By now, you may (or may not) have heard about the rogue tweet that was sent out on the Red Cross’ official account. Someone with access accidentally posted a tweet meant for her personal account that was, shall we say, not Red Cross material.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a life-or-death situation, but the Red Cross could have handled this much, much worse. The tweet was live for about an hour, and then this was posted:

The original tweet?

The Red Cross has confirmed the rogue tweeter was not drunk, and they even blogged about the incident! What’s crazy is that the Red Cross actually reported an uptick in donations after Dogfish Head Brewery encouraged its fans to donate to the organization.

What if the Red Cross didn’t have a sense of humor? They could have reacted with ire; they even could have attempted to ignore the whole incident. Instead, they were honest with their followers and fans and as a result of their honesty and, yes, humor, they received tons of great PR. Tons of people tweeted to @RedCross and @dogfishbeer that they were planning on donating blood.

Take a moment to reflect on this and ask yourself how your organization would react if such an incident happened to you. This is a great example of social media done right - because nobody’s perfect and crisis management skills are critical.