How To Recover From An Online Mistake: Strategies For Digital Mishaps

Ah that feeling of anxiety when you mess up something online.  

The other day I blasted out an email without sending myself a test email, breaking one of my own rules and then after it goes out to +2k people I realize that I forgot to remove the headline in the template that says: 

“Paying for coaching is a waste of time” 

I’m sure some of my recipients were like…..this makes no sense? Well, that’s what happened, I went too fast and didn’t remove a headline from an email template that I set up. 

If you are doing business online its probably happened to you, if not, it will, but I thought I’d turn this into a fun blog post and share some stories and a few tips on how to recover from an online mistake. 

I'm talking about a social media blunder, sending out an incorrect link to an online event, email error or other forms of digital mishaps. 

I’ve been locked out of my Zoom account 2 minutes before starting a group coaching call. I had Marketing Legend Amy Porterfield booked out for months in advance and when I showed up on the call it says ‘invalid link’.  

Oh that feeling! You don’t know what to do and it feels like one of those dreams where you show up too school with no clothes on!  

But its ok, most of the time the damage is in our own head and we create more pressure on ourselves than needs to be. People get it, they understand and anyone who is really upset at you, it’s ok to lose them.  

Here are 3 ways to deal with the inevitable online mess ups:  

1 – Call it out! Keep in mind, depending on the mess up, it may have gone unnoticed by many. But when you call it out, it will put a big spotlight on it. My opinion is nothing beats ownership of a mistake, big or small. 

Yesterday I saw an AWESOME post about one of my coaching colleagues who had built a large following on Instagram of 48k followers and was going to shut it down and start from scratch again. 

The reason? She had hired a marketing company that had lied to her and helped her grow her account using fake followers and spamming engagement strategies that didn’t align with her core values.  

She completely OWNED it; how can you not love her for her radical honesty and humility? I’m sure it was tough but she fixed it and is now able to move on in a way that does align with her values. 

2 – Fix it and move on! A few weeks ago, best selling Author Brendan Burchard had his annual Influencer Summit and they had the wrong link sent out. I’m sure he has several MILLION subscribers to his email list getting ready to jump onto the wrong page. 

He simply sent out an email with a subject line that said “Correct Link for Influencer Summit” and had one line that apologized for the error, and the rest of the email was focused on all the value that would be delivered at the event. 

I know Brendan has probably had more online mess-ups than 99% of us and probably didn’t spend a minute beating himself up over it.  

3 – Just don’t worry about it – We spend so much time worried about what other people are thinking about us, but the truth is, everybody has their own stuff to deal with and probably isn’t spending too much time thinking about you. You’ll forget about it soon too! 

Find The Apex:   

For a lot of people, the need to be perfect wastes crazy amounts of time. On the other side, moving too quickly can be sloppy and take away from your professionalism.  

Where are you on the spectrum, too perfect or moving to quickly? Or right in the middle? 

There’s a good middle ground where you have a good balance of quality without stalling and sitting for hours, days or weeks on getting your content out. 

The Backup plan:  

If you are doing big or important presentations (for example you have a big name coming on your podcast or a big event), you might want to consider having a backup link and an email ready to go out.  

Its also good to have a phone number of (guest/host) on hand in case of any issues.  

Messy action or perfection, which are you?

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