This past weekend, Buffer suffered an unusual hacking incident that saw many people’s Facebook (and some Twitter) accounts post spam. You can read about the incident (and the updates including the solution) on the Buffer blog here.

There are many security and privacy lessons that can be learned from this incident.

However, the number 1 lesson that I hope every single brand that is active on social media gleans from this is:  Be open, honest and transparent. That’s exactly what Buffer did. And guess what? No one is shitting on them this morning.

The screenshot above shows the top results for a search on “buffer weekend hack”. Most focus on the tactical response from Buffer rather than any security issues.

Throughout the weekend, Buffer updated their social media accounts, blog and even sent out email updates. their goal was to let their community of users know what had happened, what they were doing to resolve the issue and what steps their users could take in the meantime.

One of the things they were also not afraid of doing was apologizing. They actually said sorry: Which is something everyone needs to do a little bit more of because none of us are perfect.