The misinformation in using Facebook to promote and campaign for votes can get individuals into trouble.

Take for example this incident of “Facebook Like” assignment of a grade school computer teacher. She was criticized for requiring a Facebook account and generating likes in an assignment for Grade 3 students. It became the hot topic in the Philippine blogosphere when a blogger published the whole account of the incident on her article entitled Mater Carmeli School, what is your Grade 3 Computer Teacher teaching my baby brother?

Check out the sentiments of netizens over this:

View the story “Grade School Teacher in Criticized for Requiring Facebook Likes in Computer Assignment” on Storify]

<a href=”http://storify.com/likke/grade-school-teacher-in-hot-water-for-requiring-fa” target=”_blank”>View the story “Grade School Teacher in Criticized for Requiring Facebook Likes in Computer Assignment” on Storify</a>]

This is an alarming news for parents and guardians who send their kids to school in hopes of having their kids learn. When you look at it, the teacher just might mean well when As a homeschooler, I cringe at the fact that this might happen to my homeschooled kid when I transition him to the “big school”.

In the point of view of a Facebook administrator and social media manager, there are two important lessons that can be picked from this incident:

First, brands and Facebook page owners should be aware of Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines that states: “You must not use Facebook features or functionality, such as the Like button, as a voting mechanism for a promotion. “

In the case of the St. Louie Phase Women’s Club, Inc’s beauty pageant that included the daughter of the said teacher, she as a stakeholder just wanted her daughter to win, thus without any doubt used all her means to generate the much needed likes however magical the means would be. The administrators should be the one know the rules of the platform and not put the blame on their contestants.

Second, the “talking about this” metric maybe something that you are eye-ing on but are these people even talking about how good your product or services are? Or are they bashing you?

The Facebook fan page administrator immediately deleted the whole album for the pageant. I am guessing that if they did not do that, the bashing would continue and would be a scar forever on the little girl involved. This is a good move I believe.

But when they mentioned that people should not be ranting on their page, it is as if they have washed their hands and took zero responsibility for hosting the Likes contest in the first place.

Again, if you are keen on watching this metric, better make sure if the sentiment is positive or negative. It could spell disaster for your brand.