The 10 Biggest Social Media Marketing Fails Of 2013

Nima Badiey/Flickr Creative Commons

There are some good corporate social media accounts out there. Oreo churns out cute ads based on current events, and the British cell provider Tesco Mobile caught the Internet's attention with charmingly sarcastic tweets that even trolls can't resist.

But there are at least as many fails going on in the marketing social sphere as wins, and the fails are often epic.

A common element to all of these mishaps is that the social media team was not listening. And listening does not just mean talking to customers. It means being aware of the company's place in the Internet's culture, and knowing that customers do not appreciate mass-produced responses.

The following list compiles the year's best of the worst, in which a brand's social missteps became magnified for the world to see through nonstop sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit - and sites like us, Business Insider.