Microsoft landed into some hot water Saturday when a tweet was mistakenly sent out that denigrated conservative pundit, Ann Coulter.

The tweet, sent out by an employee who immediately deleted it and who meant to send the tweet on his personal Twitter account, showcases the problems that corporations are facing in the digital age: monitoring and censoring itself on social media over political matters.

Of course, corporations have dealt with this forever, going back to the Robber Barons era and the outsized corporate influence over American domestic policy in Congress. However, what should corporate policy be, on official Twitter accounts, in regards to political discussions raging on Twitter?

Some ideas might include:

1. Monitoring the official Twitter account for these types of tweets. Perhaps companies should hire a “firewall” employee whose job it is to monitor how other employees are using social media for the company and censoring those things the company might object to. I suppose this “firewall” person could be a lawyer hired by the company.

2. Monitoring when and how an official corporate Twitter account is being used. This might limit the use of the official Twitter account to only those personnel that have permission from the company and making sure access to the account is limited to those personnel.

3. Banning the use of personal Twitter accounts on company policy. This is sure to make some people scream about First Amendment rights, but it would also help companies keep up productivity and limit the possibility that something like this doesn’t occur. Of course, for media companies and social media companies, this is much harder to achieve.