The potential of social media to be a two-edged sword was further established by recent research that reflects the fact that American’s are spending millions of work hours, as well as significant segments of their personal time, on the Internet engaged in the various facets of social media from Facebook to MySpace, from Linkedin to Twitter and from YouTube to the whole Blogosphere.

Over the past few months the full potential, and the horrors (depending upon one’s perspective), have become clearer.  The message of these events to every real estate brokerage or organization is clear: Be prepared to have your organization become entwined in a fierce battle and understand how your Twitter or Facebook account can become a major liability.

The two latest examples of this phenomenon surfaced last month.  In the first, the Amazon.com organization was buried in a “Twitterstorm” when it was discovered that thousands of its titles dealing with Gay and Lesbian subjects had accidentally been tagged as “adult material” thus taking them out of the normal distribution process.

In the second incident the public relations fortunes of the Domino’s pizza organization took a serious tumble when two of their employees posted a video on YouTube demonstrating a disgusting scenario on how not to prepare a sandwich for public consumption.

These events followed closely on the heels of another widely distributed video showing Burger King employees bathing in the dishwashing sink.

In preparing this piece we were unable to identify any real estate brokerage or related organizations that have had a problem.  However, with thousands of brokerages, tens of thousands of agents and millions of real estate consumers becoming increasingly active on the internet, it is obviously just a matter of time.

Each of the events mentioned above had impacted and activated responses from millions of people before the companies involved had noticed a problem or the opportunity to take effective action.  Therein lies one of the problems with which the traditional public relations system is not prepared.  Like so many other Internet-related situations, nothing in the past has prepared most businesses and organizations to deal with the 24/7/365, highly viral Internet environment.

Obviously the first issue to come to mind is how to prevent this type of incident all together, without stifling the very nature of the mass participation social media model.  Given the fact that virtually any individual can unleash an attack on virtually any corporation, company, organization, entity or other person without notice or provocation, prevention appears to be a distant remedy.

Preparedness is a step that every brokerage or organization should undertake immediately.  There are five steps to undertake in completing this exercise.

• Identify and train your Internet Crisis Response Team (ICRT).  The successful team will include both internal and external players; individuals with specialized knowledge relating to social media issues as well as your legal counsel.

• Based upon your unique community, determine what elements of social media are most likely to be used to generate your own disaster.  By way of example, Twitter was the media of choice for the Amazon.com event and YouTube provided the weapons system for the Domino’s crisis.

• Conduct a visioning exercise to identify the top “most likely” crisis scenarios that might befall your organizations and have your ICRT group use the experience gained from this exercise to create specific crisis response plans.

• Be sure that your organization is tracking the various social media channels so that you can buy as much time as possible, through an early warning, that something is happening with respect to your name and reputation.  Google alert is probably the simplest and most immediate remedy for monitoring, although there are several others.

• Be prepared to execute your crisis response plan ASAP and, in all cases, within 24 hours.  An immediate response can halt a crisis.  Anything over 24 hours is a certain recipe for a disaster.

Responsiveness appears to be the next most immediate and appropriate exercise.  When the moment arrives, be prepared to respond in a quick and positive fashion through one or more of the following eight tactics.

1. Be credible: The facts are probably not going to be an issue here, at least initially.  In real life more players get caught conspiring to hide the act than actually committing it.  The immediate assault of the social media critics will be on the credibility of your organization’s response, rather than the viability of the actual circumstances that led to the crisis. Your first response to the situation will ultimately seal your fate with the Internet group.

2. Be transparent: Don’t talk in circles or through lawyers or other surrogates.  Have the CEO of the company talk directly in its defense. Do not try to spin your way out of the situation.  Remember that this aspect of social media was developed to respond to the type of double talk and hype that was common over the past twenty-five years.  This is where you will demonstrate that you are one of the “new” and “transparent” organizations with nothing to hide.  Do not be afraid to say you don’t know what happened.

3. Identify the spearhead: As quickly as possible figure out who is spearheading the criticism and where their comments might lead.  Are they actually customers or general critics?  Is this an exercise in criticism or are these folks really angry?  As with any crisis your response must be proportional to the threat.

4. No tricks: While it is ok to say you don’t know what caused the problem or even if there is one, always avoid lawyer-inspired “clever” responses that assume those in play don’t get it.  Remember, this is all about being credible.  While this situation may seem analogous to a media environment, it isn’t.  Both the rules and the target outcomes are different.  The social media world has more resources and perseverance than a media reporter who has other fish to fry.

5. Stay on the battlefield: Do not switch media to make your response.  If the problem came through your Facebook page, then fight the battle there.  Switching to a press release mid-stream will appear to be evasive and not credible.

6. Be ready to say that you are sorry: Do not put forth a defensive, disbelieving or superior attitude. Chances are that some manner of mistake was made and you must demonstrate a willingness to learn from the mistake and do everything possible to make sure it doesn’t happen again.  Demonstrate that you have learned from the event. Remember our mothers’ advice when she taught us never to be sorry to say we are sorry.

7. Build relationships now: Invest in customer relationships now.  Remember that today’s consumer is very interested in having a relationship with both you and your agent.  Moreover they are interested in the benefits of these relationships. 

8. Develop real solutions: Come up with solutions that will both prevent the problem from reoccurring and will demonstrate your company’s consumer-centric status moving forward.

The lesson here for real estate professionals and organization administrators is that you cannot ignore those within the social media environment who are committed to being accomplished critics. In fact they can provide critical early warnings with respect to the ongoing viability of your service package.

Like a literary critic who is critical of a book you recommended to all of your friends, a movie critic who pans your favorite comedy, or a restaurant critic who expressed disgust at the desert, these critics must be addressed quickly and appropriately. Do not expect to satisfy this group. You are much more likely to rescue those observers who, in the absence of your response, will assume that the critic is correct.

Remember that just being critical doesn’t make the critic right. Your firm is not necessarily suffering from some sort of ethical or moral shortcoming. In the social media world the art of criticism is just that.  It may or may not be correct, but it must be met face on.