Over the past week, we’ve yet again seen the power of social networking in full effect. Public outcry to three huge stories – the Guardian vs. Trafigura, the Holborn tube worker and Jan Moir’s Gately article – was picked up by the Twittersphere (as well as blogs and other networks), and brought to the attention of the PPC, TFL, government as well as national press.

In these instances, people were justified in fighting for freedom of the press, customer safety and gay rights. But let’s imagine that it was a company that had made a simple mistake. Is there any way to engage with the social media space and fix the problem? Can you employ traditional crisis management rules, or does the very nature of the Internet change the game entirely?

Richard Elsen from the Byfield Consultancy (which represented Michael Jackson following the Martin Bashir documentary), spoke to us about a distinct lack of awareness. “I think that social media isn’t at all properly understood in crisis situations. Corporates have often ignored this channel of communication, which has been a huge mistake in certain cases. The truth is that social media has rapidly gained the kind of popular reach that print and broadcast media owners can only dream of.”

Elsen went on to point that social media is truly borderless, with the power to shape the opinions of millions and can make, break or damage even the biggest of brands. Large organisations are unable to deal with the speed of social media campaigns and because of inner bureaucracies can suffer serious damage as a result. Corporates are simply badly equipped to deal with crises that originate in this way.

But is this why people turned to social media in this way in the first place? As an attempt to actually get something done about bad service or behaviour? Neil Bayley, a director at Porter Novelli, expanded on this point by using TFL as an example. He said that if a member of the public had simply submitted a video of ‘bad behaviour’ from an employee directly to them, what exactly would they do with it? “Nothing, really, except go the old fashioned route of improving its customer service. In the age of cameraphones every TFL employee is a high-profile ambassador and this is how they must be treated. They need to feel a sense of shared ownership and duty to customers or these blogstorms over bad behaviour will continue, now the public has a taste for them.”

So, what can be done about it? What should brands (like Motrin or Habitat, both of which all but ignored the negative reaction to its advert and Twitter feed respectively) be thinking about? Claire Nicholson at Adrenalin told us that the first steps are the same as in any crisis. With proactive monitoring in place, it’s easier to look immediately at what’s being said, then put out  a holding statement before allocating a spokesperson to ensure a consistent message. Post-evaluation is critical – especially within the social media space – where good or bad news spreads instantly.

“Once the crisis has subsided it is important to evaluate internally whether anything could have been done differently. Although it is a cliché, an issue ignored is a crisis ensured – so to prevent similar things happening again put an action plan together. Build a team that understand if something goes wrong they will be part of the crisis management team. Work together to put any prevention strategies in place so that things are seen to improve, this will give you an opportunity to engage in a positive manner with target audiences and show you listened.”

Bayley echoed this by suggesting that from a business perspective, customer service should be made second to none, because it will be called upon, very publicly. “You should be monitoring online chatter around your brand and react swiftly when something happens, even if that reaction is a holding statement. Being seen to do something in a crisis is almost as important as actually doing it.”

Though Jan Moir’s column was most likely intended to be controversial, it’s unlikely that the Mail would have been expecting such a huge response. As Bayley again pointed out, once ‘the Internet’ had swung into action, it was too late to remove the article and apologise. “The action the Mail did take, to surreptitiously edit the content, only made it worse. Those that complained to advertisers and the PPC most likely never buy the Mail, and those that do are most likely unaware of the whole episode. A quick check of the site reveals that the same brands are still advertising around other articles. The bump in visitor numbers might even help the Mail increase its advertising rates.” However, traffic actually rose by 21% for the paper, so for some, a ‘crisis’ isn’t neccessarily a bad thing.