You’re a large corporation, you’re a medium sized business, you’re an entrepreneur with a start up. How would you react to the following situations?

Someone has decided to blog about the poor customer service they have just experienced

Someone had posted a You Tube video portraying your company in a poor light

Someone has created a social network for people that like your company.

Don’t think the above scenarios are occurring or happening? Better think again. And you better have your ducks in a row on how you are going to deal with each of these situations. The last thing you can do is to ignore them. As each day goes by, every person now has the tag of “citizen journalist” and with that title, they can now post, share and spread good, bad, or indifferent news about you and your company. How you deal with it will determine alot about how hip you are to the power of social media and the power of your customers and customers to be.

Case in point #1 Jet Blue does not handle well the person who decides to video an altercation between 2 passengers and then it spirals out of control when the Wall Street Journal picks up on it.

Case in point #2  A blog with numerous examples of corporate failure and success A citizen journalist has documented corporate failure. How did they react?

And Case in point #3 One of social media’s most influential thinkers decides to devote a very large post to this subject.

The bottom line is this. What is your response? How do you respond? How do you act? How do you react? Does anyone know? Who calls the shots in your company on the best way to respond and what is said? How do you and your company respond to some of social media’s and the bloggosphere’s most prolific writers and thinkers when they say something about mistakes that you might have made?

You need to have a plan in place. And you need to be able to move on it quickly. To ignore it, will be your biggest mistake.