Obviously Social Media is here to stay. The genie is out of the bottle. The adoption rates of Facebook and Twitter are astronomical, and Google’s just announced Wave may, in time may trump both Facebook and Twitter.

As every marketer is figuring out how to leverage, read: monetize social media, at a macro level, every business out there - small, medium, or large - like it or not - has to face social media head on and figure out how this new force of communication will fit inside and outside their corporate walls. Company blogs are fairly easy to monitor and control, but what about corporate Facebook pages or Twitter accounts? How can you control your company’s reputation now that there are so many ways to possibly disrupt it? A little social networking background first.

Do you remember during the Internet’s boom and bust a site called fuckedcompany.com? If not, a little refresher: if you had any inside (the worse, the better) information on a particular company, you could post said dirt on the site [cached title tag: "Offering bad news about dot.com companies and betting on the demise of companies."]. The site was an extremely snarky way to poke holes into the business plans of the myriad web-based businesses trying to cash in on the Internet gold rush. Note, the site is no longer in full operation, and Phil Kaplan, its creator is about to launch a new venture called http://www.kaplanindex.com/.

How many corporate officers, not to mention employees, checked Fuckedcompany on a daily/weekly basis to see if their company had made it to the site? My friend Todd can attest to this.

Flash forward to 2009 and there are now many ways for employees to communicate what they’re working on, opinions, as well as what’s going on with their employer - be it good or bad news. And this is the potentially sticky part. Common sense dictates that most of what employees post on social networking sites about their work or employer is either benign or positive in nature. But, and this is a big but, what if it’s not? How easy could it be to damage a company’s carefully crafted reputation with just a couple of tweets? Case in point, look no further than the hellstorm two Domino’s Pizza employees caused a couple of months ago with their two minute self-made video.

In an attempt to help guide businesses through the nascent maze of social media marketing, Deloitte recently ran an ethics and workplace survey (2,000 participants in April 2009) called “Social networking and reputational risk in the workplace.” A copy of the findings can be found here.

Some interesting numbers to consider:

- 74% of employees surveyed said it’s easy to damage a company’s reputation on social media.
- 58% of executives agreed that reputational risk and social networking should be a board room issue, but only 15% say it actually is.
- 53% of employee respondents said their social networking pages are none of their employers’ business.
- 61% of employees say that even if employers are monitoring their social networking profiles or activities, they won’t change what they’re doing online — they know it’s not private, and have already made significant adjustments to their online profiles.

How often do you visit social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Twitter,YouTube, Flickr, etc?

- 22% - Five or more times per week
- 23% - One to four times per week
- 10% - Once a week
- 44% - Never

One very interesting question asked was:
“In the past six months, at least one of your colleagues was let go because of inappropriate behavior online.”
Seven percent answered “true” to this question.

Are there programs in place?

55% of executives said their companies don’t have an official use of social networks, and 22% said their companies would like to use social networking tools, but haven’t yet figured out how.

How you can protect your company’s reputation

Building a strong corporate brand is crucial to a company’s success and the Internet has become the end-all be-all for connecting with customers, friends and co-workers. Every posting - text, video, podcast, image - to a company blog, Facebook page, Twitter feed, etc. in this world of instant communication can help or hurt your brand. But there are measures you can take to protect your reputation:

- Create a social media handbook for your employees. This doesn’t have to be a 50 page exhaustive manual - just a simple set of common sense guidelines that lay out the company’s mindset regarding social media.

- Set up scans via such sites/tools as Twitscoop , RSS feeds, and Technorati to track your company’s name as it flows throughout the Internet.

- Put together a “crisis management” social networking strategy team to manage any negative or false information. Do this before any trouble comes your way. This team can be put into action on short notice to protect a company’s reputation.

The social media networking train has left the station - conversations about your company are taking place right now like it our not. But this flow of information is a terrific opportunity to keep an open and truthful conversation going regarding your company and its reputation. With some planning and consideration, you can embrace the transparency that social networking presents and align your company’s goals and brand with your employees, customers, prospects, analysts, and reporters.

What’s your take? If you’re running a company or in charge of corporate communications, how are you embracing social networking?

Will you entrust your employees - armed with a set of guidelines - to push your company’s brand out into the web-o-sphere? Will you turn a blind eye and let things progress organically? Potential landmines pock the social media landscape, but the genie is out of the bottle, and must be taken seriously.