As I’m sure Richard Branson would agree, social media can be a bit of a monster at times and a rather difficult beast to tame. The scope and speed offered by networks such as Twitter and Facebook, coupled with the ever expanding blogosphere, allows user-generated content to travel faster than a transatlantic flight to New York City.

Whether it be a poor customer experience, a brand simply getting it wrong or rogue staff playing a prank - social media has given a voice and a platform to everyone with a keyboard and mouse: and they’re certainly not afraid to use it!

Here is a collection of some recent high profile examples of the staggering power of social media from the last few months, highlighting the potentially damaging effects it can have on big brands:

Virgin Atlantic

Whilst it was tongue in cheek to some extent, the online circulation of a letter criticising Virgin’s in-flight meals demonstrates the potential that social media holds and how bad publicity can reach more people, more quickly, than ever.

Posting complaints and reviews is nothing new of course - unhappy customers have been airing their views online since the birth of online shopping. At the same time, customer service teams have been able to use traditional complaint handling procedures to deal with such feedback by responding online. But when one particularly serious incident reaches so many people, in such a short space of time, an established brand can suddenly find themselves with a big fight on their hands in order to maintain their good reputation.

Amazon

How a brand chooses to manage the situation and how fast they react can make a big difference. The recent controversy surrounding Amazon shows that even the biggest of all online brands are not immune. When hundreds of gay and lesbian-themed books disappeared from the site’s rankings there was a veritable digital uproar, initially amongst authors and activists, who took offence to Amazon’s explanation that it was “excluding adult material”.  Word spread at lightning speed and after the original post on April 12th, it had appeared on the Wall Street Journal blog within 36 hours and on many national newspaper websites within 3 days.

Whilst Amazon now claims the removal of certain books was a result of a technical error, it was their initial (and rather discriminative) reason that thousands of Twitter users spread across the network.  There have since been over 300 articles in mainstream publications, many questioning Amazon’s policy on the matter and damaging its corporate identity in the process.  It’s fair to say that widespread use of social media is taking word of mouth to a whole new level.

Domino’s Pizza

Domino’s Pizza have recently been made acutely aware of social media’s awesome power. This case demonstrates more than any how a relatively isolated incident can suddenly become a huge PR nightmare overnight. One Monday, two employees filmed themselves stuffing cheese up their noses and adding particularly unsavoury toppings to some pizza orders. Within two days their video recorded over a million views on YouTube, word spread like wildfire on Twitter and the incident was referenced in 5 of the top 10 results for “Dominos” on Google.

Needless to say, the damage had already been done by the time the pranksters denied the food was ever delivered to customers. Domino’s now acknowledge that they didn’t react online early enough - millions of potential customers’ perceptions of the brand had already been changed forever. By the end of the week Domino’s had created a Twitter account and posted a response by its chief executive on YouTube; a valiant effort, but many people were already thinking twice before dialling Domino’s.

Ryanair

In what is perhaps precisely the wrong way to react to online criticism, Ryanair were put under the PR microscope when freelance web developer Jason Roe noticed a bug on Ryanair’s website and posted details on his blog.

This prompted one member of Ryanair staff to respond by calling him an idiot, a liar and pathetic, amongst other things. Ryanair then chose to enflame the situation further when their spokesman Steven McNamara was quoted saying “Ryanair doesn’t want anything to do with idiot bloggers.” Hardly a good way to endear yourself to the estimated 100 million active bloggers in the world.

Keeping your finger on the social media pulse

So what does all this teach us? If any of your employees are foolish enough to video themselves abusing the product they’re selling and then post it online, at the very least you should be one of the first to know about it. Having your finger on the pulse of social media is not only crucial to monitoring the perception of your brand, but you need to make sure your PR team is on hand to deliver a response when such a crisis occurs. Responding quickly enough to alter the slant of opinion could prevent further widespread damage to your business. PR crises such as these also present a unique opportunity to impress and use all the extra coverage to turn bad press into good publicity.

But most importantly of all, these PR horror stories demonstrate the marketing potential if you properly harness the power of social media. If one single piece of negative press can travel from a single blog to front page news within days - imagine the impact it could have when spreading good news about your brand!