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Dallas Lawrence is Chair of the Social and Digital Media Practice at Levick Strategic Communications, the nation’s top crisis communications firm. He blogs on emerging digital media trends and best practices for social media engagement on Bulletproof Blog. Connect with him on Twitter @dallaslawrence.

If there was any doubt before last year as to social media’s ability to exacerbate reputation crises, 2009 settled the debate. In just that one year, Domino’s, United Airlines, and Tiger Woods were but a few of the headlining examples that were variously infected by the viral bug. These global brands made their problems even worse with sloppy responses to online news reports, blog posts, Facebook updates, YouTube videos, and Twitter entries.

With big names such as Toyota and Johnson & Johnson suffering similar ills in just the first two months of 2010, it seems that the second decade of the 21st Century will be as unrelenting as the first on brands that fail to effectively prepare for and respond to crises in the online marketplace.

The good news is that by understanding how online crises can be transformed into trust-building opportunities, companies and high-profile individuals can avoid repeating the grave mistakes of 2009. There continue to be teachable moments in abundance. It’s time to seize on their lessons.

Size Doesn’t Matter

In the age of digital crises, big does not mean savvy. Indeed, the bigger the brand, the harder it often falls. Having worked with dozens of Fortune 1000 companies under digital duress, several salient problems seem glaringly apparent to me. Far too often, for example, corporate marketers have no contact with those entrusted with crisis response. In many cases, the company’s social media wunderkinds are completely walled off –- intentionally –- from those empowered to ensure the survival of the brand itself.

Toyota has particularly suffered the consequences of such balkanization. Toyota boasts more than 81,000 fans on Facebook, yet the company simply failed to utilize that immense resource during the first days of its recalls. To put Toyota’s silence in perspective, Google registered more than 22,000 recall-related blog posts in the first week after the announcement. Rather than engage their tens of thousands of self-identified brand ambassadors who were waiting for information, it seems Toyota simply forgot they existed.

This failure to engage a captive and influential audience represents an utter misunderstanding of the power that online communities wield in crisis. Individuals who align themselves with brands online do so for a reason. If kept informed, these individuals are a willing and enthusiastic first line of defense both online and off. Yet with each passing day of the Toyota recalls, these audiences quickly grew more concerned for themselves and their families than the brand they trusted and treasured. The messages they needed weren’t there for them in the places they look to first.

The internal walls that separate crisis response efforts must come down or more brands will suffer the wrath of real-time communications and the public’s demand for instant access to vital information when it matters most.

What Got You Here, Won’t Get You There

Johnson & Johnson’s response to the Tylenol tampering incident of 1982 is the stuff of legend. After numerous deaths were attributed to cyanide contamination of its marquee pain reliever –- which then represented a large portion of the analgesic market –- J&J initiated a costly nationwide recall, ultimately revolutionizing the industry with tamper-proof packaging that’s now an industry standard.

Yet three decades later, when J&J found itself embroiled in new recalls, the rules of the game had changed dramatically. Audiences today want information and solutions in real time. At the decisive moment, J&J did not respond fast enough to reaffirm its brand as a champion of consumer safety.

Of course it isn’t always possible to offer a solution in the first hours of a crisis, but it is essential to at least assuage consumer fears by acknowledging the problem and affirming that all that can be done is being done. Silence only raises more vexatious questions from consumers, the media, regulators, and increasingly, online communities. The lesson here is all the more underscored by contrast to the past: If you are still reading from the pre-social media revolution crisis playbook, you will fail in the digital age, period.

You Can Not Advertise Out of Crisis

There’s no debating the historical success of big brand advertising and marketing programs. As a result of such programs, Toyota’s Camry has long been America’s best-selling car. As recently as January 6, 2010, Bloomberg reported that the company’s market share was greater than Ford’s. But by the end of January, reports showed that the trend had reversed — Ford was outselling Toyota and the Japanese auto maker’s share of the market had fallen to its lowest point since 2006.

Oddly, Tiger Woods’ ordeal was similarly patterned. His agents and public relations specialists had built a seemingly bulletproof brand, yet, at the first blush of controversy, those same advisors utterly faltered by leaving key questions unanswered and allowing the online outrage to transform uncertain rumor into outright truth. As we saw on February 19th, months into the controversy, Team Tiger still failed to learn even the most basic lessons of his crisis ordeal. In today’s world, every brand has a plug. When it’s pulled, the balloon can instantaneously deflate.

Traditional advertising and brand/reputation management cannot work in such a galaxy where crisis moves at the speed of light. Today’s consumers do not make decisions based solely (or in many cases even largely) on what they read in print or see on TV. Rather, they are increasingly turning to the experiences of their friends on Facebook and the bloggers they follow. In its 2009 State of the Blogosphere report, Technorati found that 70% of these bloggers actively discuss products and companies.

Meanwhile, no platform has shown more rapid ability to drive the lifecycle of a story than Twitter. Penn State’s College of Information Science and Technology found that 20% of the 27 million tweets posted each day mention brands in one way or another. Yet only 20% of Global Fortune 100 companies have a comprehensive social media plan that includes a presence on each of the major social media hubs, and just over a third still don’t even have Twitter accounts.

Conclusion

In a crisis, consumers need honest answers and they need them fast –- and no messaging vehicle is better suited to meet this demand than those fueling the crisis in the first place. Transparent engagements in the online communities, where your customers already live, provide a credible and direct channel for the answers they need.

As we round the corner of the first quarter of 2010, successful companies will need to embrace the reality that effective crisis management has undergone a fundamental evolution in the Digital Age. Companies that still focus primarily on traditional journalists and broadcasters or messages through paid marketing campaigns do so at their own peril. At bet-the-company moments, open and rapid engagement via blog posts, tweets, viral videos, Facebook updates, and other online venues make the difference between victory and defeat in the Court of Public Opinion.

More business resources from Mashable:

- 5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online

- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence

- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy

- Google Buzz: 5 Opportunities for Small Businesses

- HOW TO: Measure Social Media ROI

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, rjzinger

Tags: brand, brand management, business, facebook, pr, small business, social media, tiger woods, Toyota, twitter