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A few years ago, it was sufficient to put out a press release or hold a news conference in light of a company crisis or bad PR.  Not so in today’s connected world – news spreads fast via Twitter, Facebook, blogs and online social networks in general – especially the scandalous type.  Remember the Domino’s Pizza fiasco?

To summarize, Domino’s employees did what underpaid, bored restaurant employees do… they played with the food. And recorded it. And put it on YouTube. Their negligence cost Domino’s quite a bit in revenue and brand appeal. Unfortunately Domino’s underestimated the viral community we live in and their attempts to quell the hype didn’t even come close to getting the job done.

Domino’s should have reacted the minute they found out about the employee videos. To avoid making the same mistake of being unprepared, take these 5 steps and be ready to deal with negative publicity if and when it comes knocking:

1. Have a plan. Get your strategy together before bad things happen so you don’t have to scramble when the moment arrives. Assign roles and responsibilities to key staff and make decisions about which media platforms you will leverage.

1. Monitor conversations. This can be as simple as creating a fewGoogle Alerts profiles for your company, brand, products and key company employees.

1. Set up a Twitter profile. You’ll be that much quicker on the draw if you’re tapped into a conversation agent where you can communicate in realtime. You’ll be glad you took the time to cultivate a group of followers that are readily available to listen to your message. Domino’s scrambled to get enough followers to make a splash a little too late.

1. Establish media contacts now. Build relationships with folks who can help you spread the word you want spread. If you want to give an exclusive interview to tell your side of the story, you’ll know just who to call.

1. Get closer to your employees. Don’t allow there to be a disconnect between corporate and staff in the field. These employees are the face of your company, you should work hard to make them feel like a part of the whole – like they belong to something bigger.

Create clear guidelines, workflows and processes with the help of any employees who have specific responsibilities to carry out. Make sure everybody is clear on exactly what their job is and how it fits into the overarching strategy.

Your best chance of minimizing the damage is to plan ahead. Get started today.

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