"Each situation is as individual as individuals themselves," says Denise Zimmerman, president and CSO of NetPlus Marketing, a full-service digital agency. She emphasizes that there's no set formula to deal with social media foes. Rather, it's more a matter of marrying basic PR and marketing tenets with an understanding of how the digital forum can change things, such as the increased rate at which things can escalate online. "That's where it differs from historical PR practices," Zimmerman stresses, "is the speed of potential escalation."

Senior VP and Director of Insights for Edelman Digital, Steve Rubel, believes that how a brand reacts depends "upon the situation, the topic, the client, the venue, and the client's readiness." By "readiness," he's referring to a brand's plan (or lack of one), its comprehension of the severity of the situation at hand, and its presence on the web, which leads perfectly into our next guideline…