Americans love parody. If they didn’t Saturday Night Live wouldn’t have survived a single season on TV, let alone 30.

Nearly everyone who watches the program clearly understands the skits are designed to get laughs by poking fun at newsmakers often by stretching the truth. On social networking sites, however, the jokes are not always so obvious.

Twitter and Facebook have guidelines for posts that are intended to poke fun at newsmakers. But they’re not always followed. Here’s a recent example of a Twitter parody account, @bpglobalpr that takes aim at British Petroleum:

Twitter’s guidelines recognize that parody is a legitimate form of speech. That’s why Twitter has stated that people who open ”fake” accounts should clearly indicate that in the page name. In this case, “fakebp,” or “notbp.”

From the heading and the logo below (in case you didn’t notice it has dripping oil) a reader could easily get the impression this is really BP’s pubic relations site. As of May 26, this fake site had drawn almost 44,000 followers.

While BP may be a sitting duck for Social Sabotage, don’t think for a moment your organization is immune. Check the social sites daily to see if your brand and your company are being misrepresened. Report fake Twitter or Facebook pages immediately.

Or if you want to engage in parody, remember there’s little body language in 140 characters of text. So make your intentions clear.

What company doesn’t have a Facebook page, a Twitter account or even a YouTube Channel? All of these can be great vehicles for conversing with customers and prospects and for building brands. They also offer easy platforms for those who want to sabotage your organization – current or former employees, disgruntled customers or people who simply want to tear down your company’s reputation.

Perhaps the most famous case was the YouTube video that showed employees at a Domino’s Pizza store in North Carolina doing some disgusting, explicit things in the kitchen. The openness of social media offers an easy ticket for social sabotage.

Your identity can be hijacked by a bogus Facebook profile. Comments posted in jest on a blog or in a Tweet could be easily be misunderstood to the detriment of your reputation. Or a disgrunted employee or customer could go on a profanity-laced tirade against you, your company or your product.

So what do you do when it happens to you?

1.   Monitor the social media space. There are online services that aggregate social media mentions of your company, people and products in real time — Technorati and Radian6, for example. Monitor those several times a day. Check your own Facebook pages, fan pages, blogs and YouTube Channels as well.

2. Delete offensive, explicit posts immediately and report them. If offensive material shows up on your Facebook page, delete it immediately and report the offender.  Each site has links to report fraudulent, offensive or abusive behavior. In the case of someone passing himself off as someone else, report it to the social media site immediately. You will likely have to block all posts from that profile until Facebook can remove the profile (and that’s a subject for another time).

3. In the case of false or explicit posts on another organization’s social media sites that are damaging to you or your business, contact the site owner and insist the offensive or false information be removed immediately. If necessary, contact your attorney. Libel laws provide the same protection to people defamed on blogs as they provide to people defamed by the New York Times.

Fixing social sabotage consumed Domino’s for weeks. The offending employees were fired and charged with felonies for adulterating food. Domino’s president posted a new video issuing a public apology for what happened and tried to reassure consumers that similar acts weren’t occurring at other Dominos stores. He also shut the restaurant down for several days and brought in a crew to sanitize it from top to bottom in full view of local TV cameras.

ZLRIGNITION has promoted Nick Grant and Sara Horstmann to Account Manager.

Grant joined ZLRIGNITION in 2007 as an account- and street marketing coordinator and has played a vital role in managing special events and activities for Just Eliminate Lies, (JEL), Iowa’s teen-led tobacco counter marketing group.

A native of Washington, D.C., Grant holds a bachelor’s degree in advertising from Drake University, where he also was co-captain of Drake’s 2006-2007 men’s basketball team.

“Nick will continue to play a critical role in helping our clients’ engage teens and young adults, and in utilizing social media to help clients achieve their communications and marketing objectives,” says Louie Laurent, president and CEO.

Horstmann joined ZLRIGNITION in 2008 as a media planner and buyer. Before joining the agency, Horstmann worked at Heartland Financial USA, Inc. where she coordinated major marketing projects including special events and media buying.

“Sara brings a sharp focus on producing results that meet or exceed client expectations. She is a valuable addition to our account service team,” adds Laurent.

Horstmann, who resides in Urbandale, holds a bachelor’s degree in art & design from Iowa State University.

Any one who has ever read a review of a product, band, play, movie or anything else is proof that we seek out peer pressure.  Peer pressure has been blamed for everything from drug use to smoking, but how about purchasing habits?

The digital world has made peer pressure an art.  DIGG rates news stories. iTunes rates music, audio books and everything else that’s available.  You can find ratings for golf clubs, headphones, investments, restaurants, burritos even interactive agencies.

Marketers should pay attention to the desire for peer pressure from their customers and they should include activities to take advantage of it in their interactive strategy.  You see some marketers giving it the college try with testimonials that are signed off as “John, Detroit, MI.”  Do you believe that?  Or do you believe ten comments about a movie that are both positive and not so positive.  The answer’s pretty obvious.

Here’s something to try.  Go to YouTube.  Search for SlipKnot.  Read the comments.  Read how many of the comments express passion for their music.  Now put yourself in the mind set of a 17 year-old boy looking to make a statement about himself with music.  Do you think he could identify with the commenters?

Now fast forward 20 years and go to a wine rating site like Wine Spectator.  How does that site help you define the 37 year-old you’ve become.

Peer pressure is something we don’t outgrow and the digital world gives us the opportunity for us to find it and marketers to use it.