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.

More importantly, why should I follow you?

This Twitter thing maybe the largest bandwagon in the world. Micro blogging about burritos, traffic jams, and mocha. Wooohoo!

There seems to be two sides to the issue. You love it or you think it’s the most worthless waste of time ever to hit a mobile phone.

I’ve been getting follow notices from the strangest places. A grocery store twenty miles away from me. A convenience store chain. A fishing guide in Florida. Even a competing ad agency! Okay, I admit I follow them.

I appreciate their belief that I have something intelligent to say in 140 characters, but do they really expect me to reciprocate? Where’s the strategy? Where’s the cross promotion? Where’s your boss?

Social media is a great way to “socialize your brand” and it’s also a great way to waste your time and to look silly. Have a strategy? Answer the question, “Why should anyone follow me?”
If you have an answer to that question, use it in your bio…maybe even your name. If the answer is “Great deals at the grocery store!” maybe I’ll follow to see how great your deals are. But if your answer is, “Because I’m trying to use social media so I don’t have to spend any money!” don’t waste my time.

The words Social Marketing have been hijacked by Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and the whole social networking world. But in fact social marketing is the act of using marketing techniques to change behavior.

Social marketing has been applied to any number of different causes and efforts to change behavior.  Communication is a powerful force when appropriately applied to a societal challenge. Even as far back as slavery, mass communications were used to influence thought and behavior.

The temperance movement had its share of communications.  This example however might just drive you to drink.

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The most important thing about social marketing when done well, is that it has a lasting affect on us even if it might not change our behavior.  Who can forget this campaign?

The “This is your brain on drugs” campaign became part of Americana with many, many spin offs.

The most important thing about social marketing is that when it works, it produces positive changes in people’s lives.  Maybe it helps them quit a gambling problem, live a healthier life or convinces them to use generic drugs and reduce the cost of health care.

On the business side of things, social marketing can improve an industry’s image and alleviate problems caused by over indulgence if done with honest good intent.  Social marketing techniques can change a way employees treat customers, or improve the way employees do their jobs increasing quality every step of the way.