In this space I’ve discussed the benefits of social media many times, but it’s a double edged sword. If businesses don’t take care to get their message out, especially in bad times, rumors can overtake the truth, which can affect the bottom line.

Just look at the recent Qantas Airlines incident.

Last week, a Qantas plane had engine issues, to say the least, and had to return to the airport soon after taking off.

From there the rumors started. The plane had crashed, pieces of the engine were falling to the ground, the engine had completely fallen out of the plane.

All of these rumors were false and they were out there, in large part, thanks to social media. In fact, Twitter feeds were to blame for most of the rumors.

And how did Qantas respond? Through old-fashioned, 20^th century public relations, and it caused a big problem.

You see, there was a disconnect between the main corporate office for Qantas in Asia and the public relations arm, in the United States.

In fact, Qantas officials dealing with the crash didn’t even have the password to access the corporation’s Twitter account.

It remains to be seen whether Qantas will pay a price for their inability to use social media effectively, but they have an advantage in dispelling rumors that most businesses don’t.

After all, there was no crash, nobody died, so it is easy to dispel a rumor of something that obviously didn’t happen.

Would you be able to make the same claim if rumors were spread about your business?

It’s awfully hard to disprove something that didn’t happen for most businesses since most rumors aren’t about life and death like the Qantas rumors were.

So ask yourself, how would you deal with lies made about your business in social media?

If you don’t stay on top of your social media and make sure lies and falsehoods aren’t being spread about your business, your business could crash and burn.

You know I know many business owners are struggling with deciding to use Social Media, some are even attending workshops and paying many thousands of dollars to learn this ...

Brutally honest and most of you know I am, you can learn Facebook, Blogging, LinkedIN, Twitter and YouTUBE pretty easily with just a few days work and about 20 to 30 minutes a day ...

If you have been wavering, then get to it.  It's a great way to build a reputation for your profession, to build a library of video testimonials, to build relationships with your customers and team, to even reconnect or connect with personal friends ...

Almost every site now has enough training online to teach you how to make the most of it ...

Some tips for those of you online already ...

1.  Keep a balance, about half business and half personal ...

2.  Provoke thoughts and comments ... even use great quotes ...

3.  Reach out and comment or "talk" to people online, make comments as often as possible ...

4. A picture is worth a thousand words ...

All the Best ... Brad

PS.  Be careful to check in often and watch what people say on your page or on your files etc, sometimes people are simply out to use you to sell to your database or worse, rip you off ...