To many organizations, social networking sites are their contact with the outside world. Facebook and Myspace do not represent ways to stay in touch with friends, but ways to stay in contact with clients, spread name recognition, and market products. However, businesses and organizations often make critical mistakes in the administering of these social networking sites.

These mistakes can lead to criticism in the blogosphere or to unsatisfied clients making negative posts about your company or organization elsewhere. For example: if a client complains about a product on the wall of your business’ facebook page and gets no response–he may decide that he does not like getting ignored and set up a blog all about how terrible your business is. This is a mistake that can result from under-use of a social networking site or from letting the intern do it. Social networking sites should be tools used in reputation management, not problematic sites which encourage the need for reputation management.