There are a few standard social media activities that everyone takes as standard practice– like putting up a Facebook page or a Twitter feed. Most brands have a Facebook wall where people can post messages.  The wall features a live feed of any comments or status updates which mention that brand. That works just great if you’re UGGs or Pampers or some equally benign brand. But what if you’re an oil company that just had a rig blow up in the Gulf of Mexico or a CPG company with some serious environmental detractors? Suddenly what seemed like a great way to hear from your consumers is just brand-sponsored platform for criticism from your critics.

That’s what happened to BP – and not only is it not the first company to run into exactly that problem, it’s not even the first one this year. In March, Greenpeace started running a video on YouTube that harshly criticized Nestle. The company, citing copyright issues, tried to get the video pulled. Once that happened, Greenpeace supporters started flooding Nestle’s Facebook page with hostile comments and altered versions of the company’s logos. The critics clearly understood the trap the company had laid for itself. One very angry status update began, “I would like to personally thank Nestle for providing a place for all the people to see…”

It is easy in hindsight to see how to avoid such self-inflicted wounds, but how do you see it with foresight? By not treating any part of your marketing – especially social – as something separate and unique to itself. All marketing has to be focused on the same goal in order to succeed. By using a check the box approach to various social channels – like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – instead of integrating them with the other parts of your marketing mix, marketers just increase the risk associated with these platforms while underplaying the rewards.

In order to understand if the risk is worth the reward, you have to ask, “How much will this activity help me get to my business  and brand goals?” and “What impact will this have on my sales or on the reputation of my brand?”  Let’s look at the example of BP. What did they want to achieve via the social media channel of Facebook? It is telling that this isn’t immediately clear.

Social media offers great opportunities for companies, including turning loyalists into advocates, having a direct connection with its users and even building a cadre of heavy-using brand-loyal product/service development contributors . But, as we have seen, those opportunities can turn into disasters if they’re mishandled or not truly considered.

Lets examine if Facebook can play a role in turning loyalists into advocates for BP.  BP sells a commodity. There are a lot of good reasons why someone at the wholesale level would buy oil from one company instead of another but brand — as understood by most consumers — is unlikely to be a major one. Branding for a company like BP is aimed primarily at investors. The consumer component of the brand BP is primarily a licensing play for small business owners, such as gas station managers.  The only thing that turns an investor into an advocate is a company’s performance. Anyone doubting that need only look at Berkshire-Hathaway which does little, if any, marketing of itself. Yet its investors are devoted to the company. This is primarily because it has done well enough that its stock currently trades for well over $100,000 per share.

So really the best reason for BP to be involved in social media was for the opportunity it could provide to respond when major issues arise. Given that, you have to ask if Facebook was the right channel for doing that. Yes, it is a very heavily trafficked venue where BP can post its news and responses. However, the seemingly unlimited opportunity for comment makes it a much better forum for the company’s critics than for the company itself. The risk here far outweighed any possible reward.

In this way social media is a lot like poker. The first thing anyone must learn in order to be good at poker is when not to play a hand. Once the cards are dealt, you need to look at them and come up with every conceivable reason why you should fold. You don’t put a single dollar in until you’ve assessed them all.

Far, far too often marketers don’t do scenario planning around social media. They don’t consider what the competitive response may be, how they may need to respond to issue and problems, and how to promote velocity and acceleration. These are all issues that need to be carefully thought out before adopting a social media plan that allows a great deal of public participation. Providing any sort of  company-sanctioned public forum radically decreases the amount of time marketing and PR have to respond to an issue from days down to hours and minutes. If these forums work well, they are a great channel for communication between the public and the company. Because of this, they are one of the first online places where people will go for information about an unexpected event. It is essential that you have thought out how you might respond so you do not spend precious time starting from scratch.

The lesson here is NOT that social media isn’t worth the risk. It most definitely is, provided it is handled in a way that can help the company or the brand engage with consumers.