We’re beginning to see the downside of the social media land rush mentality that compelled big brands, organizations and corporates to set up shop on the likes of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Foursquare over the past two years. A much-cited new survey tells us that companies are being increasingly hit with a new type of reputation-bruising crisis, one that emerges and spreads via social media channels. As the Altimeter Group notes, social crises are on the rise and companies are increasingly unprepared to resolve them.

We can second this finding. We once again took a look back over the past year to analyze the big social media gaffes, screw-ups and botch jobs plaguing the corporate world to find that big companies, despite the increased investment in this field, are increasingly falling victim to the social media crisis. Much of it is their own doing – i.e., they’ve outsourced the social media comms to an outside agency that drops the ball (Chrysler), or they’ve committed the cardinal sin: assuming that social media channels are a place only for cheery news, finding themselves unprepared to deal with actual complaints on these discussion forums (Cisco). You can follow our analysis here in this report: “Social Media Screw-ups: the updated history from Kryponite to Kenneth Cole (and beyond).”

It’s a bit discomfiting to think brands are making the same mistakes they did last year and the year before, and at a greater pace. It’s pretty clear that deploying old-school PR methods to defuse a crisis is no longer acceptable corporate comms practice in an age where damaging “news” can break from a Twitter feed, blog post or YouTube clip.

But it’s not all bad news. Consider this – while these social tools that can sink the reputation of a slow-footed organization, they can be used to great effect by the social-savvy company to manage its communications swiftly, openly and with greater impact for all your stakeholders in a time of crisis.

With this in mind, SMI is pleased to tell you about a new workshop we have put together: Social Media Crisis Communications, set for Nov. 16th. We will team with Neil Chapman, formerly of BP and a veteran of the Deepwater Horizon spill, for this series of workshops in which we take you through crises scenarios and help you prepare you and your team for the next viral reputation-crusher that could impact your brand. More details are here.