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Let’s face it: Social media is wreaking havoc on the art of the corporate apology. At first, brands under siege welcomed the ability to handle crisis communications via a blog post, tweet and Facebook posting. This enthusiasm was born from decades of train wrecks that occurred when an insincere CEO tried to be sincere for a 2 minute TV appearance and either came off as aloof, uncaring or just plain incompetent. Who could forget BP CEO Tony Hayward during the oil spill on how inconvenient the entire disaster had been, remarking, “I’d like my life back.”

These TV appearances were agonizing for CXOs and their crisis communications teams – requiring 11^th hour media training and preparation. Yet for all of the drawbacks, television and print apologies held one significant advantage relative to the reality corporations must deal with today – it was a one-way conversation. In effect, it was a hit-and-run apology: CEO apologizes, then removes his or her microphone and goes back to business. No yelling, cussing or insults hurled at the executive walking out of the studio.

Fast forward to today, when corporations have embraced social media for the all-important apology. Sure, why not, executives convince themselves. By apologizing via social media they are doing so directly to the affronted without having to deal with pesky interviewers prodding them with questions specifically designed to create a verbal blunder.

Increasingly, however, social media is proving a thorny medium for the corporate apology for a number of reasons:

1) Picking the right platform for corporate apology – Social media is inherently informal, which can create an impression problem if a brand uses it to apologize for something that consumers or citizens consider of a serious nature. Social media can be used effectively to communicate that an organization regrets a decision, but using it as the only form of communication can be dangerous. Time after time, we’ve seen blow-back from individuals insisting that a Facebook apology was ‘not enough.’ To cover its bases, an organization should use social media as part of, but not the entirety of, a crisis communications plan.

2) Anticipate the reaction to the apology – If there exists a better example of a shortsighted crisis communications operation than recently occurred with Lowe’s Home Improvement and its attempt to eject itself from the controversy surrounding pulling ads from the program “All-American Muslim” I haven’t seen it. Lowe’s was one of several firms at the center of the storm, but its biggest mistake was turning its Facebook page into a lightning rod for individuals on both sides of the argument to hurl horrific accusations and commentary at one another – and Lowe’s. 28,000 comments (many inflammatory) later, Lowe’s has taken many messages down. It’s admirable in some cases to allow a platform for feedback, but it does not work in all cases and for Lowe’s using Facebook as apology central was a miscalculation.

3) Consider source of the apology – As part of the same swirl of controversy around “All-American Muslim” Kayak.com, which also pulled its ads, dispatched its CMO to social media to post the apology. While PR and marketing professionals can certainly play a key role in helping an organization develop and execute a crisis communications plan, it is my firm belief that the marketing executive should not be the principal voice for crises of a significant nature. There will be an inherent assumption of spin, and frankly I rarely see a well-received corporate apology that comes from a marketing executive. And I’m not even getting into the CMO insisting that the firm pulled ads not because the show was controversial, but because it was bad (didn’t I see their ad air during episode of “The Playboy Club?”).

4) Consider who is impacted to determine platform – When I worked with a technology company that was beset with technical problems that impacted a portion of the user base, we always struggled with how broadly to communicate the issue. In other words, if we had an outage impacting 10 percent of the customer base, we did not have the means to know exactly which 10 percent lost service or have means to ONLY communicate to these customers. So, the question became — do we take a more reactive approach where we would ensure that if impacted customers reached out we could make sure the had constant updates, or communicate the outage to the entire customer base which could, over time, erode customer confidence in service even for those that were not having problems. This is a long winding path to say that there is a difference between utilizing Twitter and Facebook if a corporate apology is directed towards the customer base. Where do they engage most – Twitter, Facebook, the corporate blog? Also, with Twitter the news can end up more broadly disseminated than if it is only shared on a Facebook page where only customers are more likely to congregate.