They know if you've been bad or good...

It's any executive's worst nightmare. You wake up to find your company has become a trending topic on Twitter, and not for your awesome products. Maybe you run a restaurant chain and someone posted a video on YouTube of employees spitting in the food. Or someone recorded a call in which a help desk employee cursed at a customer. Or -- worse -- one of your suppliers turns out to have a subcontractor who employs 7-year-olds in Laos to make parts for your product. There are photos of these would-be second graders stitching your brand of shorts all over the internet.

Now what?

We live in the "age of damage," says David Jones, CEO of marketing company Havas and author of the new book Who Cares Wins. Thanks to social media, people have been "empowered to force business leaders, CEOs and politicians to behave in a better way," he says. "If you do not behave in the right way, you will get taken down." It's like the old song about Santa Claus: He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows if you've been bad or good... Everything comes out in time. There are no secrets.

So what do you do? First of all, there's the rest of the song: So be good, for goodness sakes! Jones cautions businesses to always be looking at the issues that are under your control. "You as a business need to -- now -- stop treating corporate social responsibility as a marketing tactic," he says. Your customers are good people, and expect you to live up to those ideals as well. But in all the cases described above, it's unlikely that your board sat around a table and purposefully made an unethical decision. Employees have free will, and all the policies in the world can't stop someone from making a bad choice. Maybe you failed to audit all parts of your supply chain because you've worked with that supplier for years and he seemed like a good guy. What do you do when the pictures hit?

Jones advises three words: "Transparency, authenticity and speed." Don't waffle. If it's bad behavior, say so and apologize. Right the wrong if you can. Do so quickly. And give consumers a way to check on how you're doing -- one reason Apple recently released details of its supply chain. In the age of social media, being "completely candid and open" is the best way to deal with a major foul-up.