by Stephanie Marcus

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

For all the praise that brand advertisers have for social media, they must be aware that it’s very much a double-edged sword. And for all the free marketing, advertising and brand promotion via Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and other platforms used to help build an identity and relationship with your customers, it can just as quickly turn on you and your brand.

Social media disasters occur for a number of reasons, the first being that your company probably messed up. It may not have been intentional, but something, somewhere down the line, went wrong enough for someone to complain and it was enough for others to vocalize that complaint en masse. One mistake is all it takes for social media to turn against your brand.

No one is perfect and you can’t expect to please everyone all the time, so the best trick is to be prepared for how to handle things if your company finds itself under attack in the social realm. Here are three examples of companies who were attacked by social media and how they handled, or should have handled the situation. Learn from their mistakes or successes so you can stay on social media’s good side.

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A new study from Pew Internet found that between April 2009 and May 2010, social networking site usage grew 88% among Internet users aged 55-64, and the 65 and older group’s social networking presence grew 100% in the same time frame.

Young people still dominate social networks like Facebook (), but their usage only grew 13% during the year covered by Pew’s report. Older adults are catching up at an incredibly quick pace, though it remains to be seen whether they will pass the youth or hit a ceiling at or below the usage levels reported by young adults and teens.

Older adults who use services like Twitter () or Facebook are still in the minority amidst their peers. Pew reported about 10 months ago that 19% of all Internet () users use status updates, but only one in ten Internet users aged 50 and older used status updates or read ones written by others. That’s a lot more than there used to be, but it’s still a small group — especially when you consider the fact that Pew’s numbers only cover people who are on the Internet at all. Many people in that age group aren’t going online to begin with.

According to report author Mary Madden, e-mail still dominates interpersonal communication for the 50 and older set.

Professional networking has been made exponentially easier with social media. Years ago, networking meant asking a friend at another company to submit your resume to his HR department. A particularly assertive person might have been able to cold-call his way into lunch with a head honcho. Now, networking means having the ability to tap into hundreds of relevant connections with just the click of a button.

With this free reign comes many opportunities — namely, the chance to connect with people in your industry, impress them with your professionalism, and gather information that can directly help you. It also comes with the risk of doing it all wrong, alienating potential allies and crushing your chances at career development. Here are some guidelines for networking successfully in the realm of social media.

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There has been plenty of discussion about how governments are using social media to engage with the general public and open up their vast amounts of data to collaborators. The interagency collaboration occurring behind government firewalls using wikis and blogs is also well-publicized. A topic that’s received less attention are the ways that social media and the principles of openness, collaboration, and authenticity are transforming how the government does business. How is social media changing the government contracting process? That’s the $500 billion+ question.

The world of contracting is one of the most important, complex, and least transparent within our Federal Government. From 100-page Request for Proposals (RFPs) to GSA schedules to organizational conflicts of interest to non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), the environment has long discouraged real discourse in favor of strict rules, processes, and policies. Too many companies of all sizes are frustrated and overwhelmed by the intricacies and red tape connected to doing business with the government.

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Let’s face it: You never really leave high school. The Internet realm is no different.

It can be hard to get your freshman blog noticed among the teeming masses of digital domains. Why? Last year the total tally of blogs hit 126 million, according to BlogPulse. That’s a big class to climb to the top of. We’re not saying you have to be head cheerleader, but it would be nice to get noticed.

So if the only IP address StatCounter has to report is your own, and your comments section features a chorus of crickets rivaling that field behind the cabin you visited last weekend (and posted about in painful detail), face it: Your blog is that pathetic, friendless kid who skulks under the jungle gym at recess and reads Lois Lowry books in the bathroom during lunchtime.

Consider this your letter home to the parents — no blog deserves that kind of social exclusion. Read on to pinpoint and correct its reader-repelling ways.

And so begins my Netiquette column on CNN, which I write with my Stuff Hipsters Hate co-founder, Andrea Bartz. Head on over to C to the NN for more.

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Every time you navigate from website to website, or video to video, you’re driven by the experience. And yet, when we share content online — whether it’s scrolling through a Flickr () photostream from your friend’s wedding, or a live-streaming video — we are often left feeling that something is missing; that for all of the attention on social networking, there are few social media experiences that match the fun of hanging out together with friends in person.

The old debate about what is more valuable — content or distribution — doesn’t capture the whole picture because it’s the user experience that counts. It’s pretty clear now that social interaction is a key factor in driving “stickiness.” We want to socialize, interact and engage around content.

So why has this type of interaction been missing from most digital media experiences? One way to look at this is through the lens of the music industry.

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Sometimes the hardest part of having international clients is finding a way to connect with them. Small businesses often have to worry about different time zones, different languages, and even different customs and traditions.

While there’s no catch-all, golden resource that can solve every problem a small internationally-minded business could have, there are some easy ways to keep your business up-to-date and in the overseas loop.

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The City of Campbell River, in partnership with the Campbell River First Nations community, INFilm, Strathcona Community Futures, Rivercorp and North Island College, has launched the Campbell River Creative Industries Initiative. This initiative is designed to create a new economic sector in Campbell River that will tap the creative talent and resources of our little City by the Sea. Exploring everything from Urban Transformation to Community Partnerships, it is hoped that this initiative will lead Campbell River into a new era of prosperity. It’s a great time to be a geek in Campbell River!

Quick Pitch: Consumer Reports meets Yelp () for the purpose of creating buying alliances on behalf of the consumer.

Genius Idea: Groubal is an advocacy platform that enables U.S. consumers to create online petitions and recruit others to their causes.

Find your bank’s late payment fees unfair, or upset that you weren’t compensated by an airline for a three-hour flight delay? Create a post on groubal and leverage your networks on Facebook (), Twitter () and elsewhere to build support and demand action.

Each month, groubal picks the highest-ranked petitions and brings them to the attention of corporations and industry leaders in the hopes of creating effective group buying alliances. It’s the site’s willingness to champion its users’ causes that sets it apart from other online petition sites. It’s not just a tool for formalizing complaints; instead, it helps users carry those complaints to achieve reform and develops a site community in the process.

Hey there, ma and pop: Are you hip to Twitter (), Facebook () and the myriad of other social media tools that are currently at your disposal — you know, the ones the teens and 20somethings have basically dovetailed into their everyday lives? Social media may seem like a vapid way for tweens to gossip about Twilight () and the like, but it can be an effective (and fun) way to reach new customers and create stronger bonds with loyal fans.

Some of you may already be riding the Internet () wave (let’s face it, most of you probably are if you’re reading Mashable ()). The University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business recently did a study that shows the relationship between social media and small businesses and found that the technology adoption rates in the U.S. have doubled in the past year from 12% to 24%.

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