Also really happened, but never made it to the press and social media: a hospital had a power outage. To make matters worse, the emergency generator didn't work either. Panic broke out in the intensive care unit where people were on heart and respirator machines. Even cleaners were giving patients heart massages at that moment. If this had made the news, many people would no longer want to be in that hospital.
3. Blaming others
Don't say: yes, it went wrong, but it's not our fault. A while back, a province had a bridge built. After construction started, the bridge turned out to be too low for shipping traffic. Construction was stopped at the taxpayer's expense; a new design would of course have cost millions more. However, it was not the province's fault but that of a 'figure supplier'. No matter how much you want to say that you were 'not stupid' yourself: it can't be. Even if you are right, take responsibility.
4. Trivialize
Don't paint a rosy picture, don't downplay it. So as a car manufacturer, don't say: we've made 1,000,000 of those models and we only forgot to fit the brake pads properly on 3 of them. Statistically negligible perhaps, but if your father just had an accident with that car, nothing is negligible.
5. Speculation
Never speculate. If you don't know something (yet), don't brother cell phone list go into hypothetical possibilities. Only tell what you know for sure. Think of mayor Denie.
1. Monitor
Monitor, monitor, monitor (with for example Hoortsuite or Coosto). What is being said about you in the various social media? Identify people and online media with influence. You can measure that influence by the number of followers, influence scores, the number of retweeted messages, the type of messages (such as Facebook calls to action), the number of viewed YouTube videos of witnesses. Anyone who thinks that 82,000 tweets were written on the day of the deadly attack in Liège, must gauge and know what is going on. Also that there is a lot of unsavory stuff to read: