Especially when you are selling products to green moms, your brand is under scrutiny every day. Good brands with toxin-free products are constantly working on consumer education, and that’s vital to convincing a mom that your product is worth the extra price tag. But, what happens when that perceived value turns the other way? Your actions decide what consumers think of your brand from now on.

Remember, this isn’t the olden days when you had days to figure something out and hope it went away. There’s no trickle down effect that buys you a month or more to decide if you even have to say anything at all. Today, moms spread the word about a situation like this in minutes, probably before you even know they are aware of it. Fear that they are using a product that could injure their child spurs these situations like a wildfire with a stiff wind. Never underestimate the mother instinct to protect her child, and if your brand makes a product that is supposed to be safer or better or protect their child more, and the possibility exists that you’ve actually done harm — you’re going to feel the heat. Big time.

First and foremost, you should have a plan for something off-the-charts-bad, like a product recall. Running around trying to rally the troops wastes precious time, allowing the rumors and consumer-generated press to spread. Start step by step, from how your customer service people handle that initial phone call that your product has injured someone. What do they say? Who do they transfer the phone to? What information do you need? Is someone capable available to take that phone call day or night? I like to practice this often, and use the results for company-wide training. Then, what’s your next step? Charting some of the possibilities out in advance gives you a document to refer to and lets you get orders out to your public relations team so a press release can be generated in minutes instead of days.

In almost all the crisis communications I do, the lack of a plan has played a huge part in the current level of angst. Because there is no plan, people take actions that are reactionary — and that’s not usually the smart action. When I ask what the plan was versus what’s happening there’s usually silence on the phone. Then comes rationalization for what’s been done, and finally we start talking about what has to happen now.

Second, the cardinal rule in social media is transparency. Repeat that a few times. I believe that had California Baby been transparent about their formulation change right from the beginning, and I mean fully transparent, the outcome would have been night and day from what’s happening now. Green moms want to know the details. Reformulations happen all the time, and explaining the reasons and the details of a new formulation gives your side of the story the top billing. Your customers buy your organic products because they believe in you as a company. They aren’t there for the manufacturing process or to source ingredients. They have to believe that you are doing what you say you’re doing. This starts with transparency from day one. If you’re not being transparent today, fix it.

Third, every company gets complaints. No matter how brutal or how much truth there is, when moms see a complaint, there’s research that shows they judge the complaint’s validity by how you handle the response. Disavowing all knowledge of the situation (like H&M did) doesn’t work. Most people believe that for a consumer to take the time to complain publicly to you, there’s some truth to the complaint. Trying to sweep the situation under the Facebook rug by deleting comments is probably the worst single thing you can do. Hopefully you have a competent and social media-savvy PR team and together you can respond to complaints honestly and fairly. True, there are some people who are just trying to start trouble, but most consumers see that. Their belief in you as a company is directly tied to how you treat those people. Openly.

I want to say this again because it’s so mind boggling that companies do this — do not, under any circumstances, start deleting stuff from your Facebook page. The only exception to this is when someone is being abusive or violating your policies. Having those policies clearly spelled out from the beginning is crucial. Spend the time to do it. And stick to them. It’s fine to ask the complainer to email you and take the nitty gritty off the wall. But hitting the delete button shows you are defensive, and that spells deception.

Fourth, spell out clearly, in the case of a massive consumer outcry, what you are doing about the problem. It might not be pleasant to admit that you didn’t quality check an ingredient and now someone has gotten sick (or whatever your drama happens to be). But, being clear about your responsibility and how you will fix the problem in the future is the only way to keep your moms’ trust and your brand’s reputation. If you think your brand is above what green moms will say about it, read Beth Terry’s story and how she persuaded Clorox to provide recycling for Brita filters. If a company the size of Clorox is forced to change by one mom and her efforts, your company can and take a major hit too.

Last, show your consumers now, every day, what you do to protect them, to provide the products they believe they are buying, and how much you do to keep those products safe. Before you have a public relations problem. Spending the money and effort to show why your company cares about the products it makes, why those products are better than your competitors and how much work goes into the manufacturing of those products will help your current sales. Then, if something goes awry, you can point to those steps and clearly spell out what happened. In most cases, moms will understand and respect your accountability and transparency.

Keep these things in mind:

• Everyone makes mistakes.
• We should learn early in life that taking responsibility is not optional.
• Greenwashing is bad karma.
• Green moms can either be your best ally or worst public relations problem.
• It’s all up to you.

If you’re not convinced about the usefulness of Pinterest for your business, this article might shed some light on how it integrates with your other content curation.

It’s fairly easy to set up a personal account and I recommend you do this first, and play around with the site for at least a week before attempting to add your business page. This isn’t a site built around selling anything (in fact, it’s against the TOS) and you won’t get far by just giving out sales information. Relax and pretend this an electronic filing system for magazine pages and you’ll be a lot more on the right track.

Signing up to Pinterest can be done via Facebook or Twitter. I recommend you use the Facebook verification for your personal page because you’ll have to use the Twitter verification for your business page. I’ve had poor results trying to set up multiple pages from Twitter without using multiple browsers.  Once you have responded to the invitation, you can log in to your personal page with Facebook and your brand page with Twitter. The only downside until Pinterest offers brand pages is that you can’t link your brand page to Facebook.

Be sure to add the “Pin It” button to your IE toolbar to make it easier to pin things you find — even if you remove it after a week or so.

Get the feel and syntax for Pinterest, one of the reasons it’s so popular is the visual quality. Your brand will want to focus on the best images as Pinterest fodder, and you probably want to consider creating custom images for products that would share well on Pinterest. Think of this as your opportunity to turn your brand into an online magazine.

Learn about how Pinterest can help your brand’s SEO and consider creating an infographic that relates to your industry especially for pinning. Remember that between 50-70% of users are female, and I am seeing quality winning out over quantity.

Look at other brand pages and see how your brand can stand out. This article with analysis of Michael’s Pinterest brand page is one starting place. Check for your favorite brands as well. Whole Foods has a very nice brand page and green brands seem to be particularly quick to adopt Pinterest. Here’s another article with advice for brands on Pinterest.

To see what users have pinned from your site already, use this link, replacing yoursite.com with your URL: http://pinterest.com/source/yoursitename.com/.

Make sure to add the “Pin It” button to your web site and blog. I really like the Pin It On Pinterest plugin for WordPress for adding a “Pin It” button at the end of each post. It adds a box to the post editor that allows you to specify the text and photo that get pinned.

Be sure to be creative — for examples on how brands have developed a unique style/voice for Pinterest, see these examples.

If you need inspiration, check out these tips and tricks.

I’d love to see how your brand is using Pinterest, feel free to post links in the comments below.

I think the new timeline looks a lot like a blog, and the options are well thought out. Regardless of how you use Facebook, it makes it easier to show people what you’re all about.

Basics: Decide what LinkedIn will do for you.

1. Determine what you want to use LinkedIn for.

2. Determine with whom you want to connect and the parameters for new connections.

3. Determine how LinkedIn connects with your other social media and marketing efforts.

4. Make commitments on how much time you want to spend on LinkedIn.

5. If important, figure out how to determine results of your efforts and set benchmarks or goals.

Profile: Introduce yourself.

6. Complete your profile.

7. Add value propositions to your experience profile.

8. Obtain as many recommendations as possible. Don’t be shy to ask!

9. Update often so it shows up in your status announcement to connections.

Connections: Create a useful network.

10. Decide if you will connect with most everyone or be selective in your invitations and acceptances.

11. Always add a personal note to the people you invite to connect with you.

12. Always send personal notes to the people with whom you connected as a result of their invitations.

13. Always thank people who connect with you or with whom you’ve connected.

14. Always offer to do something for your connections. I end each thank you note with “Let me know what I can do for you.”

15. Comment as often as possible to your connections’ status updates.

16. Check the connections of new connections to find other people you’d like to connect with.

17. Pledge to contact so many people each month from your connection list.

18. Organize your connections into lists to more easily find people to send messages.

19. Don’t be shy to ask for introductions from your connections to their connections.

20. Offer to introduce your connection to another of your connections when it would be advantageous to them.

21. Thank connections or anyone else who responds to your comments or recommends you in groups.

Status: Show your expertise and experience.

22. Update often with information about you that is meaningful to your connections, whether personally or generally.

23. Update with news of what you’re doing, what you did and what you’re going to do professionally.

24. Update with information on events you’re going to attend, lead, plan, etc.

25. Update with awards you’ve just received.

26. Update with new postings on your blog or others’ blogs.

27. Offer to provide information or assistance to your connections.

28. Share job, intern and volunteer opportunities.

29. Avoid using automatic tweets if your purposes for each social medium are different.

Applications: Enhance your profile.

30. Add a blog, video, PPTs, slides, work samples to show your expertise and experience.

31. Follow events to attend. Post events of your own, even if you’re just attending.

32. Use collaboration apps to get your contacts working together on a project (innovation).

33. Use Learning Center to get the most out of LinkedIn.

34. Use Skills to find contacts, jobs, industry.

35. Use Company to see who’s come on board and some career information

36. Use Settings to have status information and group discussions sent directly to your email in box.

Groups and Answers: Share and learn.

37. Sign up for special interest groups.

38. Participate in discussions where your expertise shines.

39. Read to learn about your industry/profession.

40. Read to see how you might improve or target your product, service or expertise.

41. Read to learn what keywords you can incorporate in your profile to reach your audiences/customers through search engines.

42. Ask questions to engage the community and get answers.

What does it take to get you or the people you know to actually do something?

I call them the hand raisers. The people in church who raise their hand to show they agree but then leave and go straight to the potluck without signing up to actually do anything to make the event happen.

Ever notice it’s the same people who actually put on the events time and time again? Those are the do-ers. The people who actually do something.

Whether you are looking for volunteers at your child’s school, trying to sell a product that costs a bit more but is a lot better for the earth or asking people to attend an event, the biggest challenge is finding the people who do more than raise their hands.

It’s beyond frustrating to realize how much can be accomplished by small steps but be unable to convince enough people to volunteer for your fund raiser. Or, to know how desperately the school needs help but phone call after phone call finds parents too busy to help. At all.

For non-profits, it’s not the big multi-million dollar gifts, it’s the steady $10 a month gifts that allow them to budget and do good work every day. At schools, it’s vital that more than two or three parents show up for PTA meetings. Imagine if everyone on earth used just 5 or 10 less plastic bags a year!

The frustration of trying to find the do-ers can seem overwhelming, like my week. It seems like you’re pushing that ball uphill if you’re working at any of these organizations. Especially now. Maybe it’s apathy — we have accomplished so much for the environment. Or, maybe it’s all the bad news these days — there’s only so much you can take. Or, maybe it’s just always this way.

Any suggestions on motivating people to take that small step? Any organizations have success with volunteers year after year?

Wander the aisles of personal care products and you’ll find the industry’s biggest companies, many of whom skirt labeling concerns and continue to include ingredients proven to be every bit as dangerous as artificial colors. Throwing the word “organic” around like it’s nothing. Using the word “natural” all over the place. Of course, in conjunction with green leaves and lots of green buzz words.

The same goes for other aisles too. Weight loss concoctions. Those are natural?  What about muscle mass products or the ones that are produced largely from petroleum products? What about all the “Natural” standards everywhere? In fact, in this very article, Don McLemore, New Hope’s vice president of standards, is quoted as saying, “Natural products should not contain any artificial colors.” Not to be cheeky, but does he have a definition of natural?

Quick question. Can “natural” products can contain other chemicals, Mr. McLemore? Chemicals every bit as dangerous? Where are the standards for BPA? GMO?

For me, the slippery slope begins when organizations with a stake in the industry attempt to define the word “natural”. It has no legal definition. So, trying to show your customers or exhibitors or distributors how natural you are is kind of twisted. Another trick is the “we define our own organic standard” which was rampant at Expo West this year.

Third-party organic certification to a real organic standard got you down? Make up your own standard. Call it natural something.

While I’m thrilled that artificial colors are getting the boot, I can’t help but feel that it’s because they represent a small segment of the exhibitors at the show, and that because they are getting so much nasty press they are on the outs anyway. Enforcing something like organic labeling (this article calls out products exhibited at Expos) would feel like a much more significant stand to me.

I answer the phone and it’s a potential client calling. To hire me and pay me a lot of money. No real questions asked.

First red flag. But, I like money and I love this brand. I also would love them as a client and I could really help them. So, I ignored my reservations about this being way too easy and just basked in the glow of someone recognizing my genius. Until of course it really wasn’t that easy. Here’s how the conversation went:

“We want to hire you and our retainer is several thousand a month. We want you to grow our Facebook audience.”

Yippee. I can do that, and this brand needs it. I said a lot of nice things and we were ready to party until I asked exactly how they saw this Facebook audience growing.

“We watch our competitors all the time (second red flag) and they are giving away products and doing promotions on Facebook to get people to like them.” (third red flag)

First, if you spend all your time watching the competition you can’t be marching forward and blazing a path. It’s way too easy to get sucked into monitoring (or stalking) competitors and ignoring the real issues. Second, giving away stuff on Facebook doesn’t work long term. Or so I say.

Ultimately, I was unable to convince this brand to try just being themselves and putting out quality information without giving away product every Tasty Tuesday or Fruitful Friday. Sure, you get a few thousand people who want free stuff, but do they stay to buy product later? Do they ever intend to purchase your product? And, just because people kiss your ass and tell you they love you (to get free stuff) doesn’t mean you sell anything.

And, sales are everything. It all comes down to selling product and without that, the business won’t survive. Brown nosing and giving away product (both really easy to do) doesn’t translate to brand ambassadors.

I tried to talk about testing several strategies (giving free stuff being one of them) but they were very focused on keeping up with one of their competitors, and amassing a higher fan base on Facebook. Not that they had plans for what to do with these fans, they just wanted the numbers.

I’ve learned something about these brands. Companies that constantly give their product away don’t feel, at the end of the day, that they are worth buying. We call feel that or sense it, it’s why Groupon and other discounting programs must be done so carefully. It’s really no different from your mom’s saying about the cow giving the milk for free. I’m not saying there aren’t times to discount, sample, coupon or donate product. But you have to be careful and do it from the right mindset — not one of weakness and stalking of the competitor. Fundamentally, insecurity is an uphill battle.

While there are good examples of brands (like Starbucks) building giant fan bases on Facebook almost overnight by giving away product, I believe that these examples are a long time ago (in Facebook time) and that for green/organic businesses they are not as relevant. Almost everyone buys something at Starbucks at least once a year. But smaller green brands can’t say the same thing. So the strategy doesn’t cross over. It’s also not the best use of funds for a small business.

So, I said no. I’m sort of kicking myself and wondering if I could have changed this company’s mind while taking the nice retainer, but I’m too black and white I guess. We decided to pause our relationship and let them explore all this giving and stalking on their own and then check back in a couple of months. I hope when we touch base in the fall that they are ready to put their heads down and do some work. I’d love to rock their Facebook world while putting the competition away from the spotlight.

Did I do the right thing? Anyone have thoughts about freebies galore on Facebook? Stalking? Trailblazing?

The greater challenges are deciphering and managing the brand messages being tagged and dealing with negative photos. Do you delete the photo, respond or hope for the best? I’d love to start some discussion about this, and how you will amend your social media plans to factor in the photos issue.

I’m excited to have this possibility as a brand. To see customers interacting with my brands, to allow them to show, in actual use, the products I represent as they use them, is thrilling. Since my clients represent brands that green moms are proud to use, I expect 99% of this new feature to be glorious. But, I’m also always cautious. And, brands could really take a hit with this feature during recalls or other unexpected events. Photos are what Facebook is all about. They are more viral than text any day and brands should be planning now for the dark side.

I expect this feature to drag, kicking and screaming, some brands into social media simply because they fear the negative. There’s already a lot of that sentiment and fear (especially with big brands) but this tagging feature will probably be the straw that pushes some brands into social media (and they have a lot to catch up on). I’ve said this many times, but only worrying about the negative is a weak position. Get out and innovate.

Also worrying is the knowledge that a lot of brands focus on deals, discounts, coupons and “would you like me PLEASE” to get fans. Imagine how many times we’re going to hear pleas to tag their brands and all the new contests that drive users to tag photos all for a chance to win free product. With the spam/self-promotion balance on Facebook already precarious, it will be interesting to see how users react to this new feature. Will they be so excited to share pictures of themselves or their children, to associate with the hippest brands or to make a statement that they embrace the feature? Probably. But, watch out. Your brand might not be cool enough to inspire association and asking for it too loudly can drive moms away.

Especially in the green space, brands need to focus on information and quality — not quantity and short term self-promotion. It’s tempting but long term it really hurts your brand on Facebook. In my experience, Facebook’s EdgeRank takes into account your fan population. If you do a promotion that offers free product to everyone, and get 10k new fans, only for those fans to stop caring because you’re not giving them free stuff anymore, I believe that Facebook penalizes that. For green brands, sticking to long-term goals and valuing education and quality content will still be the primary strategy. But bring on the green mom photos!