Yep, I’m writing you a letter just like I did REI when they screwed up. Some of you are already doing it. You’re ignoring the new media “opportunities.” And you’re getting sliced and diced out there. Politicians are too.

I know, things move soooo fast here. It seems like you can’t keep up. Well, you can’t. But you have to know what’s going on. You have to do something quickly. You cannot ignore this new media stuff and expect to survive it.  There are three basic rules:

First, you have to make sure you know what’s going on in the innertubular lands. You ought to have people who do nothing but check out Twitter and YouTube and The Consumerist and Facebook for you. Yes, I’m saying you need to pay people to do this for you. And these people need to have their speed dials set to your best and brightest communications people. Yep, you’re going to be paying someone to surf the Internet. Get used to it. Plus, they need to use and understand these media places. That’s important.

Second, you need to chill out a little. Don’t blow up as soon as someone posts something hateful about your company. Stop and think. People do get carried away because the web can be pretty anonymous. People can fill in their email address as joe@Ihatebobscompanybecauseitsucks.com but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a real email address or a web site. The web goes from asleep to hysterical in a nanosecond. Remember, stop and think.

Third, be a player in your own Internet life. You (or your best and brightest communications people) have to be involved and you have to be honest. You have to be willing to say “we screwed up for you and I apologize.” Use the medium by responding in the same place where you got slammed. Do not try to bull your way out. You have to be sincere, you have to be honest and you have to look at this as a new way, a new time, and a new forum for you to provide added value for your company or your product. (If you’re a politician, you’re the product.)

I’ll give you an example. Back just a few months ago a Home Depot store manager took the initiative to post a sign on their door (in Las Cruces, NM) asking frustrated customers to call the manager instead of leaving because something was out of stock, they couldn’t find help, checkout lines were long, whatever. He wanted them to reconsider leaving and he wanted them to get him involved in the resolution of their problems. He was trying to make it better.

That sign was photographed by a customer with their cell phone and posted on The Consumerist blog owned by Consumer Reports with the title Home Depot Begs You Not To Leave Their Store Because Of Their Crappy Service. You have any idea how much an ad saying that would have cost them? But they got it for free. And only 10,000 extra people have viewed that sign and that thread has 119 comments. Some of their other posts on The Consumerist have had titles like Worst Company in America: Home Depot vs. Citibank and there’s one about another Home Depot sign spotted in a store: Why pay cash even if you could? This is called bad press. All press is not good.

Unfortunately, Home Depot is one of those companies that does have web sites to deal with – there’s a homedepotsucks.com and a homedepotsucks.org out there. But they do have communications people online responding, respectfully, to posts. Domino’s, the pizza chain, doesn’t do as well, however. According to a story in Information Week, two employees got bored and posted videos to YouTube dealing with snot and spit pizzas. Yum, right? Just what you want your customers to think about when they think Domino’s, NOT! This was Easter Sunday. By Monday the videos (yes, it’s plural) were viral. That means people were spreading links through Twitter, Facebook, text messaging, email, smoke signals and billboards. By Wednesday they had over a million views and it even hit broadcast news. By then, Domino’s also had their own video up, apologizing and promising to find and stop those people. They did find them (and they don’t work there any more, oddly enough), but the Domino’s response was a pretty mellow video and it took them time to get it up there.

Some companies have gone so far that they have a blog (or in retail some companies allow customers to add reviews). This gives people a place to go to “contact” or “connect” with the company. If you do this, and you should, don’t edit reviews even if they’re bad. Contact that customer and try to make it better for them.

What you absolutely must not do in your Internet business (or political) life is lie about what happened. You see, just because the Internet moves fast doesn’t mean there’s no evidence — there’s beaucoup evidence out there and people will find it and use it to point out your lie. They will paint it big and red and bold. They will catch you.

It boils down to a very simple idea – happy customers come back and unhappy ones don’t, but happiness is a choice and you can influence that choice.