Inappropriate tweets, postings by unhappy employees, ill-judged management comments - sometimes it feels as if your business can be its own worst enemy.
Add to these issues the ability of your customers to tell you exactly what they think, and suddenly you can find that it's a really bad day in the publicity department.
Companies have been shooting themselves in the foot for years.
Classic examples include the jewellery company chairman who said that some of their earrings were 'cheaper than a prawn sandwich, but would not last as long' and the clothing CEO who said that his customers would probably only wear suits at their court appearances.
Treating customers with this kind of contempt never ends well.
The power to say something inappropriate is no longer limited to the head of an organisation.
With the internet now allowing information and rumours to spread worldwide in minutes, it does not take long for a minor misjudged statement to turn into a major crisis.
Many companies have also been damaged by their staff, taking revenge after redundancy announcements or disciplinary proceedings.
The constant efforts of computer hackers are also an issue, with many instances of documents and statements emerging online when they were never intended for anyone except those inside the organization.
Companies should value the opinions and responses of their customers.
Many recognise this and encourage comment with prizes, discounts, surveys and so on.
To do this, sites must allow input from those outside the organization, but this has obvious risks.
Now that customers are empowered to tell organizations exactly what they think, you must be prepared to handle the brickbats as well as the bouquets.
On a day-to-day basis, you must have at least some basic content moderation on sites where content is posted from elsewhere.
You can moderate pro-actively, which means that every posting is reviewed before it appears on the site.
This will produce the highest quality results, but will introduce an inevitable delay.
If each posting needs to be checked by a staff member, the costs and workload may be prohibitive.
Introducing some automatic filters to eliminate spam and profanity will help to reduce the volume.
Another approach is to use reactive moderation.
This means that your moderators only become involved when a problem is flagged up, either by an automatic filter or by a site user notifying you.
This means that postings appear immediately.
However it does leave you open to something unpleasant or embarrassing being on the site until the moderator sees it and is able to deal with it.
If you are to take this approach, you will need twenty-four hour staffing - even brands that don't have an international reach can find postings appearing at all sorts of strange hours.
A cost-effective way to manage this is to use shift workers based from home, or to employ an offshore service in a different time zone.
If you decide to use the latter, do make sure that the language and idiom of the staff is suitable.
The day that your online presence fills up with the wrong kind of content is the day that your content moderation team and strategy prove their worth.
That day will definitely come, so here are some ideas for your team to help them deal with adverse publicity.
Remember that they can do nothing if they are not empowered, so trust your team and brief them with what they must know.
Be responsive: ignoring what is going on will only make things worse.
You must respond to the issue, even if it is only to make an initial statement that you are aware of the problem.
If you promise a timescale for a full response, make sure that you keep to it.
Be honest:your customers are not fools and should not be treated as such.
If there is a problem, admit to it.
Say that you made a mistake and give a timescale for your response.
That response should then tell your customers what you intend to do to remedy the situation and prevent a recurrence in the future.
Be personal: customers like to feel that there is a real person responding to them.
Brief your team to keep the 'corporate-speak' to a minimum and to give your brand a human voice.
Your team should also be reassured that they should not take any abuse to heart, and that they deserve to be treated with respect by even the most aggrieved customers.