Be hon­est. Who didn’t get a bit of a chuckle out of the digi-brawl between Kevin Smith and South­west Air­lines (South­west stock­hold­ers excepted, of course)? We all got to see a famous movie direc­tor get­ting thrown off a plane, mak­ing funny faces on Twit­ter, all the while unleash­ing rant after (hilar­i­ous) rant to his legions of fans (and crit­ics), and all South­west seemed to be able to do was offer a mil­que­toast denial/apology on their blog. In the par­lance of our times, this would be known as a whole hot steam­ing pile of FAIL. Haha, every­body laughs and we move on to the next meme. But if you’re a com­pany plan­ning to par­tic­i­pate in the social media world (and you’d bet­ter be), you should be pay­ing close attention.

“Trans­parency” is a big buzz­word right now, and there’s a good rea­son: It’s less of a trend than it is an inevitable part of doing busi­ness. Com­pa­nies like Google are get­ting ever faster and more sophis­ti­cated at cat­a­logu­ing and orga­niz­ing the mas­sive amounts of raw data that exists on and offline, giv­ing your cus­tomers, clients and com­peti­tors near-instant access to huge amounts of infor­ma­tion about you, your prod­ucts, and your actions. What you say in a press con­fer­ence tomor­row will be still be some­where on YouTube ten years from now. That flip­pant response to a rude cus­tomer on your blog will may as well have been embossed on your letterhead.

While all this should ter­rify any sane per­son, in the long run it’s bet­ter for con­sumers and com­pa­nies alike. For exam­ple, Apple is one of the few com­pa­nies who can still get away with pre­tend­ing prob­lems don’t exist. They’ll refuse to acknowl­edge that defects or prob­lems exist for months, or even years, before sud­denly offer­ing a fix as if noth­ing ever hap­pened. They can get away with it for now because they’re big (and pop­u­lar) enough, but they’re not immune: Steve Jobs occa­sion­ally has to come down from up on high with an email to a jilted cus­tomer or the media when Apple’s mes­sage con­trol gets out of hand.

Pun­dits will pon­tif­i­cate about the value or worth­less­ness of social media and its uses, but unde­ni­ably the best part is that now you have a pow­er­ful plat­form with­out any fil­ters between you to the peo­ple you’re try­ing to reach. As a com­pany, you have unprece­dented power to con­trol your nar­ra­tive and con­nect with the peo­ple that mat­ter most – your customers.

So what’s the first rule of social media? Be hon­est. Be open with your cus­tomers. Remem­ber that the coverup is worse than the crime. If you mess up, fess up. Your cus­tomers will respect you for it, and be more will­ing to give you the chance to make it right.