1. Understand the landscape: know who is out there covering you
2. Join the community: bloggers, Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed
3. Use a variety of media: Livefeed, Twitterdeck, email lists, etc.
4. Be prepared to engage: Communicate with your social media contacts regularly so they know you in advance of a crisis
5. Involve your employees: Have many employees trained in social media in advance
6. Put a social media crisis plan in place BEFORE a crisis hits.