To Facebook or not to Facebook? That is the question every organisation aiming to build closer relationships with its customers must answer and then learn how to do in a way that does not backfire.

Here is one example of how a campaign can get out of control, whether through the fault of the company or a lack of knowledge of the different modus operandi on the internet. Tone and humour are all important in dealing with situations such as occurred to Nestle, when it ventured into social networking by creating its own official Facebook page.

Apparently 97,255 people (called fans on Facebook) love the company so much that they belong to the group. Why? Well they pose questions to Nestle and get back an official answer, signified by the company's logo. For example, a lot of people asked about Nestle and its recent commitment to using certified palm oil suppliers by 2015. Nestle provides some comments along with a link to official pronouncements.

Some fans are supportive others are not. Nestle, as a good player on the social networking scene, must put up with calls made by one fan to "Save Orangutans! Boycott Nestle this Easter! Never eat any Nestle product until they use only 'Certified Sustainable Palm Oil'! They say 2015. We say TODAY!"

These are the kind of statements companies on Facebook will have to put up with in a social networking environment.

Nestle's problem began when it posted a request on the page that its "fans" should stop posting altered versions of the company's logo or their comments would be deleted by the moderator: "To repeat: we welcome your comments, but please don't post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic - they will be deleted."

That's when the chocolate hit the fan, as some commentators wrote. The post received 215 mostly negative comments (30 thumbs up) and a lot of media attention at the anguish it was causing on the site. The main criticism was that this rule amounted to censorship on a social networking site. Many of the comments were vicious and passionate. The more reasonable, such as Gretchen Thomas, said "This is what happens when social media is approached as a marketing channel. It's not."

For me, the problem was the tone Nestle took in making the request and in replying to users comments. Whoever was writing from Nestle took a way too informal tone, and became sarcastic. Instead of a tone that encouraged a spirit of participation, the writer took the route of speaking from on high. What belongs to Nestle remains Nestle's, including the Facebook forum. This served to stir the pot even more and people took it as an opportunity to get angry.

As blogger Rick Broida noted on BNET: "It's PR 101: Don't insult your customers. And in PR 2010, mind your manners in public forums - especially those expressly created for fans of your company! It may be true that there's no such thing as bad press, but there's definitely bad social networking - and this is a prime example."

The problem did not end there. It seems the bile that came out of the original post on March 19 is being repeated on other posts. It seems that an anti-Nestle crowd has swarmed the site. When Nestle bid everyone a happy Easter on April 2, the answers were in the same vein as above.

I have to get to comment 37 (out of 149) before I can find anything remotely positive, either about Easter or Nestle. The rest talk about having a chocolate-free Easter because Nestle is a) destroying orang-utans; b) destroying the rainforest; c) using slave labour; d) killing babies in India e) produces "killer chocolate" f) all of the above.

You can see Nestle has a long, hard road to climb to find any feedback from its clients that might be useful. As a former industry food writer, I would say that Nestle is one of the companies that has worked hard on amending its practices to become more environmentally friendly. Perhaps it learnt a lot from the days when it was accused of killing babies in the developing world by forcing powdered milk on poor people.

The company is now going to have to learn new lessons if it wants to get social networking right.

There, I wrote this week's column and managed to avoid swooning over the iPad!

Send any comments to elamin.ahmed@gmail.com