Today’s entry is brought to us by our guest blogger, AV Flox, editor of the hugely popular social media blog OMGOMGOMFG.com.

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Once upon a time, a woman complained about a job offer on her Twitter account and earned the scorn and ridicule of the world when an employee of the company in question cornered her with a series of tweets.

For those of you who missed the fall of Cisco Fatty, here’s the run down: a woman by the Twitter username @theconnor, tweeted: “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.”

Not long after, a long-time Cisco employee, @timmylevad, replied: “Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.” He went further with more tweets about the applicant’s naivete, contacted bloggers to write about the incident and asked followers to retweet his comments.

What followed was a round of insanity and abuse as the internet turned the woman into a meme called Cisco Fatty, with her own site CiscoFatty.com (bearing her personal information such as address and phone number–which Levad also retweeted) and a YouTube video featuring her as Hitler. During the short life of the meme, hundreds articles were written about how easy it is to overshare a job possibility off the horizon and how silly it is to think that anything you put online will stay private.

But few people addressed the issue of having an unauthorized employee speak on behalf of an entire company. So I got together with some minds in public relations and marketing to talk about the issue.

Lori Dicker, EVP and co-founder of KARMA Media Labs, a social media marketing agency, recognizes the delicate balance between managing external employee communications and promoting subject matter expertise, particularly through social media channels.

“With the proliferation of communities and means for people to express themselves and broadcast their opinions, a seemingly random or innocent comment about their workplace can have a huge impact on their employer,” Dicker told me. “It’s a bit of a fine line—as an employer, we encourage our team members to be evangelists of our own brand to help facilitate word of mouth and show our subject matter expertise. If we’re hiring, we tend to look at Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and hope people are actively communicating. It shows they understand social media. That said, there is little control over comments that may be ill-intentioned or broadcast to do damage or harm. The best bet is to create a balance and clearly communicate boundaries and expectations on how to represent the brand. Likewise, companies need to recognize their employees are extensions of their brand and have the means to communicate openly and should pay attention to what is being said.”

Rowland Hobbs, CEO of DMD Network, an integrated marketing firm, is not one to mince words. He called this “PR vigilantism.”

“He should not be encouraged,” Hobbs said of the Cisco employee Tim Levad. “I think he has a role of external affairs at his company, which raises questions about his judgment as an effective communicator and community relations agent. As a business owner, especially given DMD Insight’s work in communications, I would probably consider if he was the right person in a communications role. Employees should encourage conversation online, not use the weight of your company to bully.”

Jason Warnock, the managing partner at DMD Green, based in Calgary, Canada addressed the liability of this sort of behavior.

“This, at least in Canada, is considered just cause for termination,” Warnock said in an e-mail. “It exposes Cisco to possibly some costly legal implications. The Canadian Human Rights Charter on workplace harassment is very clear in the use of unwelcome behavior that ‘demeans, humiliates or embarrasses,’ in this case through abuse of power, and is very enforceable even though Connor does not yet work at Cisco. It is not so much that there was internet bullying, but that Levad used his position as a employee of Cisco as the force behind his abuse of power which makes this case fall under the Charter. As a Canadian employer I would have to carefully examine if this legal exposure was worth the risk of retaining this employee.”

Jackie Peters, CEO of Heavybag Media, a firm that approaches communication as an artform, was concerned about the implications of the employee on Cisco’s company image.

“It’s up to companies to recognize that the social web has new implications for their brand,” Peters said. “Every person within the organization has a personal brand, and that personal brand becomes folded into the company’s brand. And yet, it’s not something you can control. But what companies can do is train their employees on best practices and effective use of social tools.”

If you’re a business owner, does your company have policy in place regarding how employees interact on social media?

If you’re an employee, how often do you consider the repercussions of your interactions on the image of the company you work for?

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AV Flox is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and blogger. She writes about the web on her blog OMGOMGOMFG.com. Currently, she is working with journalist John Bowe on a crowd-sourcing book about American views on love.  Contact her for any writing gig, corporate or personal.