Matt Bacak is a survivor. He survived bankruptcy to build up a multi-million dollar business. And more recently, the man, who for a short while held the title of “The. Biggest. Douche. in. Social. Media.” (sometimes referred to as a “New Media Douchebag”), survived a social media s**tstorm (it all started with this admittedly awful press release).

On my post about Lessons from social media marketing failures (and successes), I wrote that

When Matt Bacak’s over-the-top press release got him a great deal of negative attention on Twitter last week, he wasn’t afraid to apologize and admit his mistakes. While it took him longer that most of us would’ve liked, he certainly responded faster than the Motrin folks, or some of the old school horror stories like Kryptonite.

It turns out he’s done more than apologize. He’s gone person-to-person to address the criticism. He’s eaten a whole lot of humble pie, and is coming out not as an example of a failure (though that release will still go down on the top of my list of bad press releases), but as an example of how to handle yourself in a social media crisis.

He’s gone so far as to agree to have his picture taken with a t-shirt that I designed (see above–the shirt first appeared on a blog post by Warren Whitlock, which also includes a link to a long audio podcast interview with Matt). The shirt is not something I’d wear in mixed company, but he’s going to wear it to a session he’s leading tomorrow. That takes guts.

Matt, thanks for wearing my shirt. Keep up the good work. Tune down the rhetoric in those releases, but don’t lose your enthusiasm. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve more than redeemed yourself–you’ve come out shining.

You can see our complete, and extensive dialog on Twitter below. For Twitter neophytes, you’ll want to start from the bottom and work your way up, as they’re in reverse chronological order.

Here’s a quick 10-question test you can give your company/client to see how social media savvy the brand is:

SOCIAL MEDIA SAVVINESS SCORE

Score one point for each completely affirmative answer:

1. Web Traffic Test: Using Alexa, is traffic to your site trending up?
2. SEO Test: Searching for your brand on Google, is the first page of search results entirely positive or neutral in tone?
3. Blog Interactivity Test: Do you have a blog, and if so, are people commenting on it regularly?
4. Blog Authority Test: Using Technorati, do you have a registered blog, and does it have high authority?
5. Content Syndication Test: Does your blog or website have RSS feeds available?
6. Multimedia Content Test: Using YouTube, does your brand have its own channel set up, and is it being fed?
7. Social Bookmarking Test: Using Delicious or Digg, are pages from your blog or site being heavily bookmarked?
8. Brand Visibility Test: Do you have a branded presence (an account in your brand’s name or a well-known brand evangelist) on Twitter, and is it being updated regularly?
9. Social Networking Test: Does your brand have its own page or group on Facebook or MySpace?
10. Wiki Test: Does your brand or product have a Wikipedia entry?

Add up your YES answers—you have to answer YES to every part of multi-part questions like #3, #4, #6 and #8—to get a score between 0 and 10. Where do you stand?

• 10 – FTW! Great job! But make sure you’re using all your channels. Don’t join something just to be there.
• 8-9 – w00t! Your brand is social media savvy. People probably think that you get it. Make sure you’re using each channel effectively.
• 5-7 – HTH! You’ve got a good start on things, but are probably missing some important elements of your social media strategy. Maybe we can help?
• 3-4 – OMG! Where have you been? You need to get started. It’s not that hard. Really. Yes, it will take time, but it’s time well spent, both for your career and for your brand.
• 1-2 – WTF? Get yourself and your bosses trained on this stuff. NOW! The sky isn’t falling, YET, but you need to know this stuff!
• 0 – YT? Hello? Is this thing on? Wow… How’d you even find this post? Call me.

Or I didn’t until I visited their website. RSS feeds, multimedia content, comments, social bookmarking, voting–it’s got it all! And RD.com readers are Digging articles like there’s no tomorrow–the better ones are getting 500+ Diggs!

Don’t think your product can benefit from social media? Think your brand is too old school, or that your audience isn’t web-savvy enough to go online? I would’ve put Reader’s Digest in that category. I would’ve been wrong, and you probably are too!

Disclosure: SocialSphere Strategies has done work with Reader’s Digest recently.