Imagine you’re an executive or staffer at the hypothetical organization XYZ. (Perhaps such an association does exist, but for the purpose of this example, I made it up.) Now, what if this tweet appeared on Twitter: “I had the worst experience with XYZ association. They are so unresponsive.” What would you do?

Maybe you don’t think too much of it — you’d reach out to the member and try and get to the root of his or her problem. But perhaps not enough of your members use Twitter for you, as a staffer at XYZ, to be too concerned.

Think again.

Wednesday, both Google and Bing announced they had reached agreements with Twitter to include tweets in their search results. Google Vice President of Search Products and User Experience Marissa Mayer blogged yesterday about Google’s move, saying:

…We are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months.

Microsoft (which owns Bing) made a similar announcement yesterday: Working with those clever birds over at Twitter, we now have access to the entire public Twitter feed and have a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with (in the US, for now).

Now, even if only a minority of your members use Twitter, anyone who searches for your organization will see that negative (hypothetical) tweet in their results — and any others like it.

The social media game is changing the way we search and obtain information. Just last week, when little Falcon Heene was supposedly flying in a man-made balloon somewhere over Colorado, millions of people were tweeting about the subject. Imagine if all those tweets showed up in Google and Bing, today’s foremost search engines. The possibilities are astounding.

Maybe your members aren’t actively using Twitter yet, but they may in the long-term. Or maybe some other social network will come around and de-throne Twitter (which is entirely possible). It’s likely that social network will also be integrated into our search engines. No longer are the Web sites of news organizations and top-ranked blogs the only items that appear in our search results. The opinions and thoughts of real people — your members — will appear there as well.

Don’t be afraid to give up control of your online message, but be sure you, as an association executive or staff member, do everything possible to keep your members as engaged and positive as possible.