It's expected that there will be 2.5 billion social media users by 2017 - that's about one in three worldwide. Today, the pressure is on for brands to maintain a real-time presence on social media to connect with and engage their customer base, while still being careful to avoid simple miscommunications, typos and any other missteps that can tarnish their name and cause them to trend on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.
The roadside is littered with brands that have unintentionally damaged their reputation because of mistakes on social media: a botched, hijacked hashtag at DiGiorno, an insensitive joke from Best Buy about real-life events or an image posted by Delta that suggested ignorance about an entire country. These are just a sampling of the many types of social media gaffes that brands committed within the last year.
Beyond these innocent, self-inflicted mistakes, there are many possible situations that can put companies in hot water on social media. Some of these, such as brand hacking and impersonation, actually involve third parties who are inappropriately, and in some cases, illegally, using a brand as part of their own social communications. Organizations today are faced with two important challenges - first, how to ensure that their own communications are appropriate, and second, how to monitor, detect and mitigate infringing third party activities on social media that could have dire impact on their reputation and business.
Today, social media monitoring is crucial. It is an essential step in identifying and mitigating reputational and business risks from undesirable social media activity.
Lack of Awareness = Lack of Control
A lack of awareness is one of the largest issues brands face when it comes to social media. This can play out in a couple of ways.
First, as social media is still somewhat of a new practice for many enterprises, executives might believe that, if they don't have active accounts, they are not at risk and do not need to participate in any online conversations. This "head in the sand approach" can hurt an organization, as just because a company isn't directly engaged on social media, it doesn't mean it isn't a topic or target of online conversations.
Further, even if a company is "officially" on social media, it is likely that many of its employees are also personally active on a broad set of social platforms. Their status updates, tweets, and posts - whether on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+ or other sites - are still a reflection on the organization, even if whatever they share has nothing to do with business.
For example, media giant IAC found itself under fire when Justine Sacco's inappropriate tweet went viral. The incident led to her termination and an apology from her employer, clarifying that her comments did not reflect the company's views or values, however, IAC was dragged into the story, distracting the company from its everyday business. It's true, that viral comments like Sacco's are hard to miss, but there are many other online comments that don't make it all the way to the Late Night top ten list. Brands that ignore their employees' behavior on social media risk harm to their own reputation.
What is the best course of action? To limit social media missteps, enterprises should first educate their employees on appropriate use of social media. By reminding employees that they are all brand ambassadors, and that every post or update represents a potential risk to the organization, much of a company's risk for self-inflicted social media harm will be mitigated. For instance, what if an employee shares company news before it's supposed to be made public? Or worse, mentions an executive's travel plans, specifically a flight number. This is information that should never be made public.
In parallel, a company should take steps to discover how and where their brand is being mentioned on social media. What is your brand's social media footprint? Who is participating, and what is being said?
By monitoring for brand mentions and activity, organizations are better able to decipher exactly what the risks are-and whether immediate action is needed to avert a social media crisis or the threats stemming from conversations on these platforms. Additionally, security, marketing, finance and legal teams alike should collectively create firm, descriptive guidelines about their organization's social media presence, educating not only C-level executives, but all employees, about proper online behavior. Having a formal process to minimize social media risk can make all the difference.
The Easiest Targets Have Ineffective Online Monitoring Processes
Social media monitoring is not an easy task. Twitter alone produces more than 500 million tweets per day - that's 5,700 per second. This is not a task that should be handed off to an intern, due to time constraints and lack of bandwidth within the organization. Instead, enterprises need to view social media monitoring as a full-time, 24/7 job, rather than as a task that gets brushed under the rug.
It's nearly impossible for an internal team to catch every brand mention on social media because the group will not be able to cast its net wide enough, and won't be able to effectively identify the small number of potentially harmful mentions from the ocean of social media chatter. Creating a bunch of Google Alerts may feel like progress, but in reality, the Google-alert-strategy only scratches the surface of potential social risk.
To augment internal efforts, enterprises with valuable brands should consider engaging a third-party partner to ensure that the broadest range of social networks are monitored, and that all the online activity detected is carefully evaluated and validated for risk potential. By doing so, businesses will be better equipped to pinpoint the most significant and harmful activity from all of the brand mentions out there, and then take the appropriate actions to mitigate those threats.
The Importance of Social Media Risk Protection
Risk management should be a key factor in an organization's social media program. Although not every social media mishap is as harmful as the next, the ability to quickly make a judgment on the severity of a mistake or brand infringement is critical. But the discovery and validation of these incidents is only possible for those enterprises that act intelligently and take a proactive, comprehensive approach to online monitoring.
Unfortunately, today the question is not "if," but "when" a disaster on social media will occur. Be one of the brands that takes the necessary steps to better educate its staff and prepare its organization to mitigate the potential threats that social media brings. Are you up for the challenge?
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