There is no denying that social media is today impacting businesses, client relationships, communities, nations and the world at large. In view of this, managing social media risks has assumed a lot of importance.
During earlier times, some business organizations addressed social media risks by barring its employees from participating on social media websites during work hours. This was the case till business houses realized how social media can boost their marketing and advertising strategies.
There as been a somersault and businesses are now embracing social media as part of their marketing strategy. However, when doing so, organizations must properly understand and manage the risks of social media.
A recent survey classifies social media risks under four main categories – reputation risks, legal and employment risks, and unethical competitor risks.
Businesses must understand and ward off reputation risks that come from the public, a section of disgruntled employees. Employees can disseminate proprietary information that harms the reputation of the organizations. There could be some jealous competitors posting false information to ruin your reputation.
There are a few steps that a business organization can follow to develop an effective social media risk management strategy.
Engage a multidisciplinary team. Social media risks can affect different departments within your company. Therefore, you need to create a team comprising of senior members from various departments to oversee and mitigate the risks.
It will be worthwhile to document intended social media use. Each department in the organizations should articulate its intended use of social media and make sure these uses conform to the company’s overall objectives.
It is necessary to periodically perform a risk assessment. The company should do a risk assessment of inherent risks to know the likelihood and potential impact of the risks. The company should devise various controls necessary to mitigate the risks.
Implement social media safeguards. Evaluate your current policy to include safeguards against social media risks. The policies should address areas such as employee use of social media at work, competitors activities etc.
All employees should be properly informed and trained on the company’s social media policy. The company should highlight acceptable and unacceptable social media uses.
Your company should actively monitor potential social media activities that may expose it to risks. Your business can keep track of social media issues related to it using social customer relationship management (CRM) tools.
This is a great post and hits on a lot of key elements to risk management, but I’ll say I’m no expert to start with. I just think the key is, “All employees should be properly informed and trained on the company’s social media policy.” Relationships with clients/customers are no doubt important, but the highest risk in my mind comes from within any organization. A multidisciplinary team is crucial and is only as good as your subject matter experts who are helping to define your policy. Hopefully they are properly motivated while following some standard guidelines/white papers and come up with something that will be easy to understand, last over time with keys on revision, and willing to work with each other as any good team should. Though, the most emphasis I would place is on taking the time to train employees; not only when they begin, but on a recurring timescale. Giving employees risk management fundamentals initially, extrinsic motivation 100% of the time, (hopefully along with their own good old fashioned work ethic), and a strong support forum to effectively provide an avenue to speak their mind positively are my idea of the way to reduce the highest social media risk.
Thanks,greatly appreciate your comment!
Great post. Very interestinf. Thanks for sharing
Glad you liked it!