Reducing Your Social Media Risk

Third in my series Inside the Professional Social Media Certificate course at Sonoma State University.  Visit http://www.sonoma.edu/exed/psm for information.

Using social media comes with risks. From damaging your professional or personal reputation to being snooped on by the government, sharing your life in public carries potential hazards.

One of the leading experts on social media risk is Kerry Rego, a social media & technology trainer, author and keynote speaker. She who wrote the book “What You Don’t Know About Social Media CAN Hurt You: Take Control of Your Online Reputation”, which covers reputation management, risks and liabilities. She is the social media staff trainer for the County of Sonoma, columnist for the North Bay Business Journal, a Vistage speaker, and an independent consultant.

Kerry is also an instructor in the Professional Social Media Certificate course and spoke recently about online reputation management. You can see her full online reputation management presentation on Slideshare by clicking here.

Protection

Important reminders Kerry provides include monitoring your online presence by setting up searches and alerts that tell you when you or your business are mentioned; being thoughtful about responding to negative posts; having both a crisis plan that is tested and a communications plan that includes guidelines for social media.

The best way to prevent fraud and keep your organization’s good name online is by listening. Setting up Google Alerts for your organization name, acronym, or other related terms provides you with email updates as they happen. Searches that can be set up on listening tools like NetVibes, HootSuite or other similar tools also provide updates on terms or phrases, including hashtags.

Response

Negative mentions of your brand will happen. You can’t please everyone and likely someone has – or soon will – complain about your company online. Hopefully others will praise you as well, but it’s important to respond in a thoughtful way to negative comments. If the comments are true, you may want to address them directly and describe your response. If they are an opinion, you may want to acknowledge them and describe your position. If they are false or inflammatory you may not want to fan the flames by responding. Whatever the case may be, a rapid but thoughtful response is important and you can only respond if you are listening.

The American Red Cross famously had a staff member accidentally send out an update on Twitter through the organizational account that was meant to go out through a personal account. It mentioned beer and included the hashtag #gettingslizzerd. The organization took down the offending tweet and rather than ignoring it, they did disaster recovery well, putting out a tweet assuring followers that “the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys”. This is just one example of how important it is to have a crisis plan/disaster recovery plan. See the full story on Beth Kanters blog.

Guidelines

To be thoughtful and targeted with the time your organization spends on social media, you need to focus on specific goals. Every organization should have a strategic plan upon which a communications plan is built to support the strategic objectives. Within the communications plan are goals that are supported by social media along with guidelines for social media use. It’s important to have these guidelines up front so that everyone who is representing your company online is clear about what to do and not to do. This helps eliminate a lot of issues before they become serious.

One useful tactic I have seen employed is to have staff or volunteers compose example social media updates and present them to a small group where they can get feedback on why something may or may not be appropriate. This provides feedback on real work instead of theoretical situations which is much more effective in teaching folks how to follow the guidelines.

Proactive

The best way to protect against online risks is to be proactive in your goal setting, listening, preparation and response. Its the old cliche of an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure. Avoid potential online viral disasters by taking action now that sets the stage for a graceful recovery.