(Newswire.net — September 20, 2017) — When social media (under various labels and terms) first arrived on the scene more than two decades ago, the business community generally greeted it with a cold shoulder instead of a hearty handshake. Indeed, the notion that an informal, unstructured communication method that didn’t just enable, but fundamentally relied on organic, emergent activity streams was somewhere between ludicrous and unthinkable. Surely, no legitimate business would want to engage customers — or even achieve sales — through this channel.
However, a couple of decades later social media has not just established itself on the corporate communication landscape, but in some cases is now the primary way in which organizations reach their target audiences. So much for pundits and prognosticators!
Yet, despite the widespread prevalence and growing influence of social media on the business landscape, many organizations are surprisingly — and dangerously — uninformed about their social media footprint. Here’s a rundown of the top three knowledge gaps.
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They have many more accounts than they realize.
Many organizations severely underestimate how many social media accounts that are currently associated with their brand. This is typically because accounts were created in the past and forgotten about. Brandle, a company that develops social media risk management and governance technology, says that it’s not uncommon for larger enterprises to believe they have a handful of social media accounts, only to discover after a social media audit that they have several dozen, or sometimes even hundreds.
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They are at risk of compliance breaches.
Organizations in a growing number of fields — such as the financial space and healthcare, just to name two — are required to monitor social media usage, and ensure that messaging is compliant. This not only includes corporately-owned accounts, but can extend to employee-owned accounts. For example, an employee who uses their personal Facebook account to comment on a newspaper article discussing a possible merger between their organization and a competitor could trigger official warnings, fines or lawsuits.
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They are at risk of data breaches.
Many organizations rely on the cyber security controls (for better or for worse) put in place by the operators of third party accounts. For example, they assume and expect that the cyber security teams at Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and so on are hard at work preventing data breaches. However, organizations themselves need to take an active role in preventing hackers and other bad actors. This focus must include training employees on what (and especially) what not to do on social media, and ensuring that any tools used to populate social media accounts with content are secure (which is particularly important since most such tools are cloud-based).
The Bottom Line
Social media is an established part of the business communication landscape, and its role and influence will only increase in the years ahead. Closing the knowledge gaps above by taking smart, strategic and immediate action will ensure that organizations find their social media experience and investment rewarding — instead of regrettable.