5 Ways to Secure Your Social Media

Social media marketing and native advertising returns 5 to 8 times more clicks than other media types like digital banner ads. It’s easy to see why: Social media gives us so much data and flexibility that we’re able to serve tailored ad messages to very specific target audiences, making those ads highly relevant to the viewer. More and more full-service marketing agencies are getting savvy at social media marketing, never mind the hundreds of firms that have popped up to specialize in this growing niche. With ever increasing returns-on-investment in the social space, what could go wrong?

In a word: everything. Professional social media management is a serious game for both agencies and clients, and clients should beware of the pitfalls that come with poor choices in social media marketing. Here are five crucial ways to secure your social media marketing and defend against both cybersecurity and brand integrity dangers:

1. Ask for the agency’s security measures. How does the team choose passwords for your accounts? How do they limit access to those passwords among the team? On what devices will your social media accounts be open? What is the level of wireless internet protection at the agency? When you hand over the keys to your social media accounts, you’ll want to make sure that precautions are being taken to protect access against hackers or even unforeseen data breaches that can occur at the agency.
2. Ask for the agency’s social media protocols. A professional marketing or advertising agency should have a written procedure for dealing with disgruntled employees, unhappy customers, foul language and other inappropriate content. At a minimum, the procedure should outline how quickly posts are removed, and/or what the procedure is for reporting situations to you or your team for an executive decision. Not only should you be comfortable with their procedures, but you should also be comfortable with your responsibility to get back to your external social media team in a timely manner. Your online reputation depends on it!
3. Scrutinize the team. Don’t just stop at the salesperson or principals of the agency you hire. Instead, ask to meet the key member(s) of the social media team that are responsible for executing the work. Develop a rapport, and use the in-person meeting to convey your brand values. In the conversation, ask the team to describe problems that have occurred in the past with other clients, and have the team describe how the problems were resolved. Remember that social media is an extraordinarily fast advertising medium, and stuff happens. For instance, we once had a restaurant client whose happy-hour post ended up on the Facebook page of a college client. Luckily, we had checks and balances that spotted the post within minutes of it going live, and we were able to rectify it. Now, we have a write-edit-proof-post-check procedure that allows for catching those errors before they even happen. Those are the honest stories you’ll want to hear in your sit-down with the team.
4. Monitor progress internally. You or someone on your team should be monitoring your social media platforms at least weekly. It will only take minutes to scroll through and take a cursory look at the types of posts and their response rates. We once had a client start a war about parking with its next-door neighbor, which the client played out on his own Facebook page (against our very strong advisement to keep it private). That’s an example of too much interference; don’t meddle with the team you hired to manage your social media, but do check in at regular intervals.
5. Ensure that there is both ability and accountability. What would you do if someone decided to damage your personal or brand reputation on social media? A qualified and effective social media management team is not a crisis management team; that’s why we have a separate Public Relations Department at GEM, which can step in and handle crisis management issues, and a Digital Department that can handle online reputation management issues that will involve web and search work. In a true crisis, you’ll want your integrated team to jump into action – which means controlling the social media conversation, influencing the media with media relations and a press release, modifying your SEO and perhaps even quickly changing your website copy.

One of the most unfortunate phrases we hear from prospects is, “we don’t want to be in social media because people can say negative things about us for everyone to see.” The truth is, those people are going to say negative things about you and your brand, anyway. You may as well be there to guide the conversation with a competent and effective social media marketing team. Besides, the marketing world is only in the beginning stages of exploring and maximizing social media marketing. That plays to your advantage, because right now it’s still relatively inexpensive compared to traditional media. It’s also one of the most preferred communication vehicles for Millennials (and we know they’re not going away anytime soon). Put simply, social media marketing is a vital part of any comprehensive marketing strategy today, and there are still opportunities to be a first-mover in many industries.

Plan carefully, choose the right team and make sure you have checks and balances in place. But, most importantly, make sure you participate in the conversation. I promise there will be a lot to Like.

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