A social media presence is a must for most businesses these days. Some reports suggest that almost a quarter of all internet traffic is routed through Facebook links alone, making the social media giant one of the world’s largest search engines.
Any mentions of a company on social media has other search engine optimization benefits. Since social media posts are inherently current and up to date, this is considered very fresh and relevant content by Google and other search engines, which boosts the profile of your website.
Also, social media posts are considered to be word-of-mouth advertising. Consumers are more likely to trust social media content shared by friends, family, and acquaintances than they are obvious corporate advertising.
So, your company needs a social media presence. It’s also a presence that should be monitored and used continuously. However, any policy you have for employees working on this needs to keep social media security for your business in mind.
The risks involved with social media are ever present. Nearly two out of three businesses had a significant or material incident in the last year.
Social media accounts that are unattended are always at risk. Make sure you reserve your company’s brand or handle on every social media channel out there. Do this even if you aren’t active on all of them. Unmonitored accounts might fall prey to hackers, and if someone else grabs your brand handle on a particular platform, then they can mimic you for a while and create serious headaches for you. They can do anything from ruin your reputation to infecting your customers with viruses. You might not know until your customer service line is bombarded with calls.
Create a social media policy for all employees. Conduct training so they know the ins and outs. Follow up with some kind of regular monitoring and testing, because nearly 20 percent of business social media mishaps happen simply due to employee error. Your staff is only human, so be prepared for honest mistakes to occur from time to time.
Less than 20% of Facebook users actually trust the platform with their personal information, so don’t go asking for it. Also, make sure that your own team isn’t giving up your company’s confidential data by filling out quizzes or doing puzzles that try to engineer passwords to social media accounts, or even your employee logins to your intranet.