Measures for Efficient Brand Security on Social Media

Since the very beginning of social media marketing platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram have been instrumental. These platforms have been used by businesses to interact with their customers and show off their brands personality in an attempt to become memorable.

Social media has many upsides of which businesses can use to their benefit. However, the use of social media can quickly take a wrong turn if not utilized correctly.

Many brands have fallen victim to social media branding failures such as the hijacking of hashtags, hacking of accounts and having controversial messages exposed from a branded account.

These scenarios can all ruin the reputation of any brand. This is why so many IT Support Providers like TechQuarters are introducing protective measures into their offerings now.

Changing times has meant that more and more businesses have had to make use of social media to build their brands. Failure to do so has led to many businesses failing to remain relevant.

Whether your business is partaking in microblogging, posting, liking or updating information the main thing that should always be addressed is the safety and security of your brand.

Many businesses do not realize the great risk of using social media and because they don’t understand it they do not put in the adequate time to address it. This can be seen through employees who make mistakes such as posting something controversial which could hinder the brands growth.

To many businesses the use of social media may be fairly new which is why it is important for them to create policies protecting them.

#1. Save social URLs

It is important to try to own all the URLs and account names for your brand. The best way to do this is to do research on any potential brand names before you choose it.

This way, you will be able to ensure that you can secure all social media handles for your business. If you are using the services like those provided by IT Support Company TechQuarters who can help you with your URL format.

If you choose a business with a common name, your business will get lost in a sea of search results. The best way to prevent this from happening is to choose something unique for your business name.

Once you’ve chosen the name for your business it is important to secure all social media handles for your business, as well as the URL.

Even if you choose not to use all forms of social media for your business, it is important for your brand identity. This will prevent other people from creating social media profiles with your brand name.

#2. Do a social media audit

A social media audit is a great way to discover any branding issues that could cause trouble for your business. There are social media listening and monitoring tools that can help with this, like SocialMention.

To do a social media audit, you’ll need to search for accounts that could have the same name as your business and see if your brand could be misrepresented. It can also be beneficial to do a competitive social media analysis which will help you find out how your competition uses social media.

If you find a fake account during your audit, all social media has processes that allow you to claim accounts that infringe on trademarks. If you aren’t able to reclaim the account, it is important that you monitor any accounts to ensure that customers aren’t reaching out to that account instead of yours.

#3. Always use a generic brand email to sign up for social media

Don’t allow the person that runs your social media to sign up for the brand social media accounts with their own email.

This will put them in complete control of your brand social media and if they leave, the email will no longer be part of your business and you’ll no longer have access to your social media. One way to avoid this is by creating an email specifically for your social media.

#4. Use a social media monitoring tool

Brands have found themselves in hot water because of something controversial posted by their social media manager.

This is a simple mistake that can be made when managing multiple accounts, which is mostly done from a smartphone. Any good Managed IT Services Company, like IT Company TechQuarters will be able to provide you with suggestions on the best tool to use.

The best way to prevent this from happening is by using a mobile-friendly social media management app for your brands social media. This will prevent your social media managers personal accounts from getting mixed up with the brand accounts.

#5. Set up a social media policy

To do this, it would be best to spend time talking to your team about social media security for your brand. Once this has been decided, you’ll then need to share this with your legal and infrastructure teams.

This is important to reduce the chance of any online branding issues that could pop up since this will provide you with a way to fix these issues. If there is a problem how will your brand handle it? Will they address it or remain quiet?

Do you have a specific way you’d like your employees to respond to customers or share any news related to your brand? Having a social media policy will allow all these rules to be set out and needs to be shared with all employees.

#6. Set aligning goals for your customer service and marketing teams

The way that your business is presented online has a major influence over the way customers view your brand. Many customers will reach out to your brand via social media for customer service issues.

The best way to avoid any potential branding issues that could come up if a customer is upset, is to make sure that your customer service and social media teams work closely together. It can also help to work via the same platform to avoid any miscommunication.

#7. Make sure all your passwords are secure

There are multiple ways to do this but the best ways to do this would be to have a password safe or create a password document. The best place to save these documents are in a cloud service like Google Docs or Dropbox.

Using this, you can save a document of the passwords for all your brand accounts. This makes it simple if your social media manager changes, they can simply open this document without worrying about being locked out of the brand accounts.