A recent study by Goldman Sachs revealed that businesses who use social media well are 34% more likely to be trusted by young, working-age people. As the population of professional millennials reaches an all-time high, so must your business’s social media presence. Eric Berkowitz, VP of Solutions Engineering at Tracx, commented in a recent webinar “Whether you’re a small, medium, or large-sized business, your brand’s health and reputation is often defined by the way you engage in public environments”. Tracx is the leading social business cloud assisting the world's top companies to identify and target audiences, improve social media planning strategies, and effectively engage consumers.
As the world becomes more constantly connected and social media increasingly becomes a marketing and consumer engagement norm, businesses need to adjust strategies to fully embrace social media. While small and medium companies may not have budgets to hire consultants to navigate a social media plans; you can still develop a social media strategy, considering these five factors and four steps to keep in mind when managing social media risk. Finally, I am going to share an excerpt from a post I read by Tony Robbins on “How to manage a crisis on social media”. He does a great job of some do’s and don’ts when engaging the larger social media outlets.
When you are committed to engaging social media on a regular basis to advance your business, you need to identify the risks of social media, develop comprehensive governance policies to mitigate risk and then deploy the right processes and technology to reinforce those policies. Some risk considerations are as follows:
- In this era of engaging directly with the public, in real time, mistakes are bound to happen.
- Employees may be hacked because they trust fellow social media users and may be tricked by cybercriminals.
- Confidential client and other information can leak out.
- Bad actors can introduce malware into the organization when employees are targeted by cybercriminals.
- Mistakes and hacks can have a negative impact on the brand and loss of employee, customer, or investor confidence.
Resources are required to develop, manage, supervise and adjust both internal and external social media programs. Although social media can be a competitive advantage, it can be disruptive and reduce the employee productivity. Content can be created in real time, outside of the firewall, with resultant reputational risks. Not adopting social media can have an adverse impact of competitive advantage, and a negative perception by clients, employees, vendors, and partners.
A strategy should be designed to identify, measure, monitor and control the risks related to social media. Engaging stakeholders from across the organization, such as IT, legal, human resources and marketing and operations will provide cross-functional perspective and ensure buy-in. Some key concepts of an effective plan are as follows:
- Strategic goals and on-going risk assessment measures should align with existing business initiatives.
- There should be clear policies and procedures to address online postings that are compliant with any laws and regulations. Policies should include the following elements:
- Strong compliance administration and oversight across the organization
- A periodic risk assessment
- Requirement for training
- Escalation processes for reporting wrongdoing and suspected violations
- A requirement for adequate documentation of compliance communications and training
- Guidelines for work-related use of social media is essential. Permissions and approval workflows should be put in place for proper training and to moderate operational, compliance and reputation risk. It should be clear who is responsible for approving the content or replies, and the chain of command in case of a crisis.
- Everything posted to social media sites needs to be monitored. It is essential that team members are set up with relevant permissions, roles and approval functions in place.
By: Tony Robbins
“FACEBOOK
WHAT’S BEST: Announcements, invitations, photo galleries, videos, and longer-form storytelling work very well on Facebook. Any content immediately interesting and conversation-worthy will keep people coming back.
IN A CRISIS: Learn to distinguish unhappy customers from trolls. If a customer or client shares a negative story or comment, don’t engage immediately. If you can’t respond privately, express empathy for their experience and offer to open a calm dialogue, over the direct message, to resolve the issue. Reaching out privately is always best as it reduces the opportunity for the exchange to become magnified as a public performance.
DON’T EVER: Don’t respond to trolls, ever — use blocking features or report them. Give yourself a waiting period when responding to negative comments, to reduce the potential blowback from posting in anger.
LINKEDIN
WHAT’S BEST: LinkedIn is a must for any business, brand or working professional — it’s most powerfully used as continual networking, recruiting and value sharing.
IN A CRISIS: Users are less likely to post reviews of businesses, through personal recommendations are incredibly common and encouraged through the platform’s interface. However, comments of any kind can be posted in response to individual posts, which typically run for a short lifecycle in user feeds.
DON’T EVER: Avoid using LinkedIn for content that is excessively personal, or not relevant to a business networking audience. Joining LinkedIn groups to post offers, obvious ads or low-value posts is considered spam, at best. Purchasers of LinkedIn InMail plans allow users to send messages to users they aren’t connected with, but observe common-sense rules and don’t spam.
TWITTER
WHAT’S BEST: In the realm of business, Twitter has replaced customer service as a first point-of-contact for both negative and positive experiences. Observe basic rules for addressing complaints, criticisms and troll messages in this, most volatile, of all public spheres and transition disputes to private, direct messages whenever possible. Twitter is key to expanding awareness, special incentive offers and linking to longer-form content that adds value. Just be careful while co-opting popular memes, current slang and trending hashtags without forethought, or risk stirring up ridicule.
IN A CRISIS: More so than any other channel, Twitter makes mass-conversation as easily spread and impossible to control as a wildfire. For good or groan. If you’re not actively provoking controversy, your small or medium-sized business likely won’t ever inflame a negative PR storm.
DON’T EVER: Block trolls rather than responding directly, but don’t ignore legitimate complaints — users can easily launch smear campaigns against brands and businesses they feel have slighted them. And don’t ever feel discouraged by the possibility of negative feedback — unless your business has a problem or conflict with multiple people simultaneously, the likelihood of bad PR surrounding an SMB is slim-to-none.
YELP
WHAT’S BEST: Unless your company is online-only, listing on Yelp is becoming perhaps more vital than LinkedIn for any business involved in customer service, retail or brick & mortar. Once listed, add rich descriptions and all relevant information, as well as photo galleries to ensure your first-glance impression is a first-class lure to potential customers and clients. Be careful of asking or aggressively incentivizing users to post positive ratings in exchange for discounts or freebies — feel free to reward great reviews, privately. The use of discretion will help create that “warm-fuzzy” illusion, making a lasting positive impression.
IN A CRISIS: Yelp is becoming notorious for angry, negative and even satirical business reviews. The rules of engagement listed earlier are perhaps even more vital to adhere to, as your collective, user-submitted star-rating on the site can either massively boost or bury a small business struggling to get noticed. Be careful with public replies; even an innocuous positive message to a happy customer can create a distancing effect with every other person you didn’t personally thank or acknowledge.
DON’T EVER: Take a lesson from Amy’s Baking Company’s failure and don’t ever post angry, vitriolic or argumentative replies to negative reviews. Always offer to discuss and mediate the situation over a direct message to maintain contextual control. Even if the negative review remains, users will have the opportunity to view your level-headed response and offer to rectify the situation.”
Creating and building a steady engagement across social media channels with your company is no longer a should — it’s a MUST. The potential fans and customers can seem daunting. Learn when, why and how to engage best to avoid crash and burns, and gain the most from social media.
Until next time, stay safe and be kind to one another.
