How to Identify and Mitigate Social Media Marketing Risks

Social media is one of the most powerful tools the Internet has ever created. This is why businesses are taking advantage of it, by opening accounts and setting up fan pages that allow them to stay in contact with clients throughout the world. Tremendous results have occurred, many of which have especially benefited these company’s marketing teams.

Unfortunately, not every business has embraced social media marketing. There are also some companies who have embraced social media unsuccessfully. Some business owners think they can jump right in, without taking the time to learn what they’re doing first. This is unwise, because there’s some social media marketing risks every business owner should be aware of.

Identifying and Mitigating Social Media Marketing Risks

While many authors have written about the positive impact of social media marketing, not many have written about the risks that are associated with a company’s decision to go social. Some of these risks include:

  • Data leakage: You need to be careful what you share online, so your secrets don’t end up in your competition’s hands.
  • Cyber bullying: Hostility happens when competition occurs. This is no different when your company decides to go social.
  • Identity theft: This doesn’t only happen to individuals, malicious people attack businesses too.
  • Verbal attacks: You can’t make everyone happy and sometimes those unhappy clients will post aggressive comments on your social media page for the whole world to see.
  • Defamation: Anyone who doesn’t like your company can use your social media profiles as a way of destroying your reputation.

None of this means that your business is better off not embracing social media marketing though. It simply means that you need to carefully and continually stay on top of your social media profiles.

Remain Vigilant in Your Social Media Campaigns

Social media marketing success means remaining diligent. You need to not only work on your own campaigns, but at the same time you must also watch what your competition is doing. This will help you know when you’re “under attack”, so that you can use the proper legal channels to tame anyone who’s defaming or impersonating you.

How to Identify and Mitigate Social Media Marketing Risks

Offer Employees Professional Social Media Training

With social media platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, you have the perfect opportunity to stay in touch with your clients. For this to be successful your social media marketing team will need professional training in order for them to know how to act when they’re online. You don’t want them to end up crippling your business because they’ve posted misleading information or mistreated a client. Best practices in these areas need to be written down and shared with everyone who works for you.

Sometimes you’ll already have too many business “hats” to wear. As such, this simply isn’t something else you want to tackle. This is fine too. It’s why companies like ours, Space City SEO in Houston, Texas, exist. With years of experience in social media marketing best practices, we’re happy to talk to you about your company’s social media campaigns.