To protect your brand, protect your social media
A few months ago, I was having a conversation with the brilliant Casey Hall of Lumberjack Social. Casey mentioned that he’s been hearing from more and more clients about brand safety and protecting their brand. That makes sense, especially given all the craziness of late. But I wonder how many brand executives think about protecting their social media as part of their brand safety efforts? I’d guess it’s not many. But they should.
First, let’s consider what’s at stake. What’s the value of a brand? Or, more specifically, what’s the value of your brand?
According to Forbes, the world’s top two brands (Apple and Google) are worth more than $200 billion each. The next three (Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook) are worth $162.9 billion, $135.4 billion and $70.3 billion, respectively. But you don’t have to own a billion-dollar brand to have something worth protecting. Even if you are a small business owner like me, your business name and brand are all you’ve got. They’re your reputation, your online presence, your SEO and your credibility as a company. And if you’ve invested in things like logos, patents, trademarks and other assets, you’ve got money on the line, too. Your brand is absolutely worth protecting.
Second, let’s talk about why – for some reason – many brand leaders don’t understand two very fundamental things about social media as it relates to brand:
Social media is your brand to consumers – and more than that, it’s the most immediate method for deflecting misinformation, issuing an important statement and managing the ever-growing number of crisis situations faced by most corporations these days. I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: when managing a crisis, your social media team are your first responders. They are on the front lines of protecting your brand every day.
Social media and its management is inherently unsafe and full of security risk. Poorly managed social media can result in a multitude of problems that can immediately and seriously damage your brand. These can include being locked out of your accounts at key moments, hackers taking control of your accounts, or worse – tweeting something from your corporate account that is so reprehensible that you then have to make a C-suite level plan to mitigate the damage.
If you’re interested in the nitty-gritty of how to implement good social media security and governance, please check out some of my other blog posts here. But let’s ask a more pressing question for this discussion: how does a company avoid this big disconnect between brand and social? Not surprisingly, it’s a two-sided problem.
If you’re a social media director or manager:
Build a solid relationship with your brand team.
Understand your company’s brand guidelines and ensure that they include a section about social media accounts and their branding.
Include those brand standards for social media accounts in your regular review and audit of company social media accounts (don’t have a regular audit? Read my post on that here.)
Understand the role your team plays in protecting and furthering your company’s brand and work hard to honor that responsibility and fulfill that duty faithfully.
If you’re a brand executive or manager:
Get to know your social team. Chances are they are super fun people and will welcome your interest.
Work with the social team to include brand guidelines for social media accounts in your overall company brand guidelines.
Understand how the social media team operates, how they handle crisis situations and how you can help during those events.
Open the communication pipeline. Because of the nature of what social media teams do, they are very often on the front lines of spotting and flagging brand issues and violations – everything from spoof accounts and websites to employees misrepresenting the brand. Build the expectation that they share those items with you, and likewise, build trust by sharing brand-related issues that may affect social with them.
Major corporations that do social at a large scale are particularly vulnerable in this area. They are most frequently the target of hackers, and they have those brands that are worth billions with a B to protect. If you’re one of those folks, I’ll just leave you with this: Brand and social media should be working hand-in-hand to protect your company’s brand. If that’s not the case for your company, roll up your sleeves and get to work.