Infrastructure.

It all begins with a good infrastructure. Just like your company has a formal infrastructure for IT, HR and other key functions, there should be an infrastructure for social media, too. This includes tools, record keeping, archiving and other functions that need to be managed centrally to ensure accuracy, consistency and strategy implementation. Too many companies have no infrastructure for social media, which leads to a total Wild West environment. (Read more about the Wild West.)

Processes & procedures.

Standardizing your social media processes and procedures across the company is one of the smartest things you can do. This prevents people from making up their own rules, and it gives people clear guidelines about what is and is not OK. Without standard operating procedures, it is impossible to responsibly run social media at scale. And, with regulations like GDPR in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act, the stakes are now financial, reputational and operational all at once.

Security.

Finally, you have to keep your stuff safe. This is extraordinarily difficult in today’s digital age where cyber criminals are looking for vulnerabilities 24/7 and social media platforms themselves have huge data breaches routinely. Safeguarding passwords, controlling who has access to your accounts, putting additional security measures in place and using the right tools can all help mitigate these risks. Nothing is 100% foolproof, but companies that don’t at least try are simply inviting the criminals to attack them.

Busting my top 5 social media myths

Leading the social media practice at a major company is never boring. And yet, I do find myself sometimes sounding like a broken record – especially when it comes to helping people understand some very basic principles of social media for business. Here are the five social media myths I wish I could bust for the universe at large.

The four pillars of good social media governance

Even though social media security breaches have sadly become commonplace, and even though “Our Twitter account got hacked” is a generally acceptable excuse, there is no underscoring how much damage these events can do to your brand. So how do you prevent your company from being the next one in the news for some terrible social media incident?

Don’t be a dinosaur! 3 social media must-dos for companies of any size

If you have not yet thought through your social media security plan, you probably are opening your company to unnecessary risk. You are also basically operating like a dinosaur in modern times. So whether you’re a single-location mom and pop enterprise or a huge global corporation, maybe these governance tips will help. Here are my top three…

Protect your passwords: 4 key tips to deter cybercriminals

If you manage social media for a company, you should do everything you can possibly do to keep your passwords safe. They are literally the keys to your entire social media kingdom. And yet for some reason, many of the world’s largest companies do a really bad job of this. They are in fact, leaving their social media car unlocked in the driveway.

 Here are four key things to do to improve your password security dramatically.

Third party apps: don’t leave the window open for cybercriminals

Protecting your primary social media accounts is not enough. You also need to consider anything you have connected to your social media accounts, otherwise known as third-party apps. If you protect your main social accounts but ignore your third-party apps, that’s like locking the front door but leaving the window wide open.