How can social media ruin your business is a subject every business, company, celebrity, employee and employees should understand; when it goes down the wrong path, it takes a lot to resolve… sometimes it can never be resolved.
Social media is a way to reach out, communicate, engage and expand your customer base as a business or brand. It is also a way for outsiders to reach in; it’s a two-way street that can lead to success and also to failure.
Social media is a very volatile section of doing business digitally, a lot can happen in seconds and can last for years. Every content, every follower, every post is a potential hazard waiting to implode in your face.
You are dealing with disgruntled customers, former employees, hackers, bots, competition etc. who now have direct access to your customers via your social media pages and can immediately cause a negative chain reaction that can go on forever if not quickly stopped, controlled and resolved.
Does a social media design system need to be considered an essential part of your brand’s voice? Yes. Do not underestimate the power of establishing a consistent look and feel across all of your social channels — it will go a long way in earning your follower’s brand loyalty, help other folks quickly recognize what your brand is all about at a glance at your social media presence and also distinguish between your posts and competition or even fake ones.
How can social media ruin your good name below are a few scenarios?
Stealing your good name
A lot of old companies, businesses and celebrities didn’t understand the social media introduction and most didn’t quickly move to own their usernames, domain names across the platform, when they eventually found out they needed the platform to grow their business, it was too late.
Most had to formulate another username with numbers or special characters, some had to buy it but we are here to talk about those who let go and ignore the platform in total, it’s a big no-no for serious businesses, the social media world is very volatile, one minute a platform is king, next day it’s become a useless place to even link your website too. You do not need to be active on the platform but once in a while, it can be used to in rare situations like posting the right information or helping reach a new audience due to activation or request.
Social media platforms have become more of quick places to reach and pass information; top brands, political figures and countries take this matter with serious priority to make sure no fake information is passed via their usernames.
Social media platforms have even taken steps further to put up verification icons to confirm the accounts represent the real owners. With all these, you still need to take serious security measures because a few seconds, a few words are all it takes and your business or brand is ruin via social media.
Access due to weak passwords and security measures
Following the stealing of your good name, weak passwords also give access to an already established account and known brand. These stories always come up daily and once researched, it’s just that extra security step that was overlooked that led to the account been hacked and used quickly to ruin the brand or get more information.
As your social media account becomes more valuable, you become a target by competitions, bots, annoyed customers, even new hackers who are just trying their hands and for fun will post content that does not represent the brand.
We advise you to keep your apps updated and also change your passwords at certain intervals with nothing related to your personal information as this is normally the intel they used to try and access your account. Also, use the two-step verification which is encouraged by every platform to help increase security.
For companies, security guidelines and measures should be in place for all employees accessing the social media accounts and must be updated regularly as we learn from news on accounts that just got hacked.
Fake News
One of the biggest problems’ countries, Top celebrities and even the social media companies face is fake news, no one is above fake news been spread around by people who want to ruin your business, brand or image.
Businesses should have a brand guide for all your posts, fonts, logo placement and message this helps in recognition of real news to fake news by your followers. Giving you an edge when issues arise.
With access to your account, an image and a few words, you begin to go through a whole lot cleaning up and explaining which might be head or accepted. Even without access to your account just mentioning your business or brand can also ruin your business. This leads to one of the most important parts of running your business on digital platforms – monitoring
Not Monitoring
We monitor everything that matters to us from our account balance to fuel tank in our car or generator, mobile data, notification of a new email from that lead and credit alerts. Add your social media to the list, as we have read above, been able to quickly intervene or plan a strategy before it gets out of hand is a key advantage to any serious business.
Not monitoring your social media accounts is a big No-No, and these platforms have made it so easy, different settings for different notifications and even though it’s on by default, we always turn them off to avoid the many emails, SMS and notifications in our phone.
As a business, notifications must be all on, to make sure you don’t miss the new clients, the replies, also the comments and bad information relating to your brand and business.
Google alert is also a tool that covers all searches made about your brand or business, use your google account and add all words but mostly phrases and you get an email or notification saying this was searched for. It’s an awesome tool and mixed with Google trend can be used for SEO and even marketing, it all depends on your creativity.
Competition
Talking of monitoring your own account, it also understandable and also a business sense to monitor your competitors for many reasons, the unhappy customers who switched to your competition and now your competition is using their testimonies to ruin your business.
The same goes vice versa, it is important to know your competition – this is the norm for every business, find who is not happy with their services and convert them into your customer, news about your industry you missed, new services they have created; because they are also watching you.
Anyone first to the market with the service or gets stolen from you and does it better can reduce your income and ruin your business.
Also, if your competition is taking hits at your brand or business, get to know first before you hear it from the streets and be able to plan a response immediately.
Employee activity
As much as privacy is to be respected, an employee activity also affects a brand image on social media, just like any news, good or bad – it begins to affect other bigger bodies connected to the news.
People begin to connect their workplace, gender, beliefs, nationality and their employer; bringing up forgotten negative news about the brand or business into the limelight causing more negativity and plans to clean up begins. This is definitely going to ruin your business if immediate actions are not taken, we have heard many times when brands announce on their accounts the immediate dismissal because it does not reflect the brand message and culture.
Conclusion
No brand, business, celebrity is safe, the key is to prepare even though it might not happen in years to come but once you are prepared and it does eventually happen, you are ready to save your business from been ruin by a single social media post.
We advise you to always take your digital security very serious, listen to the news on new ways people are getting hacked and adjust your security measures to intercept.
Teach your employees about the brand message and culture and posts that will lead to immediate termination of their job with you and keep your employees as happy as you can professionally.
Be professional about your social media posts, always look out for every possible scenario your post can be used against you either by religion, nationality, ethnics, different social bodies etc. the list is endless but do your best and every day you survive without been hacked is a good day for the brand.
If we have left anything out, do educate us in the comment section below, we are here to listen and help your business grow, contact us now.
