Managing your business’ online presence involves more than just managing your social media sites and online communities. Keeping an eagle eye on all online mentions is important and can be a daunting task. When you leave your house for an extended period of time, you take the necessary precautions to make sure it’s secure, locked, and under the watchful eyes of someone you trust. You should be taking the same care with your company’s reputation and have a strategy in place and steps outlined to keep it safe and secure online. Here are 3 areas where you should employ a risk management strategy:
1. Protecting Your Reputation
Your business reputation is valuable and often at risk in the social media arena. You need to listen to what’s being said, keep track of mentions and monitor comments and your online communities. Monitoring for risks keeps you ready to act should any threats come your way.
2. Guarding Against Copyright Infringement
Detecting copyright infringement is important to your company and its products and services. Infringement happens all the time online and even counterfeit sales of “knock-off” products can damage your business. Guarding against this involves searching the Internet for any brand mentions and monitoring user-generated content, especially with video and other visual content.
3. Crisis Monitoring
Risk management also involves monitoring for crises. Being prepared ahead of time with a strategy will help cut down the response time to getting a crisis under control as well as set in motion needed escalation procedures. Acting quickly and responding in the right way to each specific or potential crisis takes personnel and good management. Remember to respond to and interact with followers and fans in a timely manner.
Don’t put your business at risk. Your reputation can be ruined in a flash, as social media is an avenue where bad news spreads very rapidly. Risk management will protect your reputation, keeping it safe and handling threats before they do damage.
