“As more organizations recognize the benefits of social media for communicating with customers and other stakeholders, a vast majority of risk professionals …believe that social media poses at least a moderate threat to their organizations.”
Organizations leveraging social media may do so without contemplating the potential loss for a public social media misstep –one that includes both tangible and intangible costs. There are many regulations an organization must follow when leveraging social media. Failure to do so can result in significant losses to a company, which may include the following examples:
Decreased stock pricePayments of legal and discovery feesCosts of fines and sanctionsFees paid for public relations and crisis management firmsCosts of employee turnover and replacement, along with decreased productivityImpact to reputation, customer loyalty and loss in salesPrice of Corporate Integrity Agreement implementation along with lack of focus on the core businessStifled innovation due to concerns and fears
Social media risk includes both the use of external social media, such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, but also extends to internal social platforms organizations utilize to improve productivity, such as IBM Connections™, Salesforce.com Chatter™and Salesforce.com Communities™and others. It is anticipated that these internal social communication platforms will surpass email as the primary source of internal communications in just a few years. As internal and external social media converge, so do the risks.
Technology can mitigate social media risks
Social media risk management technology (a.k.a. social media monitoring) is an effective way to identify what is being said about a company and its products, to analyze what is being said, and to alert appropriate personnel to risks requiring management. The collected data also can serve as predictive analytics to further identify potential areas for heightened risk efforts.
Putting an effective and impactful social media risk management technology in place can:
Protect brand reputation and stock valueIncrease compliance and eliminate or reduce fines and sanctionsSafeguard against tangible and intangible losses and their resulting impact
Otavio Freire, Chief Technology Officer, OpenQ, Inc.