translated from Spanish: How social media can ruin your business (and what to do about it)

It doesn’t matter if it comes from a hacker, a disgruntled customer, or is simply a reaction to something you’ve posted. The truth is that negative content on social media can destroy trust in your brand in a matter of minutes.
“Social media is the most immediate threat to your company’s reputation,” says Pete Knott, digital consultant at Lansons, a company specializing in reputation management.
“If you don’t take it seriously, this will have a direct impact on your company from a financial and cultural point of view.”
Fake news remains one of the biggest challenges, even though Facebook and Twitter are trying to combat it.
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In May, for example, shares in UK Metro Bank fell 11% before the company could get rid of the wrong rumours that appeared on the networks, saying the bank was experiencing financial difficulties.
And, according to Ilia Kolochenko, of the internet security firm Immuniweb, located in Geneva, Switzerland, the consequences can be potentially far worse.
Fake news
“The Hackers they can do great damage if they find a way to post fake news on the networks,” says Kolochenko.
“Imagine if they manage to get into the BBC accounts and publish that Iran dropped a nuclear bomb.”
Ilia Kolochenko says hackers are a danger to corporate accounts on social media.” The effects can be devastating, especially if other media outlets saw the story.”
Social media posts don’t need to be wrong to damage your brand. Sometimes the truth can hurt, too.
In 2016, the market value of the Samsung SDI battery company fell by over $500 million when Tesla boss Elon Musk tweeted that the company was working with Panasonic on its next electric car.
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If you don’t think about them carefully, your own publications can also cause you problems, as American bank Chase discovered earlier this year, when he was accused of “shaming the poor.”
The financial institution suggested in a publication that customers with little money in the bank could save if they stopped traveling by taxi or buying coffee.
Name theft
Other threats include people who steal a company’s name.
“Creative criminals frequently exploit the names of big companies to make social media scams,” Kolochenko explains.
“For example, they can create the ‘Amazon Help in India’ account on Twitter, where they ask customers to contact them if they didn’t get a shipment, and they’re asked to pay a customs bill.”
Claire Twohill says customers know how to make companies react by writing comments on social media. Even posts from unknown customers can do a lot of damage if other customers read them.
“Consumers know that social media is a very quick way to get a response from the customer service department,” says Claire Twohill, director of social media at public relations agency FleishmanHillard.
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“That’s why network attacks are often the direct result of a supply chain problem, or a change in a popular product.”
“But, beyond motive, you need to react quickly.”
Planning
Masha Maksimava, vice president of Belarusian monitoring company at Awario networks, says that “the key to online reputation is to act quickly in the face of negative comments to avoid getting into a crisis.”
To do this, it is necessary to be properly prepared.
“Planning is crucial,” says Lopa Ghosh, partner of global service provider EY.
Lopa Ghosh recommends having an action plan ready. Equally important, however, is not to overreact.
“You don’t have to jump to every negative tweet,” Twohill says.
“Sometimes it’s better to do nothing to avoid creating a crisis for no reason.”
In any case, it is key to find the right tone.
If you find it, you can even change the situation and make it turn in your favor.
Employee activity
“Networks are a great place to rebuild a reputation,” Says Knott.
“So try to think about how you can use your crisis response to show the values your company holds and to show the human side.”
Masha Maksimava says you don’t have to waste time when it comes to responding to negative comments. Employee activity in one of the biggest pitfalls of social media.
Cybercriminals, for example, often use information that employees inadvertently display on networks to infiltrate the organization.
Richard Horne, a cybersecurity expert at PwC, says “people expose a lot of themselves on social media.”
“Criminals can look at someone’s profile, see that they like skiing, and send them a link to an evil program that offers cheap chalets in Switzerland.”
“It’s a very common way to infect companies’ systems.”
Passwords
The challenge, then, is how to handle the way employees use networks, without interfering with their rights.
“You can’t monitor your employees’ social media accounts, that’s getting into murky terrain from an ethical point of view,” Ghosh says.
Hackers can get a lot of information from your business so your employees publish.” What you have to do, however, is educate them about passwords and types of comments they post.”
It’s also important to be clear about how they should respond—if they should—in case the company is embroiled in a crisis.
Emma Harvey, founder of reputation firm Seven Consultancy says, “If there is an incident, make sure employees understand the protocol and don’t try to put out the fire themselves trying to defend the company online.”
Monitoring tools
The monitoring or listening tools that use the social media application programming interface (API) to collect and analyze data can help build your reputation and manage crises in networks.
“Including a listening tool in networks can be difficult, especially if your brand name is a common word like Apple,” says Maksimava.
“That’s why the three main things are an analysis of what’s feeling there is so you can deal with negative comments first, real-time results, so you can intervene immediately and flexibility, so you can exclude comments irrelevant even if the keywords are ambiguous.”
You just have to be careful not to invade people’s privacy.
“Network eavesdropping tools definitely have benefits, but they should be used the right way,” Knott says.

Original source in Spanish