Dangers of Social Media to business

For some time now, businesses have been trying to harness the might of social media. So much so in fact that huge corporations are formally setting objectives for people in sales roles to create so much ‘noise’ every year on social media.

All to often however, organisations forget two very important points. Firstly, that there are no guarantees that social media will will help your business. Secondly, there are no guarantees that social media won’t hurt your business!

We’ve all seen examples of company chiefs or celebrities getting into trouble because of controversial tweets. Of course this is just one of the risks for a company using social media.

A recent study from Grant Thornton entitled ‘Social Media Risks & Rewards’, outlines some of the risk involved:

• Damage to brand reputation
• Disclosure of proprietary and/or confidential information
• Corporate identity theft
• Legal, regulatory and compliance violations

Despite the clear and present dangers, the study reveals that only 18 per cent of respondents have performed a risk assessment on using social media.  Furthermore, only 33 per cent of the organisations interview had a social media policy.

Perhaps the greatest risk though to most small businesses comes from an unhappy customer who uses social media to tarnish your good name online.  Of course, the unhappy customer may not be a customer at all. He or she could just be a competitor looking to damage the public’s perception of your product or service.

Ultimately, whether your organisation is using social media or not, it can still come under fire online.  If it’s not happened yet, it almost certainly will at some point.

Being prepared therefore is crucial. Work with your PR and SEO agency to develop a robust response plan which clearly sets out who will respond, tone of voice etc.  If you see every bad piece of publicity as an opportunity to win and convert support, social media can become a very powerful PR tool indeed.