company social media

7 reasons to take control of your company social media accounts

How many company social media accounts does your business have? Who manages them, and how frequently do they post? Are they staying broadly on brand?

Social media accounts are easy to launch, which make them a great marketing tool, yet this simplicity can be the cause of big problems for businesses. Obtaining social media optimisation can be a struggle when business accounts are set up by staff without any training or guidance.

Imagine the scenario where there’s a clear brand messaging strategy, yet unauthorised social media accounts are set up by staff that don’t follow the agreed thinking. In this scenario it’s easy to imagine how quickly a carefully constructed strategy can become unravelled and brand reputation can be damaged.

What’s more, this situation can be very confusing for customers, who struggle to identify the official social media accounts for an organisation and aren’t sure who they are communicating with.

Here’s 7 persuasive reasons why every organisation needs to take control of their social media presence:

1. Reputation management

Multiple company accounts mean multiple voices out there on the internet, all purporting to represent your brand. How do you know that they are all speaking in the right tone of voice, providing value to customers, and helping to build your brand? Are there abandoned accounts that are lying dormant and creating confusion? Take control to ensure that messaging and tone of voice are consistent and on-brand.

2. Risk management

Protect your organisation against the disgruntled employee scenario (see HMV example) by ensuring that social media managers are trained and suitable for the role. A centrally held directory of all accounts with usernames and passwords protects your organisation against this risk, as well as sickness and absence, and allows for effective crisis management.

3. Resource management

How many accounts currently exist within your business, and how often are they updated? How much resource is that taking up that could be used more profitably elsewhere? What is the return on investment for all the time currently being taken up managing social media accounts? Your Financial Director will be very interested in your findings!

4. Clarity for customers

Customers need to be able to identify the official social media accounts and follow the right ones. Unfortunately, given how easy it is to set up a social media account, swipe a logo from the company website, and write anonymously, it is very easy for pretenders to damage your brand. Any queries unanswered by your pretenders, or by your staff will harm customer satisfaction.

5. Co-ordination of campaigns and initiatives

If multiple accounts exist and have built up reasonable follower bases, then you can use the added reach of these accounts to get a message out to a wider customer base. Accounts may reach different customer segments, allowing you to target your messages and promotions effectively. Without control over those accounts you won’t be able to reach their followers.

6. Customer insight and satisfaction

Social media has become a very effective two-way communication tool, and is frequently used by customers to send complaints or feedback. By taking an overview of social media in your organisation you can provide guidance to account holders on how to respond to messages that are complaints, slanderous, and so on. What’s more, by providing an agreed process by which complaints or grumbles can be fed back to a central contact, they can be escalated to senior management if necessary and your organisation will become faster at responding to issues.

7. Legal protection

If you have awareness of all your company’s official accounts it makes it much easier to identify brand imposters – those using your company or brand name who have no genuine association with your organisation, and they can be halted faster using the reporting process or your own legal team.

At the same time you might identify brand ambassador/fan pages that pop up. It’s equally useful to know what is being said about your brand by influencers as a pro-active approach to working with them could pay dividends for your brand.

Do you have an issue with your company social media accounts?