No longer the “New Kid in Town.” Social Media and its
marketing resources have gone from a compulsive form of recreation for many to
a fundamental piece of any small business marketing plan, large or small.
What is still not readily known by many small business owners and
managers is that use of social media by companies and their employees can
seriously compromise a businesses’ security. Very often, when it comes to
maintaining safety and security via social media, employees can end up being
the biggest issue.
Whether it’s from posting on their personal page about
things happening at work, or clicking on things they shouldn’t while using an
office computer, employees can accidentally leak information or download
mal-ware into your network without even realise they are doing it.
To help avoid the issues that can result in these seemingly
small actions, here are some tips to assist you in keeping your business and
your employees safe from social-media troubles, both at work and at home.
Even though you can’t stop an employee from telling people
where they work, explain that like giving out their home address and phone
number online, revealing where they work can make it easy for people to find
them and collect more info on their daily routine.
Employees should also be informed that associating the
company with a personal account on questionable social networks could hurt the
company and, by default, hurt the employee as well.
Keep Privacy Settings Updated
This is important on two fronts. First, train your
employees how to maintain their own accounts’ privacy settings, this will
lessen the possibility of unauthorised info getting leaked.
On your businesses’ accounts, it’s likely you don’t know
most of the followers you’ve cultivated. Taking steps to secure those
accounts as much as possible, with privacy settings that will work best for
your company, will significantly add to your online security
Establish Work Place Use of Social Media
Most of us have done it, checked our Facebook page during
lunch or a break. Instead of trying to ban the use of social media on
work computers, it may be better to create some policies on how to use it
instead.
For instance, stating that visitation of these sites may
only be made during breaks and that the use of apps like games, quizzes, or
anything else that requires clicking on links, are prohibited on company
computers. Putting these policies in place will assist you in avoiding issues
that can affect your network.
Make Sure Your IT Specialists Are Trained to Handle
Social Media Specific Issues
Once you’ve established an office policy for Social Media
use, it will need to be enforced. This means ongoing surveillance of
online activities. To accomplish this, invest in consulting, and
antivirus protection via software and hardware.
Additionally, the company’s technical staff will need to be
updated about current social-media security risks.
A Word on Hacking
All businesses and their social media accounts are potential
targets. Any compromise of these tools could result in irreparable
damage. Fortunately, the items we’ve already discussed can help prevent a
hacker from successfully breaking into your account.
Additionally, use strong passwords with unique alpha-numeric
combinations. These days to create the best possible login security, you
need to use upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and accepted punctuation as
allowed.
Once you have one password, don’t use it for multiple
logins. If a hacker manages to figure one account out, you’ll have given
up the keys to the entire kingdom.
A Little Prevention Can Go A Long Way
The most important way to prevent harmful issues from social
media use is to educated and even provide training for your employees.
Whether this is via a workshop, meeting or included in a
section of the employee handbook, be sure your employees have the knowledge
that can save your business’ social media accounts and their own from
unnecessary attention and use.
Monitoring the social media marketing landscape is vital to
your success.
For additional help, click the link below for no cost social media training:
No cost online marketing training here
By Martin Goldthorpe 2018 - Business Marketing Mastery
For additional help, click the link below for no cost social media training:
No cost online marketing training here
By Martin Goldthorpe 2018 - Business Marketing Mastery
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