One of the most potentially damaging risks from social media can be to an organisation’s reputation. Employees, customers and vendors can be an organisation’s greatest ambassadors or can seriously undermine its brand and image.

Published: 30 Aug 2011

One of the most potentially damaging risks from social media can be to an organisation’s reputation. Employees, customers and vendors can be an organisation’s greatest ambassadors or can seriously undermine its brand and image.

While no one can control or change this feedback, it can be monitored and responded to in a timely manner, as appropriate.

Other possible issues include legal, employment and information security risks.

According to the US-based public accounting and consulting firm Crowe Horwath, organisations that implement social media guidelines that promote the responsible use of social media will be better equipped to reap the new medium’s benefits.

Raj Chaudhary, a principal in Crowe’s Risk Consulting practice, has suggested that organisations can document and implement their social media risk management strategy by taking the following actions:

1. Engage a multidisciplinary team. Since social media activity affects a wide range of functions, representatives from the following teams should be brought together: human resources, legal, information technology, marketing, risk management, public relations, compliance and any other affected functions.
2. Document current and intended social media use. The team should define how the use of social media aligns with organisational objectives and each department should report how it uses or intends to use social media.
3. Perform a risk assessment. Based on the information received in the documentation step, the organisation should then conduct a formal review of risks associated with social media. The multidisciplinary team should determine what steps, if any, have already been taken to control or mitigate risks such as defamation of the company, its products or leaders.
4. Expand current policies to include social media and implement safeguards. This step requires that organisations review and enhance current policies to cover use of social media. This should include appropriate and inappropriate employee use of social media, information security policies to protect information, marketing and communications, as well as vendor management policies.
5. Provide social media training. For the policies to be effective, it's critical that organisations educate their workforce on the social media policy. Ongoing training sessions should include appropriate and inappropriate communications, highlight the constant threats present on social media sites and distinguish between the positive and negative use of the medium.
6. Monitor social media channels. Organisations should also consider how they will stay current on social media chatter that might have an impact on their objectives. Social customer relationship management (CRM) tools, comprised of software products and vendor services, help organisations monitor by listening on public channels for social media chatter that affects the organisation.