Maximize Your Social: A One-Stop Guide to Building a Social Media Strategy for Marketing and Business Success

Chapter 14

Managing the Risks

As companies begin to open their social media programs up to their employees, it’s worth looking at what the potential risks are of implementing such a program and how to handle them. According to a 2012 study, only 24 percent of the Inc. 500 companies have a social media policy.1 Those operating in heavily regulated industries should take extra precautions (which, unfortunately, go beyond the scope of this book), but be in touch with legal and compliance teams when creating and implementing the social media program. Nonetheless, there have been a number of debatable social media brand meltdowns, from the likes of Kenneth Cole,2 Motrin,3 American Red Cross,4 McDonald’s,5 and others, and it’s important for brands to consider how they should deal with crises that either begin on or bubble over to social media.

A number of additional glaring issues are emerging with the growth of social media in the workplace of which companies need to be mindful:

• Social media content required for e-discovery: Companies have always maintained archives of other documents, and now they’re being required to provide social media content. For reference, one of the first cases of this was Gordon Partners et al. v. George S. Blumenthal et al.6
• Increased requests for social media data during regulatory examinations: One report indicates this was a growing trend starting in 2010 for financial services firms.7 The same report also predicted that, “by the end of 2013, 50 percent ...