Is your business a social media disaster waiting to happen?

Social MediaOne of the pivotal success building blocks of any search engine optimization strategy will be your social media efforts. You can’t leave this critical area of your SEO success ignored. If you are not on top of your social media strategy and content on a daily basis, you will simply be inviting disaster to walk right in and wreak havoc on your business.

  •  Your company’s reputation is the most important thing you need to guard out at your social media platforms. Your reputation can take a severe hit at any time and you must be on guard. You need to constantly monitor what is being posted and you must keep close tabs on any comments or reviews you are getting. You must attend to them immediately so as to ensure your rep is not damaged.
  • Beware of mirror sites set up by rival competitors, hackers, or a disgruntled employee or customer. These can be done rather simply especially at such sites like Facebook. People will take it as your legitimate site and untold damage can be done. Such a site could post sensitive information about your business including private information about customers and vendors.
  • You can’t let just anyone post to your social media sites. Many a small business has gone down in flames because an employee went on a rant over a negative comment that was posted. You need a professionally trained social media person or team tending to your sites and employees must be strictly banned from posting anything on the company site.
  • If you have a substantially larger company, a corporate spy could establish a Facebook page and start reaching out to your other employees. They will be told that the poser is an employee from another company location and your employees could mistakenly reveal private information.
  • Avoid posting any private information about your employees at any of your social media sites. ID thieves revel in that information as far too many people use birthdays and such as passwords.
  • Google Alerts is a great way to stay up on what is being said about your company online and in social media. You need to guard against campaigns designed to ruin your reputation by those that would do you harm. Also, never post when you or your people are ready to take a vacation. There are so many countless sad tales about people’s homes being robbed while they were on vacation. How did the thieves know? The victims posted their vacation schedule on Facebook.

– Written by Kevin Sawyer