Has social media marketing become your new marketing focus? While networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have become powerful platforms to expand your reach and find new customers, it is important to remember that these profiles need to be protected. Are you willing to risk the chance of a hacker leaving offensive tweets or posts that can affect your reputation much like Burger King or Jeep? Hackers can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time, not only to your immediate bottom line, but also to your reputation. Here are 5 tips for helping you protect your profiles and social media marketing efforts.
Create Stronger Passwords and Change Them Often
It sounds like common sense, but you should never get lazy and choose “password” or “password123” as the password to each of your company’s profiles. You wouldn’t believe how many people do! Your password acts as a first line barrier to protect you from a hacker attack. Why choose something easy to guess? Many companies try to make easy to remember passwords to make it less stressful on employees, but instead why not develop a systematic approach to your passwords? For example, replace letters with symbols or create a uniform capitalization system that employees know. That way even if a password is written down, it is protected. For example, if your password is ilovefacebook, but your system is to capitalize the second letter and replace all b’s with % signs, then an employee who sees ilovefacebook knows that the actual password is iLoveface%ook. It might sound complicated, but trust me preventing hacking is easier and less stressful than trying to clean up the mess. If several different team members will have access to the profile, you may want to invest in an advanced sign-on technology that will allow employees to use their own unique passwords to sign into the account and make posts and changes.
Control Who Posts to Your Social Media Accounts
If you aren’t freelancing, you probably have more than just a handful of employees. Remember that not everyone needs to have access or should have access to your social media marketing plans and profiles. If you use a management system that is designed to give only those who are authorized access to posting to your accounts, you can reduce the risk of the wrong message reaching the public and increase internal accountability.
Consolidation with a Management System
Do you know how many different corporate profiles you have to 
promote your brand? If you are marketing on different platforms, you need to be sure all of your accounts are managed and secured by a management system. Without such a system you may be authorizing 5, 10 or even 15 apps to integrate your social media marketing – each app opens you up to more risk of hacking. These systems will help you take control of your profile, message, and security. They can also act as an extra firewall with built-in malware tools that will notify you before clicking through to a suspicious page. Consolidation tools include Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or more robust tools like Sprout Social.
Monitoring and Reviewing your Messages
Social media marketing isn’t just about one way communications. You must be sure to monitor the messages you receive and look out for red flags. Suspicious messages that are unsolicited can be a cyber attack that will leave your accounts at-risk. This is especially important if you are running a blog.
Stay Updated on Privacy Policy Changes
Networks like Facebook and Twitter change the privacy policies and security options on a regular basis. As technology advances and there are more security breaches, the platforms come up with new ways to keep profiles secure. Review new policy changes on a regular basis and always look out for new options that will make life more difficult for a hacker.
There are a number of ways to hack proof your social media accounts so that you can market to your targeted niche without suffering a cyber attack. Be sure you use the right software systems, assign the right employees, and stay on top of network updates.
