When you communicate with a global audience on social media, you take on real risks, from reputational damage to security threats.
That’s where social media risk management comes in, helping you spot problems early and respond before they escalate.
Below, we’ll break down the biggest social media risks and share expert tips to help you manage them with confidence.
Key takeaways
- Social media risk management protects your brand. It maintains brand trust, supports compliance, and reduces security and financial risk.
- Social media risks go beyond brand channels. Employees can also create security and legal issues.
- Risk management requires a proactive approach. Social media policies, employee training, and active monitoring help curb potential risks.
- The right tools make social media risks easier to manage. Tools like Hootsuite help teams monitor conversations, manage messages, and respond faster with more visibility across teams.
Social media risk management is the process of identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks that stem from social media.
Your brand, customers, and employees are all active on social media, making your channels common ground for conversations — both good and bad — and potential crises.
Common social media risks include reputational damage, security breaches, compliance violations, legal issues, and financial fallout.
Let’s dive into each risk below:
Damage to reputation
Negative comments, inappropriate posts, or bad reviews can all chip away at trust. And because social media is so public, crises can spiral out of control quickly.
Maintaining trust in your brand is crucial, but it takes a proactive approach. To limit reputational risks, your team should have a social media crisis management response plan in place.
Security breaches
If your social media passwords get into the wrong hands, it creates a serious security vulnerability.
A breach can lead to spammy posts, lost account access, or exposed customer data, putting data privacy (and other sensitive data) at risk.
Security risks also increase during employee transitions. When someone on your marketing or social team leaves, it’s important to remove account access and permissions right away. This keeps your social media accounts secure.
Compliance violations
Social media compliance means following the rules set by regulatory bodies, social platforms, and your own organization.
Depending on your industry, that can require extra care when publishing content. For example, healthcare brands can face serious legal issues if they post content that violates a law or regulation.
If you work with brand partners or influencers – or run sponsored content or giveaways – make sure you’re following advertising regulations.
You can avoid compliance risks by having your legal team review all contracts. They should give the green light on any social content that all parties plan to share.
Source: Laneige
Legal issues
Managing legal risks on social media doesn’t stop with compliance. It also extends beyond your brand’s official channels.
Employees should feel comfortable sharing work updates online, but without social media guidelines, even well-intentioned social media posts can create legal issues in the real world. This is especially important for businesses in regulated industries.
A social media policy helps set expectations around what employees can and cannot post, protecting both your brand and your team.
Financial fallout
Any negative situation — whether it’s a PR crisis, compliance violation, or security breach — can quickly snowball into bigger problems. In some cases, that impact shows up on the bottom line.
Just ask pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. Its stock fell 4.37% in the fall of 2022 when a fake account tweeted that insulin was free.
That kind of financial fallout is exactly why a strong social media risk management plan matters for any brand that’s active on social media.
We asked Trish Riswick, former Social Engagement Specialist at Hootsuite, for her top tips for managing social media risks. Here are the five key steps:
- Define a clear social media policy
- Train employees on safe and compliant social media use
- Monitor social media accounts and conversations
- Respond promptly to negative feedback
- Review and update your policy regularly
1. Define your social media policy
The first step in managing risk on social media is to have a clearly defined social media policy.
A social media policy should outline a plan of action for different scenarios, including emergencies, PR crises, or security breaches.
It should also clearly state what everyone’s roles are in crisis scenarios, from the legal team to PR to customer service.
Just as importantly, your policy should cover team transitions. Define your handover process and outline the steps you need to take to secure your accounts. This makes sure that everything will continue to run smoothly in their absence.
2. Train your employees
Your employees can be some of your strongest brand advocates — but without regular training, they can unintentionally put your business at risk. An off-message or non-compliant post can quickly impact your brand reputation.
“Many employees want to be more active on social and showcase what they’re doing at their company,” says Riswick. “However, they need to understand what they can and cannot post.”
This is where social media guidelines for employees come into play. Your risk management plan should include clear direction on what employees can share from their personal accounts, from confidentiality rules to industry regulations.
To make this easier (and safer), consider a tool like Hootsuite Amplify. Amplify enables you to generate on-brand, pre-approved social media content, which employees can conveniently share on their personal social media channels – including LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
3. Monitor your social media accounts
Monitoring your social channels helps you spot potential issues early and step in before they escalate. But it’s not just the social team’s responsibility.
Depending on the situation, teams like customer service or PR may also need visibility into what’s happening. That’s why it’s important to have a clear process for routing messages to the right teams and stakeholders.
“A lot of information can get lost when moving from team to team,” says Riswick. To avoid that, she recommends using an internal system to flag and relay critical messages.
“Categorizing and tagging messages helps more people in the company have eyes on what is happening. They can use that information to improve their area of the organization.”
TL;DR: Monitor your social channels closely and use tagging or routing systems so the right teams can see and act on issues quickly.
4. Respond promptly to negative feedback
When negative feedback pops up, it’s important to have a crisis response plan ready so your team can act quickly.
“My best practice is to always move that conversation from public to private as quickly as possible,” suggests Riswick.
Effective crisis communication starts by acknowledging the issue publicly. This tells customers you’re aware of it. Then, move the conversation to a private channel to resolve the problem.
Source: Glossier
Acting quickly helps prevent negative comments from gaining momentum and turning into a larger PR issue.
5. Review and revise your policy on a regular basis
As platforms, trends, and regulations change, your social media policy needs to evolve with them.
“In order to stay compliant within your industry, you need to revise your policy on a regular basis,” says Riswick. “This not only protects the brand but, more importantly, protects employees.”
Keep an eye on emerging platforms, shifting social trends, and updates to industry and local regulations. Use those changes as cues to update your policy when needed.
When updates happen, communicate them clearly so employees are always aware of what is and isn’t okay to post.
If you want to improve your brand’s approach to social media risk management, here are a few tools with the right functionality.
1. Hootsuite
The key to mitigating a potential social media crisis is to spot it early, and that’s where Hootsuite comes in. You can use Hootsuite to keep an eye on brand mentions, assess brand sentiment, and quickly step in to address feedback or customer issues.
Every Hootsuite plan includes everything you need to get started with social listening.
With features like Quick Search, you can discover trending hashtags, brands, and events anywhere in the world, or dive deeper for personalized insights on your brand.
You can also track what people are saying about you, your competitors, and your products — up to two keywords tracking anything at all over the last 7 days.
If you want to level up your social media customer service, Hootsuite Inbox 2.0 helps you manage all of your social media messages in one place. This includes private DMs, public comments, emoji reactions, and more.
2. Meltwater
Meltwater helps you monitor specific keywords — like your brand name or certain industry topics — across all major social media platforms. You can easily engage with and respond to posts that mention your keywords.
Best of all? Meltwater works within your Hootsuite account, so it’s even easier to streamline your social workflow.
Source: Meltwater
3. Mentionlytics
Mentionlytics is a brand monitoring tool that alerts you of any brand or keyword mentions from across the web. This includes news articles as well as social channels — even YouTube and Reddit.
Source: Mentionlytics
4. NetBase
NetBase is a social listening and analysis tool. It lets you monitor both owned and earned conversations using custom streams created directly in Hootsuite.
The app helps your brand stay on top of everything from customer feedback to PR and digital campaigns.
Source: NetBase
Social media risk management FAQs
What is social media risk management and why is it important for enterprises?
Social media risk management is the process of identifying and reducing risks that come from using social media. It is important for enterprises because a single post, comment, or security issue can damage trust, lead to legal trouble, or impact revenue.
What are the best practices for building a social media risk management strategy?
The best practices for building a social media risk management strategy include creating a clear social media policy, training employees, monitoring social channels, responding quickly to issues, and updating your policy on a regular basis.
How do companies manage social media risks like data breaches, brand safety, and compliance?
Companies manage social media risks by protecting passwords, removing account access when employees leave, creating a clear social media policy, and involving legal and compliance teams when needed. Regular monitoring and fast response also help prevent small issues from becoming bigger problems.
What tools help enterprises monitor and mitigate social media risk in real time?
Tools like Hootsuite help enterprises monitor and reduce social media risk in real time. Hootsuite’s social listening tools make it easy to track brand mentions and spot potential issues early, while Hootsuite’s Inbox 2.0 helps teams manage messages, route them to the right team, and respond quickly – all from one place.
How can regulated industries manage social media risk and compliance?
Regulated industries can manage social media risk by creating stricter social media policies, training employees often, and reviewing content before it is published. Ongoing monitoring and regular policy updates also help ensure posts stay compliant as rules change.
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