3 risks of social media

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Today, all indicators point to continued investment in social media across all industries. According to a study of marketing executives conducted by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, they will devote nearly 11% of their budgets to social media in 2016 and nearly 23% by 2020.

Businesses that use social media to guide prospects through the following three stages see real performance:

New subscriptions
New interactions
New customers and their loyalty
In short, high exposure translates to higher ROI, meaning more budget.

However, high exposure also comes with some downsides, namely exposure to the finland phone number data risks present on social media and malicious individuals who use it to harm users and brands.

But what are these risks and malicious individuals? What are the main risks encountered on social media? You need to consider several scenarios.


#1 – Risk No. 1: Scams, hacks and account takeovers
Monday, February 18, 2013: BurgerKing's communications department is on alert. Their Twitter account has just been hacked and disguised as a McDonald's account! The avatar of the @BurgerKing account, renamed "McDonalds," has been swapped for the logo of the competing fast-food chain with these few lines of introduction: " Official account of Burger King USA. Just sold to McDonald's because the Whopper flopped ." This may make you smile, but for the brand, it's a real crisis management exercise. In the space of 71 minutes, the hacked account had sent out more than 50 tweets, which were themselves retweeted 73,421 times by Internet users.





A more recent example, one that happened in our country, was the hacking of the Ministry of Culture's account last July. A prankster claiming to be the community manager's son took control of it for most of the night, posting inappropriate tweets and insulting certain Internet users. It must have been a long night for the Ministry's staff, who tried to manage the problem as best they could.



Not to mention all kinds of scams, such as fake profiles hacking into your impeccable social media presence, using your hashtags , and spreading a scam through fake discount coupons or other means. In this scenario, it's not always easy for a company to spot the scam before it impacts revenue. If a scam escalates, it's important for the brand to implement a specific policy to warn customers and communicate about refunds. More importantly, it's necessary to seek to identify scammers so they can be banned from the social networks on which they operate.

This is what happened to Qantas, for example: a fake Qantas account claimed to offer free first-class tickets...





#2 – Risk #2: Cybercriminals
Imagine you're the social media manager for a wealth management firm. You've just launched an ambassador program for all advisors, who are successfully using it to grow their business. Your marketing director is thrilled.

You're starting to notice some strange signs. Some advisors haven't been getting any results from this program. You investigate and discover that six accounts are using the image of one of your advisors and redirecting to the company's website, resulting in customer engagement. However, only one of the accounts is distributing content through the referral channels you specified. The other five are posting links via targeted messages that redirect to a malicious page that asks for your login information. The security team confirms that the number of complaints logged in this area has increased dramatically, with customers reporting phishing attempts and theft of identifiable information. It's no wonder the program's performance hasn't lived up to expectations.

In this scenario, the company did not monitor all of its digital assets, which include employee accounts in an ambassador program, to detect fraudulent use. Fake profiles are extremely easy to create, and companies must be especially vigilant in spotting imitations of their brand, especially if they interact with customers. Please note that social networks will remove any account that violates their terms of service.

#3 – Risk No. 3: Communication slip-ups and errors
Sometimes a brand thinks it's funny or has found THE communication guideline on social media to get people talking about it, without realizing the consequences that this can have. Sometimes, too, some people should have twitched their thumb seven times before clicking "Publish." It could be a joke in bad taste, an inappropriate tweet, or simply an account error.