Social media reputation is just as important as your market share and financial position. In the internet age, both private consumers and corporate clients rely on the social media and their friends’ recommendations to evaluate businesses and products. A negative comment or review on the social media could hurt your reputation seriously.
Imagine how much worse things could be if someone hacked your business social media accounts and started posting whatever they wanted under your brand name. It is the marketing nightmare of the present day, similar to the Watergate scandal on the political scene.
This is why it is of crucial importance to do everything within your powers to protect your social media accounts from intrusions of all kinds. Below, we will go through some of the most effective best practices applied by large companies and brands worldwide.
1. Use a Password Manager to Store Your Passwords
It would be ideal if our memory was powerful enough to remember every piece of critical data, including all the passwords. But it is not – and this is why we write down lists of passwords in our smartphones and computers and, even worse, on notepads and sticky notes which we leave next to our computer.
Is that scenario familiar to you? With the ability to hack both computers and mobile devices connected to the internet, nefarious people could get hold of your passwords and take control of your social media accounts. You can avoid this situation by storing all your passwords in a secure password manager and use it to connect to your accounts.
2. Password Security
Some hackers use the trial and error method and manage to hack into many accounts. Why? Because they have weak passwords. A weak password is easy to guess within under 100 tries by a hacker. For instance, an internet security survey has shown that the most popular passwords worldwide are still “12345” and “password”.
You probably do not use such insecure passwords, but maybe you use your wife’s maiden name or your wedding anniversary date. These are weak passwords that are easy to guess by someone – especially if that person knows you, or has already hacked into your computer and has access to your personal data.
3. Control Access to Your Accounts
If your business is growing, you will probably consider hiring people to take care of social media marketing. It sounds like the best idea, getting rid of this responsibility and having more time to focus on your business. But how many people should have access to your business social media accounts, and to what degree?
For example, in Facebook pages you can set roles to: admin, editor, moderator, analyst or advertiser. Except for the admin role, none of the others can change the access password and take control of the page. This is why you should give every person the exact level of rights they need to do their job, without giving them full control over your accounts.
4. Use Antivirus and Anti-Spyware Software
This advice refers not only to your social media accounts’ security, but also to the security of all the data stored on your computers and smartphones. Every day dozens of new viruses are launched online. Some will lock you out of your device and demand a ransom to regain the use of your computer or smartphone. Others will download a copy of all your data and sell it to the highest bidder.
These best practices, applied and enforced consistently, can protect your social media accounts from intrusion and safeguard your online reputation.