There is no denying that social media provides many benefits for self-storage businesses. Promoting your facility on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other sites helps your business to stay relevant and provides free access to a large audience of potential customers. Social media gives businesses the ability to post real-time updates and can help enhance the relationship with prospective and existing tenants in a way that no other medium can replicate. Not adopting social media can have an adverse impact of competitive advantage, and a negative perception by tenants, clients, employees, vendors and partners.
- Human Error: In this era of engaging directly with the public, in real time, mistakes are bound to happen. Employees may also be hacked because they trust fellow members of their “tribe” of social media users and may be tricked by fraudsters.
Ways to Avoid Being Tricked: Create a social media policy and procedures to protect your company. Make sure to consult all relevant parties, whether that’s executives, IT, legal, security and compliance, or PR beforehand. Clearly define the dos and don’ts on every social channel for engagement and employee advocacy.
- Processes: Facilities need to define and approve the right permissions, approvals, access, data classifications and collaboration processes before they get started.
Consider including guidelines on how to:
- Create a secure password
- Avoid spam, phishing attacks, and human error
- Share on-brand and approved content
- Engage properly on behalf of the brand
- Avoid social media platforms’ default privacy and security settings
- Proceed in the event of an attack
- Legal: Potential issues range from adherence with privacy laws, to content ownership, to intellectual property infringement, to human resources issues such as unauthorized activities (i.e. harassment, discrimination and defamation).
Avoiding Legal Issues: Clearly define best practices, guidelines, and procedures on how your organization plans to implement training and enforce proper use.
- Data (collection, protection, security): Facilities need to meet the regulatory requirements of collecting, processing, handling and storing data. The corporate network should be secured to prevent confidential tenant and client information from leaking out. The facility should be protected from incoming threats when social media users inadvertently introduce malware or employees are targeted by cyber criminals. Global facilities need to comply with local data protection regulations when employees are connecting with each other and sharing documents across borders.
Get Secure Technology: With policy and education behind you, technology is the final piece of armor
against social media security threats. Arm yourself with security software that automatically checks for
malware, worms, viruses, and other cyber risks. Secure login information using passwords stronger than
‘sam1234’.
Likewise, everyone engaging on social media should do so in one secure social media management
platform (Click here to visit hootesuite, a social media management program) . This allows all
communications to be tracked, archived for compliance, measured, and secure. Both your desktop and
mobile phone require security software and apps to scan for suspicious apps and links while you’re working
on social media.
Social media opens a world of opportunity for your business to grow and connect with customers. Arm
yourself against threats and move forward knowing you’ve done everything in your power to protect your
business.
- Compliance: Industry regulations vary by industry, geography and culture. There are more than 10,000 rules and regulations that govern electronic communications in the US alone. Categories of rules include recordkeeping, adhering to advertising requirements and supervision of employees. Facilities must be able to provide proof of compliance when regulators conduct audits as well as respond to e-discovery requests.
Be Compliant from the Beginning: Work out how your facility is going to comply with various local and
industry rules and regulations, including data privacy and protection, advertising, record keeping and
supervision.
- Financial: Missteps can have a negative impact on share prices and result in fines from regulators or data protection enforcement agencies.
A number of areas require consideration to ascertain your risk.
The core areas are:
Use of personal mobile phones and tablets for business purpose
Use of personal email addresses (non-company domain – i.e. Gmail, Yahoo, et al)
Use of non-company cloud services, such as Dropbox, if they are not business sanctioned
- Operational: Although social media can be a competitive advantage, it can be disruptive and reduce the employee productivity.
Put someone in charge: Social media is a full time job. At least one person should be fully trained and
educated in social media best practices and policies. They should monitor your brand’s presence, listen for
related conversations, oversee training, and security, as well as manage who has publishing access. Having
someone act as the eyes and ears of social is a big step in mitigating risk.
- Reputation: Content is being created in real time, outside of the firewall, with resultant reputational risks. Mistakes and hacks can have a negative impact on the brand and loss of employee, customer, or investor confidence.
Control Responses During a Crisis: A crisis for a company can range from unexpected website issues to a
lawsuit. How a crisis is handled online makes a huge difference to the future ramifications. It’s important
to monitor and respond to customers who write on your wall or send you messages to resolve any
issues and let users know they’re heard.
- Costs: Although social media is viewed as “free”, facilities may need to hire experts to work through their governance issues, third party vendors to provide platforms to manage access and retain records and writers or agencies to develop content.
Cost Control Initiatives: A reliance on relatively low-cost social media channels to market products to millions
of consumers supports a company’s efforts to control costs of essential functions, including sales, marketing
and customer service. For example, a company can maximize its return on marketing dollars by relying on
social media to reach some customers rather than higher cost television advertisements.
10. Product Marketing: A product can be directly marketed to the consumer using social media. Such
marketing amplifies messages that are conveyed by other product promotions, including website
advertisements and press releases. Don’t be left behind and miss out on your competitive advantage.
Take time to test out your social media accounts. Set concrete goals for how frequently to post, and have an idea of what sort of content you want to put out there. Whether you mark the calendar for one month from now or six months down the road, make sure you analyze the success of your social media accounts. Work with whomever is running your social media and take a look at feedback you get from the social media world. Check whether or not any of your content has been shared. Take the time to make sure your current frequency goals are still realistic. As time goes by, you’ll learn more tricks of the trade and you’ll develop a better understanding of what your customers want to see.