Brandle Social Media Governance Blog

Chip Roberson


Recent Posts

3 min read

The Confusing Truth About Corporate Social Media Monitoring

By Chip Roberson on June 04, 2020

Many companies have a corporate policy stating that employees cannot use personal social media accounts for work. In some regards, this make sense as it is a priority for the business to conduct corporate social media monitoring on corporate accounts. It’s also good practice to use work accounts for work and personal accounts for other interests. However, when corporate social media monitoring comes into play, some platforms make this impossible — specifically Facebook and LinkedIn.
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4 min read

Mitigating Social Media Risks During Company Layoffs

By Chip Roberson on March 11, 2020

As I sit down to write this, I can't even think of a working title. What I'm about to explore is not a fun topic but it's a conversation every executive knows is coming. The Coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic has triggered a series of events, which has destabilized markets and is affecting businesses, large and small, globally. The conclusion to draw is that layoffs are coming and crisis communication is going to be in play. Mitigating social media risks during company layoffs may not be your first crisis concern, but you will want a strategy to protect your global digital footprint and your brands.

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4 min read

How to Prepare for a Corporate Social Media Crisis Event

By Chip Roberson on February 27, 2020

Serious social media governance leaders know that a crisis event is in their future.  A social media crisis is not an "if" but a "when" situation. So the real question is: are you and your corporation ready to take charge and mitigate the risks when it happens? Recently, the NFL was put to the test when the hacker group OurMine decided to wreak havoc with team and player social media accounts. It's a good time to think about that event and ask yourself if you and your corporation are prepared to manage a social media crisis event like the NFL accounts being hijacked by hackers?

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2 min read

Inactive Twitter Accounts—An Opportunity to Reclaim Your Brand!

By Chip Roberson on December 06, 2019



We've all dealt with it; somebody grabbed your brand's name (or a variation thereof) and is holding it hostage on Twitter. Even worse, they could be misusing it as a counterfeit site phishing customers and sales. Getting that handle back can be tedious, expensive, and is not always successful. But there may be hope if that username is attached to an inactive Twitter account!

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4 min read

Twitter May Release Your Brand Username Soon. Be Ready!

By Chip Roberson on December 03, 2019

As reported by The Verge, Twitter started sending emails to the holders of accounts who had not signed in for six months or more:

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3 min read

Web Presence Management for a New Mobile App — Snapchat & Peach

By Chip Roberson on March 09, 2016

All around us, the world seems to be going “mobile first”. Given almost all of us walk around with a powerful computer in our pocket, that’s not terribly surprising. However, if you’re an enterprise trying to keep track of each corporate web presence, new mobile-only apps like Snapchat and Peach may be causing you some frustration. 

How do you find and keep track of the accounts your employees may be creating to represent (or protect) your products and brands? It’s not like there is an obvious URL one can type into a browser to go to the app as the whole user experience happens on the phone.

However, all is not lost.

While it may seem that each mobile app is an island to itself, that’s usually not true – especially when the app is just getting started. When the app is young, it focuses mainly on building an audience and that requires a streamlined sign-up and invitation process.

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4 min read

What's another URL among friends, Facebook?

By Chip Roberson on October 28, 2015


LEAVE IT TO FACEBOOK...

...to randomly change the ground under your feet. Of all the things which are important to your business' web presence, the addresses people use to find you is near the top of the list. Lose your URL and you can become invisible.

However, URLs pose another problem which most businesses don't take into consideration: the fact that you can have too many URLs for the same web property. And now it seems that Facebook has decided to give your business page one more.

Big deal, you might say? Well if you're a large organization with lots of brands or locations, your problems just got multiplied...

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5 min read

What is Your Corporate Web Presence?

By Chip Roberson on August 11, 2015

If you asked your colleagues in the marketing, PR, or IT departments "How big is our corporate web presence?”, would they give you a consistent answer? What if you included your colleagues over in legal, risk, and compliance? Would you start to get a consensus or would you just get more answers that don't agree?

According to a 2013 report by the Altimeter Group at least 13 different departments within the enterprise have a stake in the corporate social media presence alone. However, what each group imagines when they talk about corporate web presence may vary widely. Are they concerned about trademark protection (e.g. legal), or managing registrations for corporate domain names (e.g. IT), or all the product and campaign points-of-presence (e.g Marketing and PR)? It is even possible your colleague might alter her answer based on what she thinks you need to hear, due to your role. 

Most businesses today lack a comprehensive and consistent inventory of their corporate web presence and that is partly because the world has been changing so quickly that few have had time to agree upon a common definition of "corporate web presence." 

So, let's fix that.

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4 min read

The Importance of Social Media During M&A Due Diligence

By Chip Roberson on August 03, 2015

Many companies now disclose domain names as part of the due diligence process of a corporate merger or acquisition but social media is often an afterthought...and a painful one. Fortunately, the legal profession is starting to take note as evidenced by this insightful article, "Acquisitions: Are you doing your #duediligence?", by Siobhán Langwade and Kate Schmit of Stevens & Bolton LLP.

In the year and half we've been offering the Brandle Presence Manager as a platform for discovering and inventorying a corporate social media footprint, we have discovered:

  • Companies consistently and greatly underestimate the size of the corporate web presence.
  • No company has a single, complete and accurate inventory of their web properties.
  • Headquarters often does not know which employees created and/or manages which properties.
  • Credentials (passwords) are often not centrally managed nor available for all properties.
  • Control of these accounts is at greater risk of being lost post acquisition and regaining control can be a painful, slow and relatively expensive process.
  • Once the acquisition is complete, this becomes the headache of the acquiring company.

Social media accounts are intangible property and now an important part of the list of assets for the target company. Here’s how to secure the social media properties as part of the merger and acquisition due diligence process.

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5 min read

Why A Social Media Audit Is Not Enough

By Chip Roberson on July 17, 2015

Many companies come to us with the request "Can you run a social media audit so we can update our spreadsheet(s)?" While the answer is "Yes, we can..." there is a very big caveat: "... but your data will be out of date very quickly.”  

Unfortunately, social media is not like an email address or phone number which the company can control who gets one, when and for how long. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. all operate by their own rules. Anybody, inside or outside your company can create a new (or modify an existing) social media presence (or new domain) that purports to represent your business...and this can happen on a daily basis. which makes auditing your social media presence a challenge.

The challenge with conducting an audit for web and social media accounts is that the web is a dynamic world and a single audit that produces a static spreadsheet is out of date the moment it is completed.

For good digital and social media governance, you need to perform a continual audit that produces a dynamic inventory!

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