When was the last time you updated your corporate social media governance plan and ensured all aspects of the plan are current, effective, and well-communicated? 

As we stated in our last blog post, research firms have listed risk to brand reputation as the #1 risk concern of global c-level executives, and risks arising from technology in the top 10. Social media can be an in-road for both of these risk concerns. This is why your Social Media Governance Plan is a critical part of the corporate risk program.

We know ... creating an effective corporate-wide plan can feel like a tremendous weight on your shoulders. But reacting to a social media risk event without a plan is a much bigger weight! So to help lighten the load, we're getting you started with a general direction of an effective Social Media Governance Plan. 

Throughout the year we keep our eyes focused on the service firms that conduct research on risk factors facing the C-level suite of global enterprises. Because social media can spread so quickly, the C-suite and the Boardroom have to consider how a major risk event will either stem from or play out on the web. Which means the people leading the digital and social media team need to have strong web presence governance in place to effectively manage these risk concerns.

Now that it is 2016, it's a good time to take a look at last year's risk research and consider what is top of mind for global CEO's. We believe this perspective can help you gain a general understanding of corporate risks and prepare you to have better conversations about the specific risks that your own CEO is concerned about for your company. Why? Because understanding your company's key risk concerns is the first step to developing an effective social media governance plan.

This post highlights the 2015 Global Risk Management research conducted by AON, Deloitte, Protiviti (conducted by North Caroline University), and the US CEO Outlook 2015 by KPMG. The top findings you need to consider for your 2016 risk plan for web presence management and social media governance:

• Damage to Reputation/Brand is the #1 global risk concern in most research.
• Regulatory and Compliance concerns top all research reports, and
• Disruptive Technology and Cyberthreats play prominently for all industries.

Nick Hayes of Forrester has just published the December, 2015 report for Security and Risk Professionals. The title of the report is TechRadar^TM: Risk Management, Q4.

In this Forrester report, Nick identifies the thirteen most important technology and service categories for risk management at various stages of market maturity, business value, and user adoption.

Hayes raises several issues/opportunities/risks/practices to consider in this report and we recommend it to anyone in the C-suite or who is tasked with managing risk to the enterprise.

Brandle Tips is a series of posts that highlight features and functions of the Brandle Presence Manager. We hope to make learning easier for our customers and to show other readers how easy web presence management can be!

Today's Brandle Tip is all about the Inventory Monitoring Column and how Brandle automatically monitors your social media profiles. When there is a monitoring issue, Brandle will email you the issues as well as present them in the Monitoring Column of the Inventory table. 

The key events that Brandle is presenting in the Monitoring Column are:

• Profile Change Detection (Included with Brandle Presence Manager)
• Compliance Criteria Failure (Included with the Compliance Module)

Each key event has multiple options that may be presented, and they all should be reviewed by a member of your Account Team. Once reviewed, the team member should either process the changes with the point-of-presence (POP) contact or approve the change and dismiss the issue. The rest of this post takes you through the steps.

It's been almost two years since the FFIEC has issued its final guidance on social media for all businesses supervised by the CFPB. We've spent a lot of time talking about how regulated businesses can create social media governance programs and we've offered tips and ideas along the way for attaining social media compliance for mortgage companies. 

In our blog post Social Media Compliance & Your Sales Team: 6 Steps to Success, we suggest a process to help secure compliance with your loan officers. Step number five of that process is to "train your sales staff". One of the best ways to train employees on social media compliance is to give them examples and guidelines on what, exactly, you would like them to do with their social media accounts! 

Primary Residential Mortgage, Inc., one of Brandle's customers, has created Social Media Guidelines and Requirements for their loan officers to receive step-by-step instructions. The beauty of the document is that it is simple, gives an illustrated example for each approved social media site, and lists the compliance requirements on each page. PRMI is kind enough to let us share this "best practice" example of how to help loan officers with compliance and good brand standards! Perhaps it will help you with your training program for your "social sales team".

In every industry, good sales and marketing professionals seek external data to support marketing ideas and business decisions. That is doubly true in a regulated industry, like financial services, where a decision could cost the company high compliance fines. So when external data is available, such as meaningful survey results showing social media industry trends, it's a great idea to leverage the findings to update, change, or confirm your existing social media programs.

Recently, Putnam Investments and Socialware conducted social media use surveys among advisors in financial services firms. In this article, I present highlights of the Putnam survey and more detail on the Socialware study.

The biggest data point from the Putnam Investment study that demonstrates why you should ramp up your social media program for advisors is: 

• The share of advisors acquiring new clients through social media is up sharply to 79% (from 66% in 2014), with the average annual asset gain from these clients standing at $4.6 million.

The top findings in Socialware's Social Media Trends survey are:

• 48% of advisors are allowed to create their own social media posts, as well as share pre-approved content
• The top challenges center around social media risk management 
• 39% of firms still have no ROI metrics to assess social media program success 

We hope you find information in this article to help you navigate the chasm of corporate risk and build a bridge to social media success!

One of the more difficult challenges for the corporate team responsible for social media governance is the task of monitoring the web presence activities of the sales team. The challenge is even greater when you have a distributed and large sales force. And if you are in a regulated industry (such as mortgage, finance, insurance, or pharma), the job is critical to the regulatory compliance of the company!

I recently got a call from one of our mortgage customers asking if I could recommend best practices to manage a distributed sales team so the company could demonstrate corporate-wide social media compliance. He commented that he felt like he was "herding cats". I was happy to guide him through the process I recommend and I thought others might benefit as well. Additionally, I get to use a photo of really cute kittens in a blog post (attentively gathered for training and monitoring).

In this article, I outline a sound process to help you manage web presence compliance for a social sales staff. Although I do highlight procedures for companies in regulated industries, these steps can be followed by any company so that you can get the most out of your social sales team while managing risks for your company.  

As usual in business (and herding), it comes down to the adage, "Make the Plan....Work the Plan". Successful social media compliance is all about implementing best practices for governance, leveraging corporate brand marketing, and training your sales team how to "be social".

If my headline caught your attention, then I'm betting you are responsible for advertising and social media compliance in a regulated business. You may be in the financial sector (a mortgage, securities, or banking company) or other regulated industry (like a pharmaceutical or medical business), but the challenge of selecting the right solution for your web and social media governance program is the same for everyone:

What tool do I need to achieve corporate web and social media compliance?

There are three tools you need to consider to run a good compliance process. Once you understand the web and social media tools landscape for regulated businesses, you will know which tool is your priority starting point.

Are you responsible for managing, publishing, listening, or analyzing the data from your corporate social media properties?  If you spend part of your work day focused on any of these activities, then you are using at least one Social Media Management System!

The growth of Social Media in the corporate environment has created a large market for different tools that help you achieve different goals. Most people start with a publishing tool, but a new tool category is emerging called Web Presence Management which addresses the key needs of corporate web and social media governance.

Is it time your company adopts a Presence Manager?

It’s always a challenge to keep up with the compliance issues, audits, examples, and trends that occur daily in each regulated industry. For the Mortgage Industry, I have a go-to source: Rob Chrisman’s Daily Mortgage News & Commentary blog. Because Brandle solves the challenges of social media risk management and social media compliance, I’m most interested in regulation and commentary around these topics. And when the topic is targeted specifically on social media compliance for mortgage companies, you know that the CFPB is part of the conversation!

In today’s post, Rob presented some interesting information on the CFPB and compliance regulation from an article written by Margaret Wright with CliftonLarsonAllen, LLP. The article was originally posted on Banker’s Advisory Compliance Monitor. This information has motivated me to ask our Mortgage customers: What is your corporate risk exposure regarding social media compliance and consumer complaints?