Brandle is excited to announce POP POSTS, our new content monitoring feature of the Brandle Presence Manager GRC Module. Since our launch in 2011, we have always monitored the profile content on the social media properties. Our focus was to discover and monitor the representation of the social property to catch bad actors creating counterfeit sites and to discover stale POPs (points-of-presence) that our customers needed to remove from their digital footprint. We left the content stream to publishing and listening platforms. But as social media governance and compliance needs have grown, our customers have requested that we expand our compliance features to the content stream (also called "post" area) of social media. Now, Brandle proudly boasts that POP Posts for the Brandle Presence Manager delivers comprehensive social media monitoring and compliance for all content in social media!
Evolution of Social Media Monitoring SaaS
If you've been tracking Brandle, Inc. you know that we are the original social media governance and web presence management solution. We have been helping companies manage their digital landscape for over eight years. We have always helped companies discover, monitor and protect their brands as well as monitor the POPs (points-of-presence) that relate to their brands. From the first day we launched, we included websites, blogs, and social media accounts (via the social networks' APIs). Later we added microsites, industry sites, and Apps. However, our social media monitoring was strictly focused on the profile content of the POP since the content stream was managed by publishing tools for global brand companies, and regulated companies used restricted marketing platforms or a content library created by the marketing department. Since there were no SaaS tools that addressed the discovery of accounts and monitoring of the profile content, Brandle created the solution.
As the discipline of social media governance and compliance evolved, so did the governance needs around posts made by the social media account owner. Companies (and our customers) are more advanced in their social media governance practices, and since customers began to request this new feature, we decided to expand monitoring and compliance beyond the profile data (e.g. cover art, avatar, description, Facebook About Story, etc.) and into the posting/content stream.
The two driving changes we've seen in social media governance are:
1. Global companies are now not only governing the creation and periodic audit of the account, but ensuring that an account is adhering to corporate requirements and agreement for posting. This includes the agreed-to posting frequency per social network, criteria settings for risk-oriented words for that business, and the governance that all POP managers are posting via the approved publishing platform.
2. Regulated companies are moving beyond the lock-down of employees being social, to employee training on regulatory requirements and brand standards so they can be social and compliant with their own posts. They may still be using a content library from the marketing department, but they also want to put their own local spin on their customer communication (creating a sales advantage for them). So there is a heightened need for stronger monitoring on posts. Additionally, as regulated companies have educated employees and updated social media profiles to be compliant, the next-level compliance risk is in the post content.
Brandle's POP Posts allows Brandle customers to extend the governance and compliance structure they have implemented for the POP profile data to the POP posts, as well as apply new criteria. Brandle Criteria is the feature that allows the customer to set-up rules for Brandle to follow and automatically report back to the governance team or the person who is responsible for the POP when a Criteria fails. For example, a Criteria that states "No post shall use the term Guaranteed Rate", will flag and report on uses of the term "guaranteed rate". POP Posts allows all compliance and governance standards to be applied and monitored to all content within one governance system — the Brandle Presence Manager.
Key Benefits of Brandle's Comprehensive Solution
Brandle attracts companies who need to monitor:
- A large digital landscape like those of a global brand company or a retailer with many local storefronts across a large region (or the world). Think of 3M and Cargill with large brand portfolios, global hotel chains with many inns, grocery stores, etc.
- Regulatory compliance across corporate and related third-party social media accounts (partners and employees). Think of financial institutions and employees such as mortgage loan officers and financial securities professionals, or pharmaceutical and medical device companies and their sponsored disease-focused communities.
What all of our customers (and prospects) have in common is that they want to:
- Have a single source of the truth for their branded and brand-related digital landscape. Including what accounts are approved as compliant for brand standards and regulations.
- Have a tool that automates some of their work for discovering accounts, flagging compliance and brand standard issues, tracking historical data, reporting by segments, communicating with account holders, and audit processing.
- Minimize SaaS on-boarding and set-up time and reduce the number of tools required to perform their job, as well as eliminate having multiple tools to perform pieces of their job.
- Have integrated data and reporting on their entire social media landscape: the corporate properties, as well as employee, partner, community, influencer and counterfeit properties. This allows them a complete management and risk view of their branded and brand-related social media landscape. The sum of these accounts is what delivers the online reputation for the company (good, bad, or mediocre).
Brandle solves all of these challenges and now includes the data monitoring, criteria application, reporting, for all social media content (profile and content stream). Next, let's look at the specifics of the POP Post feature.
What Can You Achieve With POP Posts?
As stated, Brandle has always had the ability to view the content on a social media profile and to set criteria on this data. The Brandle Presence Manager has always given customers the ability to:
- View all profile data within the Brandle System, including cover art, avatar, URL, descriptions, and associated data (audience, platform-verified, and last post) of a social POP.
- Set Criteria so Brandle automatically finds words, referenced websites, and text statements that should (or should not be) used in profile data.
- Set Criteria to determine last post has been published within a set period (1 week, 1 month, past 6 months, past 1 year) in order to apply needed governance.
When a criteria on a Profile fails, the customer or a contact in a designated role is sent an email alerting them to the criteria failures and the POP Inventory Table in Brandle GRC displays the message clearly.
POP Posts brings in the most recent posts of the points-of-presence in the customer's Brandle Inventory. To be clear, this is for social networks that allow post access via their API (Application Program Interface). Brandle started with Facebook and Twitter and will continue to add more networks that allow post access. So in addition to the profile content capabilities listed above, Brandle POP Posts allows you the ability to:
- View the text of recent Posts.
- View the text on Post artwork (read by a text-detection system).
- Set Criteria to look for specific words in text of Posts.
- Set Criteria to look for specific words in text of art.
- Apply Tags to POP Post for management. Apply Tags to POP for Audit.
When a criteria on a POP Post fails, the customer or a contact in a designated role is sent an email stating the Criteria failure, which can be seen in the POP Posts Table in GRC.
It's an exciting time to be able to add POP Posts to Brandle. We are seeing a huge shift in social media governance and compliance with dedicated professionals leveling up their strategies. This is great for a company's risk management practice AND great for consumers. The end result will be a consistent brand and well-trained social employees: bringing solid brand reputation to the company.
If you'd like to see POP Posts in action, please connect for a demo.
