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 but your data will be out of date very quickly.”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and social media accounts is that the web is a dynamic world and a single audit that produces a static spreadsheet is out of date the moment it is completed.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!

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?

Over the last 6 months we've seen several large enterprises make commitments to incorporate social media into their governance, risk and compliance (GRC) practices. As a result, digital teams are coming to us with mandates and deadlines to inventory, review and remediate their enterprise's global web and social footprint. This appears to be a harbinger of a sea change in how the C-suite addresses the risks and rewards of social media – in other words, social media governance.

With the new social network Ello getting 30,000-40,000 signup requests per hour, the platform has attracted our interest at Brandle. As you may know, our Brandle Presence Manager helps companies discover and track points-of-presence on the web where their enterprise appears to be represented, so this mad rush to create accounts made us wonder "who is really on this network?"

Taming Your Enterprise Social Media Presence

Your boss has just asked you to inventory all the social media accounts used across the enterprise. On the surface, enterprise social media account management may sound simple to your boss but you know it's nothing but.... That's because social media points-of-presence (POPs) can be created by anyone at any time without any form of control or oversight by you or your team.

When used properly, web and social media sites are powerful marketing tools which can bring customers to your door; however, they can also bring the regulators knocking. The FFIEC has finalized its guidance on the use of social media by financial institutions and the CFPB has started the door-knocking. Factor in the use of social media by mortgage loan originators (MLOs), which you are also required to monitor, and the compliance challenge is escalated. Now state regulators (for example WA, TX, CA and AZ) are getting more aggressive in overseeing the use of social media and are sending out "intent to audit" letters. Are you prepared to meet the challenge of an audit?

Every few years technology evolves and something wondrous emerges that affects businesses and consumers in a significant way. Often, the new technology replaces an existing technology, or even makes it obsolete. In some cases, it has a major impact on how an enterprise shifts its IT focus to better serve its customers and shareholders. We’ve come to know these impactful technologies as “disruptive.” The most significant “disruptive technology” of the past ten years has been social media; not just for the platforms themselves, but because it takes a significant shift in business culture and operational excellence to incorporate it effectively. In fact, it takes a transformation.

To successfully use social media in an enterprise often requires support from the C-Suite. However, when it comes to getting buy-in from the C-level execs, the argument is often "What's the Social Media ROI?" That's certainly a reasonable question but it should not be the only question that is asked. Here's why.

This morning I awoke to a private message from an old and distant friend. I don't hear from her very often so this caught my attention. Why was she reaching out to me?

It turns out she had just received a friend request from me via Facebook. I thought this was odd since we're already "friends". I mean, we were talking over Facebook at that very moment! Fortunately, she was skeptical enough to double check with me as this didn't seem right.

Every industry has adopted social media at different levels and each industry analysis shows a particular pattern of performance with social media. Regulated industries, such as the Mortgage Industry, have the additional burden of keeping their employees’ and agents’ points of presence (POPs) compliant as well as their own branded POPs. Today, we see every industry, regulated or not, jumping heavily into social media.