Five ways to protect your brand when using social media advertising

Protecting your brand reputation on social media is a hot topic right now. Recent high-profile incidents have led some social media platforms to make significant changes in order to protect advertisers whose adverts appear within their content.

YouTube has pledged to build more human (as opposed to algorithm) content checks into its verification process and introduce a three-tier suitability rating offering more clarity on exactly where ads will run, while Facebook has doubled its content review team and is working with third party partners to develop brand safety tools.

Businesses using social media advertising can also do a number of things to help protect the reputation of their brand:

1. Develop a Social Media Policy

While your core social media activities are likely to be handled by a social media management agency or team, all your employees need to be mindful of what they share and post. A social media policy, which takes into consideration legal risks, brand vision/voice and privacy, will help prevent employees from posting anything that may endanger your company’s security and reputation.

2. Control Your Brand Name

Most social media marketing revolves around the most popular networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube but it’s worth securing control of your brand name on other networks to avoid someone else adopting your brand name and jeopardising its reputation.

3. Monitor channels for sensitive categories and mentions

Your social media marketing company will be able to break down content on various platforms to identify sensitive topics, such as anything violent, that you wouldn’t want to place your advertising alongside. One of the other benefits of using a social media marketing agency to run your Facebook ad campaign is that they are able to monitor and deal with negative comments or mentions of your brand name quickly and before they spread.

4. Third party verification

Any decent social media marketing agency should be working with third party verification providers to ensure the content on social media platforms is valid and does not breach any security, suitability or privacy regulations.

5. Keep Passwords Safe

It goes without saying that you should keep your passwords safe and private but that’s easier said that done when a number of different people need access to your social media accounts. Using a password manager is a good way of sharing login credentials securely.