social media

While it’s very important for brands to stay connected with their audience online and via social media, there comes a huge responsibility and a somewhat risk with what is being broadcasted for the world to see that essentially reflects your brands name and image. Social media has lots of benefits for business including advertising of a brand or product, generating targeted awareness of your brand, and having the ability to connect with real consumers all over the world. Now that social media is being utilized by businesses now more than ever, social media policies and governance need to be placed into effect.

An article on meltwater.com published back in 2020, lists four pillars to a strong social media governance model, which include the following:

Consideration of brand guidelines in an online space
- Guidelines must be put in place and followed by employees to reflect the brands image in a professional way, as well as know how to respond to customer complaints online.
Integrating compliance and legal regulations
- These regulations can help safeguard a brands social media team in various ways including protecting the brand from threats made against the institution and preventing false advertising material.
Getting comfortable with social listening
- Monitoring online activity across all platforms is highly important and should be reported on every 2-3 hours. We saw an example of this last week when Twitter tweeted “Hello Everyone” shortly after Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp went dark.
Getting familiar with the business continuity plan
- Having discussions about what to do in a crisis is essential so that all employees know that they are supported and know what to do to come out the other end of an incident easily and safely.

Similarly, Charlene Li defines social business governance in our reading this week, as an integrated system of people, policies, processes, and practices that defines organizational structure and decision process to ensure effective management of social business at scale.

After thinking about social media/business governance and its importance, I wanted to find examples of social media content posted by businesses online that did not attract the attention it was intended to. With that, back in 2019, Inc.com published an article titled “The 10 Worst Social Media Fails of 2019”. Beverage company SunnyDelight tweeted “I can’t do this anymore” which sparked frustration amongst some pointing out that a juice brand posturing as a depressed individual was inherently insensitive.

Back in 2017, Adidas sent out a mass email to those that ran in the annual Boston Marathon that year, however used a poor choice of words in their subject line.

The day after the United States Presidential Election Day, The Gap tweeted a video of a blue and red (Democratic and Republican colours) hoodie sweatshirt being zipped up in the middle with the accompanying caption “The one thing we know, is that together, we can move forward.”

Twitter users called out the brand for hypocrisy and tone-deafness regarding two parties who are fundamentally at odds, especially as the sweatshirt was never available for purchase in the first place.

Just by reading the backlash that these large businesses received via social media, shows us that all brands, large or small, need to follow strict guidelines when producing content and get the thumbs up from various people on their individual social media team and avoid putting the brands image and reputation in the hands of one marketing individual.

The same goes for us as social media users. We need to make sure that the content we are displaying on our own profiles for the world to see, are continuing to reflect us as professional humans and under no circumstances let social media become the reason we let our identity be jeopardized.

https://www.meltwater.com/en/blog/4-pillars-social-media-governance-mode

https://www.inc.com/max-totsky/social-media-fails-2019.html

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141115020359-33767-how-good-is-your-social-business-governance/

The development of social media in our digital era has been beneficial for business, networking, creativity and for some, building a personal brand; however, as the use of social media has increased amongst teens, so has the decline in mental health cases.

According to an article published via the theodysseyonline.com, those who spend more than 3 hours per day on social media are at heightened risk for mental health problems in general, and teens who spend 5 or more hours a day on their electronic devices are 71% more likely to exhibit suicide risk factors.

This dark side to social media can be caused by several factors, one being the focus on “likes”. Teens and young adults are constantly focused on producing content in hope that it will gain a lot of positive attention. The need to gain “likes” on social media can cause teens to make choices they would otherwise not make, including altering their appearance, engaging in negative behaviors, and accepting risky social media challenges. Cyberbullying and trolling can be a result, causing depression, anxiety, and elevated risk of suicidal thoughts.

The ability to edit pictures also can cause users to compare themselves to others regardless of these false displays of beauty and lavish lifestyles.

So, what are these social media companies doing to help?

Popular video-sharing app TikTok has put out at least half a dozen initiatives this year alone to further safety and privacy, primarily for teen users. For example, TikTok started offering guides and tools in the search results when a user searched terms related to eating disorders. Director of Policy for TikTok US, Tara Wadhwa, stated “While we don’t allow content that promotes, glorifies or normalizes suicide, self-harm or eating disorders, we do support people who choose to share their experiences to raise awareness, help others who might be struggling and find support among our community.”

In addition, user searches are being closely monitored and as a result, search intervention has increased. If a user for example, searches for terms related to mental illness or suicide, then the app will direct them to resources such as Crisis Text Line Helpline.

Some videos will also portray a warning message if flagged for sensitive content so that users have the choice to view or skip content.

In 2018, Instagram created a ‘well-being’ team who have been able to come up with ideas to hide the number of likes on posts and to introduce the ability to flag posts that may be inappropriate or raise concern.

Twitter is another social media platform that can contain constant negative news and opinion, leading to ‘Doom scrolling’. Wikipedia defines doom scrolling as the act of spending an excessive amount of screen time devoted to the absorption of dystopian news. Increased consumption of predominantly negative news may result in psychophysiological responses in some. Marketwatch.com stated that earlier this month, Twitter debuted “Safety Mode” that uses artificial intelligence to automatically block users who are being aggressive or hateful.

Social media can be a scary place if delved into deep; however, it’s never going to go away but only continue to develop and grow. As users we need to be more mindful of what we are releasing to the world in terms of content and help the employees behind these top social media platforms to identify inappropriate content and accounts. Most importantly we need to BE KIND ONLINE.

Resources:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/tiktok-shares-new-mental-health-resources-as-instagram-faces-backlash-over-its-influence-on-teens-11631822975

https://www.psycom.net/social-media-teen-mental-health#:~:text=While%20teens%20can%20use%20social%20media%20to%20connect,can%20result%20in%20symptoms%20of%20anxiety%20and%2For%20depression.

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/stats-social-media-mental-health