Chris Tomlinson: Control your brand online

Nov 5 2010 By Chris Tomlinson

I’ve found a solution to a problem you probably don’t know you have yet.

Or maybe you do, if your brand has successfully built significant Facebook, Twitter and YouTube audiences and you don’t know how to keep them under control.

Worse still, no firewall can prevent your staff from randomly joining online conversations about your brand even if they are being held on what you thought were your own social media assets. (Unless of course, you ban mobile phones at work and monitor employees home user accounts).

More worrying, is that you may not have editorial control over what is said on, allegedly, your own social media channels.

But why would you want to stop your employees, who should be your biggest advocates, from evangelising your brand among their on-line communities, contacts and friends?

Better to give the activity a blessing but with the rules of engagements clearly spelt out.

Most employers seem happy to let their staff use email, despite a similar risk of misuse, and few advocate removing that facility from employees’ desks.

If you suspect your staff of cyber-skiving, just monitor productively, you can always give them more work.

A bigger problem is how do you control the dozens of external conversations often taking place under the banner of your brand?

Without social media access your staff cannot help.

The solution is called CrowdControlHQ.com, a web based service, run by a Birmingham based company that I think is pretty unique.

It allows social media policies to be set and enforced, while monitoring, flagging or even automatically deleting rogue content.

Perhaps more importantly, it maintains administrative access to company social media accounts, preventing disgruntled employees from walking off with a company’s fan base.

To exploit social media’s marketing potential, brands need to relinquish control and empower their staff with the confidence to participate.

Usually when I suggest such a strategy to clients it is met with derision, followed swiftly by an invitation to re-use their door.

But now I’ve found in Birmingham (where else?) online innovation that can help minimise the risk.

* Chris Tomlinson is managing director of www.frienddigital.com, a social media and online PR agency