Page 353 - Using MIS

Q7 How Can Organizations Address SMIS Security Concerns? 321
Managing the Risk of Inappropriate Content

As with any relationship, comments can be inappropriate or excessively negative in tone or be
otherwise problematic. Organizations need to determine how they will deal with such content
before engaging in social media. This is done by designating a single individual to be responsible
for official organizational SM interactions and by creating a process to monitor and manage SM
interactions. This allows the organization to have a clear, coordinated, and consistent message.
User-generated content (UGC), which simply means content on your SM site that is con-
tributed by users, is the essence of SM relationships. Below are a few examples of inappropriate
UGC that can negatively affect organizations.

Problems from External Sources
The major sources of UGC problems are:

• Junk and crackpot contributions
• Inappropriate content
• Unfavorable reviews
• Mutinous movements
When a business participates in a social network or opens its site to UGC, it opens itself to
misguided people who post junk unrelated to the site’s purpose. Crackpots may also use the
network or UGC site as a way of expressing passionately held views about unrelated topics,
such as UFOs, government cover-ups, fantastic conspiracy theories, and so forth. Because of the
possibility of such content, organizations should regularly monitor the site and remove objec-
tionable material immediately. Monitoring can be done by employees or by companies such as
Bazaarvoice, which offer services not only to collect and manage ratings and reviews, but also to
monitor sites for irrelevant content.
Unfavorable reviews are another risk. Research indicates that customers are sophisticated
enough to know that few, if any, products are perfect. Most customers want to know the disad-
vantages of a product before purchasing it so they can determine whether those disadvantages
are important for their application. However, if every review is bad, if the product is rated 1 star
out of 5, then the company is using social media to publish its problems. In this case, some ac-
tion must be taken, as described next.
Mutinous movements are an extension of bad reviews. In January 2012, McDonald’s opened
a Twitter campaign to promote customer stories. Within a few hours, it was clear that disgruntled
customers were hijacking the campaign. McDonald’s pulled the Twitter hashtag, and within a few
hours, negative conversations stopped. To be able to respond promptly, McDonald’s created a
contingency plan for dealing with unwanted results in all of its social media marketing. 41

Responding to Social Networking Problems

Part of managing social networking risk is knowing the sources of potential problems and moni-
toring sites for problematic content. Once such content is found, however, organizations need
to respond appropriately. Three possibilities in such situations are:

• Leave it
• Respond to it
• Delete it

41 Marissa Brassfield, “McDonald’s McDStories Twitter Promotion Sparks Huge Backlash,” Foodista, last
modified January 24, 2012, www.foodista.com/blog/2012/01/24/mcdonalds-mcdstories-twitter-promotion-
sparks-huge-backlash.