The world is a wild place today and it’s interesting how things on both ends of the spectrum – from negatives that can create big issues for companies to the positives that boost sales overnight – create volatility and a fear of the unknown. And in guiding a variety of companies we wanted to touch on this.
First and foremost, when looking at risks derived from social media then assessing them, understanding human behaviors is absolutely critical. Is someone a comedian that made a bad joke or are they truly troubled and their behaviors/language could lead to something much bigger? Our team has spent 15+ years studying this.
On the flip side, what if social media risks have nothing to do with a negative, but are actually a positive for your company: A new food trend like the fried chicken sandwich craze. Though in not detecting the trend early on you had no time to develop recipes, ramp up production, etc. so the risk/threat comes in the form of lost revenue.
The moral of the story is that social media risk assessment in this day and age is imperative, and having deep knowledge of human behaviors, particularly on social media, is the first step to achieving more clarity. The second involves social media risk assessment tools which we’ll cover in a follow-up post.