Chose your social media partner carefully…

A critical part of any firm’s marketing mix is that organization's social media marketing strategy.  A change in terms of service or a billing dispute can quickly put your firm at the mercy of a service provider and leave you with a lot of extra work to repair the damage.

1. The technology platform you select has the ability to control content.
Be careful when choosing providers that you are not run out of town by a change in the provider’s terms of service to support favored firms. Recent examples include Apple’s change to their terms of service about content that allowed Sports Illustrated to go ahead with their swimsuit issue but prevented most other organizations from showing bathing suit clad models.

2. What happens if you get cut off or they go down?
We have discovered the hard way that a billing dispute with a social media site can cause painful repercussions.  The conventional wisdom says to link your firm’s websites to a variety of social media but be careful.  Consider carefully the number of locations and difficulty to update web sites, landing pages, email signatures, blog footers, et. al. if, or when, you lose access to one of them.  Keep in mind how much content will need to be republished to change or remove links that are no longer valid.

It is also important not to rely on a single provider to host all your web content.  Spread your content over a variety of social media sites to mitigate the risk of losing a major portion of your web presence in the event they fold or you find yourself in a billing dispute.

Take Aways

1. Chose your partner with care. A cloud provider can have you at their mercy if they change their terms of service.
2. Build on a provider model so that your firm can switch content providers and be certain your web presence does not rely on one
3. Keep in mind the difficulty of updating links in the event a particular provider goes away.