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Ryan Holmes is the CEO at HootSuite. He has written about the recent tweet-jacking of Burger King/McDonalds (53 hijacked tweets retweeted 70k+ times in the 71 minutes the account was compromised) and also of Jeep/Cadillac breach, and is suggesting a list of four critical tips for your brand to avoid being pirated. Most of them are obvious of course, such as lock-down your password; and a few suggest use of a social media manager such as Mr. Holmes’s employer HootSuite – but all are critical in maintaining brand integrity.

They are, quite simply summarized below:

1. IMPORTANT: Make your password bombproof.

2. Know when to hold ‘em: Keep company passwords hidden…Consider implementing a password management solution, like LastPass or KeePass to store, distribute, and manage your organization’s secrets.

Another very effective way to reduce the number of passwords floating around is with single sign-on technology, or SSO. The term ‘single sign-on’ might sound complicated, but it’s actually very simple in premise: SSO lets employees log into company social media accounts with the same username and password used for their company email account. This means access to a company’s main social media accounts is kept in the hands of one trusted central administrator, who holds the real “keys,” or passwords, to all social profiles.

3. Click with caution. Are you sure you know how to spot a malicious link? Spammy links are a common way to hoax or phish in order to compromise social accounts. One sure-fire way to prepare for these potentially dangerous moments is to make sure your team is accessing social profiles through a secure third-party social media platform.

4. Get your money’s worth. Send out your paid social media messages from a secure platform. Believe it or not, paid social media (like Promoted Tweets and Facebook’s Promoted Posts) is a billion-dollar business trend that is simply skyrocketing in popularity…Choose and utilize a trusted social media management tool that allows you to buy ads right from within the platform—providing all of the security features mentioned above.

For full list and more detailed explanations see: LinkedIn.

More stories about Social Media.

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