Social media increasingly become part of the company’s strategy in managing goods and services. The more buzz in social media, the more popular a brand. But, the popularity of social media makes it vulnerable to the media presents a risk and a mistake for the company. Here some mistakes that can be happen when you manage social media publicity:

Unhonesty Review
Each company must strive for more positive reviews about the products and services, and as much as possible to avoid any criticism or negative review. Thus, companies may sometimes do unethical acts, such as imposing a positive review and does not contain a negative review. But, this has the potential for reputation risk if the practice was discovered by your customer at a later date.

For example, an employee caught Belkin offers a payment for positive reviews of their router products, and even asked reviewers to vote down the negative comments. But, then Belkin is officially issued a press release stating that they did not engage in such practices.

It’s just that, an investigation of an employee revealed that although not in formal rules, but so far all employees Belkin experiencing pressure to do anything to get a positive review. This included: logo include Apple and Microsoft certified false, remove the inaccurate data in order to show that they are superior products, making a false review, write a negative review of competitor products, to pay.

What about the result? Of course, this problem resulted in customers fed up and stops believing the review issued by the company. In fact, review it has an important role.

Brandjacking
Maybe your company is not using social media strategies today. Your company may not realize the benefits of social media so much. Just keep in mind that if you do not manage brand online, then there is the risk brandjacking. What is brandjacking? Brandjacking is a situation where there are others who recognize the representative of your brand, although it is not.

These conditions ever experienced by ExxonMobil on Twitter first. Using accounts @ exxonmobilcorp, a man named Janet claimed to be an employee of Exxon, and answer questions on Twitter about things related to ExxonMobil.

Therefore, a clear identification of the company’s online identity is very important. If the company has official website, also include the official profiles on social media.

Wrong Rumors
User-generated content has many benefits such as a user can freely post accordance with their wishes. The contents are richer and it builds a community. Only where there is a risk that the information presented might be true, but it could also be wrong.

Examples are iReport, where users can post news about anything, without editing and without a filter. At that time, there are users who post about a heart attack on Steve Jobs, which then resulted in Apple stock plunge. If time is Apple actively in social media world, perhaps they can prevent this by providing a direct confirmation.

Underestimate Blogger
Companies must be careful when dealing with bloggers, because once you do anything that hurts them, then your online reputation going extinct. Blogger has a strong community, and they are supporting each other. So, if you underestimate the bloggers, get ready for the worst condition.

Examples such as Asus has ever held a contest for bloggers review, where Asus asks bloggers bloggers to choose which is most favorite. Bloggers have a winner, but then Asus changing the rules that make other people be winners, but it was not a choice bloggers. Thus, it provoked outrage from bloggers.

Then what happened recently is the case of a housewife who prosecuted by an international hospital due to libel, when the mother is only just posting complaints via email, which then spread on the internet. Women who later detained by the authorities, get sympathy from the bloggers, and vice versa hospital until much later today criticized a bad reputation and quiet visitors.