social media crisis avoidance in regulated industries

icucmoderation.com1.800.710.2713

SOCIAL CRISISAVOIDANCE IN REGULATED INDUSTRIES

http://www.icucmoderation.com/


The murkiness of what is and isn’t allowed on social media can have a chilling impact on companies in regulated industries, but without adapting to digital means of engagement and promotion,

THESE COMPANIES WILLBE LEFT BEHIND.



TABLE OF CONTENTSRegulated Industries And Social Media

The Difference Between Moderation And Listening

Tools Vs Humans

Escalation Procedures

The Way Forward



SOCIAL MEDIA CAN BE A TRICKY THING -Especially in certain industries. What may be a personal place to share for many individuals could lead to legal risk for many companies.

We’ve all been privy to the news of large corporations apologizing for insensitive tweets or social posts that weren’t relevant to their brand. These social crises can not only be a huge headache, but also lead to a loss of customers, unrepairable reputation damage and, in some cases, legal action.

Any category of business that is controlled by government rules is considered a regulated industry. These industries include healthcare, pharmaceuticals, banking, finance, utilities, real estate, education and insurance; so-called “vice” industries such as alcohol, tobacco and firearms; and management or business consulting firms that advise companies within these industries.

When any companies within these industries use social media, each post needs to be carefully planned as to stay within brand and industry-regulated guidelines. Additionally, if any of these businesses are discussed online, these conversations need to be monitored.

This ebook contains some useful guidelines to help companies in these regulated industries avoid social media crises and mitigate the risk of legal action.



REGULATED INDUSTRIESAND SOCIAL MEDIA



AEROSOL STEROID PRODUCT SAFETY INFORMATION IN PRESCRIPTION DRUG ADVERTISING AND PROMOTIONAL LABELING (U.S. FOOD & DRUG ADMINISTRATION)

FINANCIAL SERVICES AND MARKETS ACT 2000 (UK)

CANADA’S ONLINE PROTECTION LEGISLATION (COPL)

CODE OF CONDUCT OF THE GERMAN ADVERTISING STANDARDS COUNCIL ON COMMERCIAL COMMUNICATION FOR FOODS AND BEVERAGES

ART. 25 - MEDICAL PRODUCTS AND CURATIVE TREATMENTS. IL CODICE DELL’AUTODISCIPLINA PUBBLICITARIA 58ª EDIZIONE (ITALY)

ACT NO. 40 SB. THE REGULATION OF ADVERTISING FORMAT (CZECH REPUBLIC)

ARTICLE L-311-4 OF THE CONSUMER CODE, AS AMENDED BY SECTION 87 OF THE ACT OF 1 AUGUST 2003 ON FINANCIAL SECURITY. (FRANCE)

CODE OF ADVERTISING FOR COSMETIC AND HYGIENE PRODUCTS (CODE DETIC) (BELGIUM)

CODE DE LA PUBLICITEPOUR LES PRODUITS COSMETIQUES ET D’HYGIENE (AUSTRIA)

PROTECTION OF PRIVACY AND PERSONAL USE IN ADVERTISING (LITHUANIA)

INTERNATIONAL AD REGULATIONSHERE ARE JUST A FEW OF THE INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING GUIDELINES TO WHICH REGULATED INDUSTRIES MUST ADHERE

ARTICLES L5122-12, L5122-14 AND R5055 TO R5055-6 THE CODE OF PUBLIC HEALTH (FRANCE)



WITH ALL THE POTENTIAL PITFALLS OF PARTICIPATING IN SOCIAL MEDIA, WHY WOULD ANY REGULATED BRAND WANT TO TAKE THE PLUNGE? Although it pays to be cautious, here are a few reasons companies in regulated industries should be on social media:

• Sharing legally approved marketing information• Communicating about corporate social responsibility• Communicating to shareholders• Providing customer service

Everything that is posted on social media in a regulated industry must be approved both by the company’s marketing department and the company’s legal department. A business cannot make a claim about a product or service that could be held against them later if it isn’t true. A single tweet from a company’s Twitter account may appear briefly in a user’s news feed, but once it’s out there, it can be captured forever.

As a public company, investors and other interested parties increasingly want to know that the business is doing good and giving back to the community. Regulated businesses will share messages via social media channels to show transparency, as much as they can, to give their reputation some uplift, and gain approval from those that follow them.



Many companies will share quarterly results via social media for public interest and the interest of their shareholders. These messages, again, are fully public information, not insider trading information, and are legally approved before being posted.

Customer service is of utmost importance to businesses in regulated industries. If a utility company, for example, is mentioned in a tweet where someone

is claiming their electricity is out and their children are freezing, that company wants to know this information as soon as possible. If a pharmaceutical company notices conversations promoting a dangerous application of their product, they need to know this as well. Not only is there a potential risk to human lives, but the company’s reputation is at risk.

Businesses in regulated industries are interested in monitoring what is being said about their brands that could be, in any way, a risk to their reputation or a legal risk. Monitoring is also used to ensure that brand mentions are not including violations of industry regulations. The activity of a disgruntled employee, for instance, who sets up a fake account and posts on behalf of the organization, needs to be dealt with immediately.

The next section will cover the ways brands can perform this monitoring.

BRANDS NEED TO BE AWARE OF WHAT IS BEING SHARED, INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY, FOR 3 REASONS: • Situational awareness • Risk mitigation • Crisis avoidance



THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MODERATIONAND LISTENING



THERE ARE SEVERAL WAYS TO ANALYZE THE SOCIAL REPUTATION OF A BUSINESS:

• Social listening• Moderation• Social media intelligence/analytics

Social listening is a real-time, ongoing activity. Social listening focuses on earned media - what is being said on channels beyond the control of the brand. Listening can be set-up on a check-in basis as well, depending on the brand and level of engagement with the brand followers. When listening, an analyst looks for:

• what is being said about your brand, • what is being said about your competition, and • what topics are being discussed that are relevant to your brand and industry.

Moderation is content filtering. Moderation focuses on owned media – what is being said on a brand’s own social channels. With moderation, there are community referees making sure the content doesn’t violate community guidelines and is free of unwanted content.

EARNEDMEDIA

OWNEDMEDIA

LISTENIN ODERATIONG M



MODERATION MAKES SURE THAT POSTS:• are healthy, on topic and relevant to the conversation• do not include profanity, nudity, pornography, racism, libel and so on, and• in some cases, do not include competitive mentions.

WHEN REPORTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA, MANY ANALYSTS WILL LOOK AT SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS.Analytics, or social media intelligence as the interpretation of the analytics, is looking at aggregate data after the fact. This data identifies trends, demographics, volume and overall sentiment about a brand. Social listening and analytics helps to identify the ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘how’ about a brand’s public social reputation; social media intelligence helps to identify the ‘why’ and ‘what’s next’.

All of this analysis helps to identify and classify content according to specifications. Some conversations may warrant an escalation to a decision maker. It could be classified as a risk or an outreach opportunity. A risk might be a customer complaining about your brand, product, service or employee. An outreach opportunity might be a disgruntled customer of a competitor. These conversations provide an opportunity to reach out and put a customer or potential customer back into a happy state.



Volume of Conversation

Total number of mentions of a brand over a specified time

frame

Sentiment/ToneMeasuring positive, neutral, negative & mixed sentiment

Trends/ThemesWhat topics are trending

in a brand’s industry or category?

DemographicsAge, region, gender

(dependent on open source public data)

Share of VoicePercentage of conversation of one brand versus others

Conversations by Channel

Volume of conversation per online channel

Share of Conversation

Percentage of brand conversation within an

industry/category

Message ResonancePercentage of key message conversation out of brand

InfluenceWho are the main

influencers of the brand conversation online?

SOCIAL METRICS & ANALYTICS



TOOLS VS HUMANS



THERE ARE VARIOUS TECHNOLOGIES USED TO IDENTIFY AND GATHER CONVERSATIONS AND MENTIONS THAT COME FROM SOCIAL MEDIA. These conversations could include anything from discussions on social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.) to posts on blogs, forums, discussion boards and review sites.

Because of the sheer amount of networks and platforms being monitored, it simply doesn’t make sense for a human to do the initial listening or moderation manually. Tools dramatically help human analysts find mentions and conversations that need to be monitored and analyzed. A useful analogy is how individuals use the Web. If you need information on a topic, you don’t go sequentially from website to website to find what you’re looking for, you use a search engine to scrape the data and bring back clearer and more relevant results.

While tools are useful for this type of work, it’s important to note that tools can’t fully understand context or make judgments about importance. That analysis is best left to trained humans. Outputs from moderation tools should go through quality assurance by analysts and then be refined further to provide better outputs for the social listening needs of a given project.



HUMAN AND AUTOMATED MONITORING

Automated tools used for enhanced content retrieval

Multilingual content analysis &

processing

Automated report outputs

and metricsIdentify trends, add insights &

recommendations, and deliver customized,

actionable reports

HU

MA

NA

UTO

MATED

Identify relevant channels &

keywords queries



ESCALATION PROCEDURES



WITH THE HELP OF TOOLS, TECHNOLOGY AND TRAINED ANALYSTS, SOCIAL LISTENING AND MODERATION HELPS IDENTIFY CONTENT THAT NEEDS TO BE ESCALATED. Each regulated business will have their own needs and dictates based on their industry, engagement and social media history.

All mentions that are tagged for review are assessed by an analyst to classify them according to company policies. Analysts will determine if a mention is a risk and if so what kind of risk, and depending on that risk will determine if it’s something that needs to be escalated to the client. It may also need continued monitoring.

Escalation procedures may vary depending on the situation and should be determined when developing a social media strategy for a company. Regulations should be identified, and community rules should be determined. Specifications in messaging, who should be notified and what content warrants escalation should be defined in a scalable process that is understood by all levels of company management.



ESCALATION PROCEDURES

Is the threat real?

YES NO

1 Contact 24/7 Client Contact(s)Via telephone or email,as per client direction

1 Escalate to clientfor assessment

2 Contact Authoritiesif applicable

2 Take no action(As per client direction)

3 Fill out appropriate reportingform from Social Network



With regulators governing these industries,

BRANDS NEED TO HAVE A STRATEGIC APPROACH TO SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT AND DIGITAL PROMOTION. It is important to work alongside strategists who have a deep understanding of developed standards and regulations.


icucmodera*on.com 1.800.710.2713

QUESTIONS? Jay Majumdar [email protected]