In today’s social media age, smart organizations are monitoring organic social media posts for compliance in some capacity, whether it be from internal teams and employees, or from external partners and third parties. But, are you monitoring your paid social media posts for compliance, too? Here’s why you should.
Why are paid social media posts risky?
Organic social posts pose a level of compliance risk due to the number of individuals who could potentially be posting on behalf of your brand, many of which may go undiscovered. Although you may be responsible for what your partners and third parties say on your behalf, your organization may not be directly signing off and approving those specific posts.
But, by paying for social media advertisements and tying corporate funds to it directly, your company is essentially putting a paid “stamp of approval” on the post-meaning that if there is something that’s non-compliant in that paid post that your ad agency or social media partners put out, your company assumes all responsibility for it since it was “approved” by your organization.
From the consumer’s standpoint, they understandably interpret paid ads as something that is reviewed and cleared for use by the company, making the risk of misinterpretation more dangerous for the brand that’s advertising. One could argue that the company played a more direct role in misleading the consumer, or at the very least, neglected to put effort into protecting them from false/misleading claims.
Why are the risks different from paid posts than organic social media posts?
Paid ads are made to be seen. With corporate ad dollars behind it, a paid social media post is likely to have significantly more visibility than an organic social media post, which typically has a limited audience.
Additionally, these ads are designed to be posted during peak consumer-viewing times. So in addition to gaining a wider audience (since you aren’t restricted to the poster’s followers), your ads could be presented when the most consumers are going to see them.
Should your paid social media post contain false or misleading language, you not only have an increased likelihood of deceiving a larger number of consumers, but you’re also potentially increasing the chances your ad will catch the attention of a regulator.
How to mitigate compliance risk on social media
To protect your organization from any potential issues related to non-compliant posts on social media, you need to continuously monitor all posts (both organic and paid) on a regular basis. This way, you can catch and fix any compliance issues before it’s too late.
PerformLine’s Social Media Monitoring gives you the ability to:
- Monitor both paid and organic social media posts within a single platform for complete compliance coverage
- Capture all ads posted by the accounts you request to review, even if the ad is deactivated shortly after going live
- Hold paid ads to different standards than your organic ads if needed by applying different rules to each group
- Communicate and remediate non-compliant posts to the person or agency posting directly from within the platform (i.e., show the individual which part(s) of the post are flagged, state that they must fix it, and continue to monitor subsequent posts to ensure the behavior does not re-occur)
- Support your compliance team’s efforts with documented evidence during an audit
Don’t let your social media posts-organic or paid-go unmonitored. Scale your social media oversight to ensure it offers the rewards of consumer connections, not compliance risk. Our team of experts is ready to help!
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