How to turn social media risks into opportunities in regulated industries

The potential fall-out of social media risks is much higher in regulated industries. However, with the right approach, social media can increase your sales pipeline, while opening new doors for opportunities. 

People today are socially savvy and can see through carefully crafted posts by marketing. Scaring already cautious professionals into silence on social media is not the answer - increasing awareness of social media risks and enabling them is. 

Generational usage of social media on the rise

The financial industry recognises this and is calling for more safety measures when regulated professions such as law, financial services, or healthcare pride themselves on sound judgment. However, the public won’t always interpret their social media posts in the way they were intended.

Take ‘finfluencers’ for example – social media influencers who provide financial advice – are often operating without qualifications. 

And with 37% of Gen Z turning to social media for investment information compared to just 4% of boomers, there are new calls for social media platforms to introduce safety measures when promoting financial content (Barclays).

How to protect your brand from social media risks 

Reduce the human risk factor with social tools  

Instead of limiting what your employees feel they can share, some social media tools remove the employee ‘fear factor’ whilst improving compliance at the same time.  

For example, we’re working with many law firms and financial services organisations that are turning to tools such as Smarp , Sociabble or Elevate. These enable you to set up ‘post approval’ rules and pre-populated messages so that your employees can repost them, as well as enabling them to submit posts for approval.  

Your employees feel safe in the knowledge that what they’re posting is on-brand and compliant, whilst lessening the fear of a PR scandal waiting in your inbox. 

Building brand trust

As Charlotte Lander explains, it’s also about understanding the wider social context in which you operate. 

Building a safety net

The success of employee advocacy programs rely on employee authenticity and pre-populating every single message reduces this. Try to limit approval or automated options to areas that lend themselves to being potentially offensive or pose a real threat to client confidentiality, such as: 

• Winning a new client  
• New deals 
• Celebrating court wins
  
  

Keep on top of social media risks (and opportunities) 

Fraudsters are always evolving how to carry out their attacks (after all, how many of us now respond to emails littered with spelling mistakes telling us we’re due a windfall?). However, social media is the latest arsenal at their disposal, which enables them to make phishing attacks very convincing.

The IT and legal teams often hold overall responsibility for regulatory and legal risks for online activity. However, your social media guidelines should specifically identify all social media risks - whether that be reputational, security or confidentiality issues - and balance with that empowering employees to help build their professional brand.

Here’s how: 

• Regularly review your social media guidelines.
  
• Keep on top of feature updates and new social tools. 
• Look for common mistakes.  
  For example, simple oversights like accepting a connection request from a stranger or geo-taggingyour location when you’re meeting a new client have the potential to cause serious security breaches and confidentiality issues.
• Highlight best practices in your employee advocacy program. Maybe someone has become an expert at creating viral posts. Pass on the good news too!
  
  

Address the biggest risk with effective social media training

You can implement the latest malware, install remote wiping on mobile devices and use employee advocacy tools that enable you to screen comments before use. But that doesn’t remove the biggest risk factor: your people.

It doesn’t matter how comprehensive your training on how to conduct yourself on social media is. If your employees don’t understand it, it’s not effective.

3 training ideas you can implement:

• Having effective social media guidelines is one thing but setting up employee training sessions is more encouraging, where you can explain the benefits of posting. Building up a community where people can learn from each other works very well. Maximus do this extremely well.
• Buddy systems work really well, if employees have another person to team up with, they are more likely to post and feel more confident there is someone to check what they are sending is accurate.
• Start small with an employee advocacy pilot program; invite subject matter experts who have already shown an interest in social media. Explain the benefits of why employee advocacy is so important, leaving employees feeling empowered not scared.

By implementing these training steps, you can be confident that employees understand the risks if you were selected for an audit.

Our social media learning platform covers everything needed to help your employees – or workers - understand the potential consequences and risks on social media and protect their professional and employer brands. It uses interactive scenario-based examples and bite-sized modules to aid retention and ensure they know how to apply theory in practice – all fully personalised to their current level of knowledge.

Editor's Note: This blog was originally published in 2021 and has been refreshed for 2025.