Managing Risk and Building Trust on Social Media

Brand safety means ensuring that a business’s ads are not associated with content that could damage the brand’s reputation. This includes avoiding content that is offensive, controversial, or could be associated with illegal or unethical activities.

While brand safety is most often discussed in the context of paid ads, it also applies to organic social, or really anywhere that a brand could appear online.

Brand safety matters for marketers because it directly impacts the reputation and image of the brand they’re managing.

Collaborating with a public determine, influencer, or content material creator can broadly profit your model consciousness. Nevertheless, these collaborations additionally include extra dangers for manufacturers, since influencers typically share their private views and opinions on their channels. These opinions could not all the time align with previous or current companions.

One instance: the just about decade-long partnership between Adidas and Kanye West’s “Yeezy” product line. This lengthy collaboration got here to an finish in late 2022 after Kanye West’s public anti-Semitic feedback.

Though it meant dropping a product line, Adidas decided that associating with a public determine who went towards the corporate’s values posed a much bigger danger to gross sales.

When launching a brand new marketing campaign or content material collection, we extremely advocate utilizing hashtags to enhance attain and engagement. Nevertheless, you have to analysis the hashtag first — in any other case, you danger your model’s posts displaying up in a search with unsafe content material.

The net clothes retailer, Dorothy Perkins, found this the onerous means after deciding to make use of the hashtag #LoveDP. (Don’t Google it, simply belief us.)

Programmatic promoting additionally dangers attracting unhealthy site visitors. In case your model’s advertisements by chance seem on unsavory web sites, your web site can grow to be the goal of enormous quantities of bot site visitors.

Model security could also be one of many largest challenges for manufacturers on-line, largely because of the UGC nature of social media. In spite of everything, you possibly can’t cease customers from mentioning your model alongside offensive content material.

Nevertheless, we’ll let you know 5 belongings you can do to guard your model security.

With the rise of TikTok and LinkedIn, extra and extra staff are creating content material associated to their employers. Just like the dangers with influencers, employee-generated content material can jeopardize model security much more as employers can’t management staff’ private profiles.

Earlier than executing a model security technique, you’ll must know your model’s danger tolerance.

Along with subjects like pornography, terrorism, and misinformation, manufacturers may select to keep away from subjects like faith, politics, and nudity relying on their values. For instance, whereas Disney would wish to keep away from placements associated to sexual subjects, Durex possible wouldn’t.

Most advert platforms supply the choice to decide on totally different danger ranges of content material your advertisements will seem adjoining to. The degrees vary from restricted (least dangerous, much less attain) to broad (extra dangerous, larger attain).

If you understand there are phrases or phrases that you simply by no means need your model’s content material to be related to, you possibly can enter an inventory of those phrases as “unfavourable key phrases” right into a blocklist to keep away from associated placements.

Be cautious, although, as unfavourable focusing on can lower your attain unintentionally. For instance, a phrase like “knife” could exclude cooking movies or recipe blogs.

Professional tip: Use your model’s security threshold and model values to provide you with unfavourable key phrases. Ensure that to replace them commonly, and seek the advice of your social care and customer support groups for phrases to incorporate.

Given its roots as a conversation-focused platform, there has all the time been a better stage of scrutiny on Twitter’s model security dangers. And with Twitter’s historical past of misinformation, hate speech, and spam accounts, even the edgiest manufacturers ought to take further care to make sure their Twitter advertisements aren’t violating model security requirements.

Some methods you could shield your model on Twitter:

• Adjacency controls. Add as much as 1,000 unfavourable key phrases to regulate the tweets which can be proven above and under your advert in a person’s timeline.
• Marketing campaign placements. Management the place your advertisements are positioned. You’ll be able to exclude areas equivalent to inside search outcomes, on person profiles, and in replies.
• Content material opt-outs. Select particular content material classes the place you don’t need advertisements to be proven.
• Block listing. Exclude particular person publishers you don’t need your advertisements to be proven alongside.
• App exclusions. Should you’re promoting on the Twitter Viewers Platform, you possibly can exclude as much as 2,000 apps.
• Key phrase exclusions. When organising your advert marketing campaign, you possibly can add unfavourable key phrases to stop your advertisements from showing in search outcomes for these phrases and being served to customers who’ve tweeted or engaged with these phrases.

Though TikTok has had comparatively much less time than its friends to develop its model security insurance policies, the platform already gives a robust mixture of industry-standard settings and third-party instruments that ought to reassure any marketer who needs to promote on TikTok.

Right here’s the way to use TikTok’s model security options:

Most of LinkedIn’s model security controls are relevant when promoting on the LinkedIn Viewers Community, that are websites and apps exterior of LinkedIn the place manufacturers’ advertisements might be served.

The principle settings embody:

• Block listing. Should you’re promoting on the LinkedIn Viewers Community, you possibly can overview the entire listing of publishers to know the place your advertisements might doubtlessly seem. Should you spot any you’d prefer to exclude, you are able to do so by including them to a block listing.
• Enable listing. Should you’d like LinkedIn to prioritize particular publishers when putting your advertisements, you are able to do so by including them to an permit listing.
• Third-party apps. LinkedIn means that you can join exterior apps like DoubleVerify, which helps manufacturers keep away from unsuitable content material and seem on contextually related websites and apps.

Pinterest has excessive model security requirements and has developed stable advertiser- and user-focused insurance policies.

Listed below are some settings to guard your model on Pinterest:

• Flip off feedback. For natural pins, manufacturers have the liberty to delete feedback or flip them off altogether. For paid pins, customers can’t remark (this can be a default setting and can’t be modified).
• Advert placements. Entrepreneurs can manually select the place advertisements are proven, together with browse (dwelling feeds and associated pins), search, or all placements.
• Key phrase exclusions. Entrepreneurs can use unfavourable key phrases to exclude their advertisements from being served in search outcomes related to these key phrases.
• Expanded focusing on opt-out. Usually, expanded focusing on permits Pinterest to increase the attain of your advertisements by serving them to individuals exterior of the key phrases and pursuits you specify. Nevertheless, when you don’t wish to danger advertisements being proven in undesirable contexts, you possibly can flip this setting off.