Organizations today are expected to generate massive amounts of content every day. Moreover, the exponential growth of social media outlets has led to unprecedented levels of content generation.
Therefore, it has become necessary for most organizations to collect, organize and manage content.
However, many organizations struggle to archive, manage, and preserve this type of content. Most organizations lack the tools and expertise to deal with social media content.
That’s where social media archiving comes into the picture.
Let’s go over the definition of social media archiving and see how implementing a social media archiving solution can be beneficial for your business.
What is social media archiving?
Simply put, social media archiving is a process of collecting and organizing content generated and spread across social media platforms.
For example, when a customer posts a review on a social media channel, the social media archiving process should capture that information for future reference.
Social archiving allows organizations to accurately manage, sort, and tag social content, ensuring they are able to respond to brand crises and PR crises, and comply with legal discovery requests.
If organizations don’t archive content, they risk falling behind competitors, meeting compliance regulations, and complying with government regulations.
Archiving, however, is a step that many businesses overlook. If this step is skipped, organizations not only lose content but also lose track of what content they have.
Benefits of implementing a social media archiving solution
Let’s explore 5 reasons why organizations should consider implementing a social archiving solution.
1. Avoid Legal Issues
Organizations that fail to preserve social content risk violating various privacy laws.
Every state and country has specific laws about preserving social content, and failing to comply with these laws can result in hefty fines, lawsuits, and other legal consequences.
For example, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires healthcare organizations to protect patient records and images. Failure to comply with HIPAA can result in stiff fines and penalties.
Similarly, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), effective from May 2018, provides EU citizens with greater control over their personal data. Failure to comply with GDPR can result in hefty fines.
Having total peace of mind and transparency is only possible through the use of specialist software, as social media platforms do not have the natural archiving capabilities sufficient to fulfill the requirements needed by these regulations.
2. Quickly provide evidence for eDiscovery
eDiscovery is the process of collecting, reviewing, and producing data needed for legal purposes. Organizations often face legal discovery requests, and they need to produce data immediately.
If organizations don’t have the data, they can’t meet these requests.
Social media archiving solutions can help organizations quickly collect, organize, and sort social content. When data is stored in a central repository, it’s easier to find.
Moreover, social archiving solutions provide real-time analytics, making it easier for organizations to review content.
3. Ensure adherence to your social media policy
You may use social media archiving tools to keep an eye on your company’s official social media channels, ensuring that your staff and the general public are abiding by your social media policy and best practices by tracking keywords and configuring alerts.
When HR, compliance, and legal departments have access to all communications, they can keep an eye out for any signs of improper behavior and respond swiftly if necessary.
4. Automate retention and eliminate human error
Most organizations keep content for years, and they often rely on manual processes to manage data.
Manual processes involve a lot of manual effort and a lot of room for human error.
For example, if an organization uses spreadsheets to manage content, manual processes can lead to data loss. Spreadsheets are not designed to store large amounts of data.
Moreover, they are not designed to store data for the long term. When spreadsheets are used to manage data, it’s very difficult to delete data.
To avoid data loss, organizations often rely on automated archiving systems. These systems take over the responsibility of managing data.
Social media archiving solutions allow you to set up retention periods. When set, the system automatically deletes content after the specified time period. This can help you get rid of unnecessary data and free up space while also ensuring compliance.
5. Be alerted to brand crises
As your organization’s reputation depends on its brand, it’s important to be aware of any potential crises.
When you archive your social media posts, you have total visibility into your channels and can better guard against the leak of confidential information that might damage your company’s standing online.
As a bonus, you’ll have better information and risk management, compliance, and data governance as a result.
6. Gain better insight into your audiences
Social archiving solutions provide real-time analytics, allowing you to gain insight into your audience and customers.
This insight can help you keep your finger on the pulse of your audience and customers, as well as recognize trends, events, and developments.
You can then use the insights gained to improve your marketing strategy.
Over to you
In conclusion, social media archiving solutions can play an important role in your organization’s overall business strategy.
By implementing a social media archiving solution, organizations can collect, organize, and archive social content, helping them meet compliance regulations, avoid legal problems, provide the evidence needed for eDiscovery, ensure adherence to their policies, and gain insight into their audience and customers.