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Lawyer Doug Cornelius> is Chief Compliance Officer at Beacon Capital Partners, LLC, which is a real-estate private equity firm in Boston, Massachusetts. Cornelius not only covers compliance issues for his firm, but blogs about the complexities surrounding compliance to help others understand the issues.

These issues are legion. In this> recent post of April 12, 2013, Cornelius highlights several articles that expose the tremendous risks involved in compliance. The Wall St. Journal article> he cites begins, “The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is facing heightened judicial scrutiny over its practice of allowing companies to settle lawsuits without admitting or denying allegations, but Robert Khuzami, former head of the agency’s Division of Enforcement, defended the agency’s use of such settlements on Tuesday as an efficient enforcement tool.”

The reason for the companies’ refusal to admit or deny allegations is that they are between a rock and a hard place: assuming that some proof of the allegations exist, admitting guilt would expose them to civil lawsuits that would cost far more than SEC fines.

Then in this post of April 3, 2013>, Cornelius discusses the hot water that Netflix chief Reed Hastings found himself in after boasting on his personal Facebook page that his company had provided over one billion hours of online viewing in the previous month (June of 2012). The hot water was due to the SEC regulation that companies may not provide company news privately ahead of general public announcements.

The SEC ultimately decided against pursuing enforcement actions against Hastings, but Cornelius was left shaking his head at the executive’s social-media denseness: “Personally, I thought Mr. Hastings made a bad decision in using his personal Facebook page to make a company announcement. The information had already been released, but in more technical releases. His personal Facebook page did have 200,000 friends who could see the news, but it was still gated and not available to the general public in a broad and non-exclusionary manner.”

What does this have to do with the Eye of Sauron? Cornelius thinks that it might be necessary as a supervisory tool>for compliance.

We have a better answer: Kronovia> API for compliance and brand management. It’s far less intrusive, easier to manage, and updated frequently to make sure that your customer’s CEOs stay out of the SEC’s crosshairs. And it’s indestructible by any ring.

To find out how Kronovia works with your social apps, contact us today.>

Satire has a long, admirable history of getting its point across by shocking normal readers or viewers. Thus Jonathan Swift, in A Modest Proposal, did more than shake up a couple of countries when he proposed that the excessive children of the poor could be sold to the rich as dietary supplements. By proposing such an outrageous solution to a terrible problem in a dry, understated voice, Swift drew attention to the hypocrisy and cruelty of current economic policies, thus opening up serious discussion on how to change them.

In a more modern example, the comedian George Carlin used satire in his routines to skewer (again) the hypocrisy and inhumanity of modern media. Thus a reviewer of Carlin’s “Life Is Worth Losing” noted, “One of his next theories was human sacrifice and how since we have the nastiest television networks on the face of this Earth we need a network station like Fox to run a 24 hour a day suicide/assassination show.”

For satire to be effective, it must have a point other than to shock. It must bring a veiled social evil into the light of examination and discussion. Its motivation must be to change something that is deeply wrong.

There are many satire sites on the web, few of which are funny or effective. Until recently, one of the best was The Onion. However, during the recent Academy Awards telecast, someone on The Onion’s twitter account posted such a shocking, pointless tweet about a child actress that its tolerant following—not to mention the rest of the civilized world—rose up in protest. The Onion, reigning champ of online satire, was forced to apologize. Talk about damaging your brand.

See that this doesn’t happen to your customers. After you add our brand controls to your social apps, your customers will never have to apologize, no matter how satirical they are. To learn more, contact us today. 

Unless you are tuned into the business news often you may not realize the amount of social media blunders that are taking place in that world on a daily basis these days. Those who cover business for a living understand this, but many in the outside world do not. The social media mistakes by businesses are becoming more common, and they are costing businesses in a number of ways.

A business that is traded to the public as a stock is particularly vulnerable to facing problems when it comes to the social networks. Although they want to use them to stay in touch with their customers, it is very easy to fall into the trap of making a mistake that can cost the company dearly. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) monitors these types of things to make sure that no one is gaining insider information just by viewing material posted by a company on social media sites.

You want to stop stupid social media errors even if you are not a traded company. A slip up on the social media sites can be very costly from a public relations standpoint. Therefore, it is clearly the case that you need to do something to try to prevent this from happening.

If you contact us, we can give you the solutions. We can help by providing you with risk management software that helps to monitor everything that is being posted under your company’s name on the social media sites. It will flag anything that seems like it might be inappropriate, and it will allow you to be the final judge of this. Once you have done all of this, then you are going to feel a little more relaxed that your image is not being soiled on the Internet.

Social media is wonderful for sharing information among family and friends. It is great for detailing the day to day happenings in your life through status updates, photos, videos, and more. However, for companies it is also something that they have to be concerned with every minute of every day. Stupid social media mistakes can happen at any time, and they can be wildly costly to the business that has made such an error. 

An article by Mark Ruquet from cutimes.com detailed how business insurance companies were surveyed and most claimed that they expected an increase in the amount of claims that would be filed as a result of social media in business: 

In a survey of 105 insurance professionals conducted during the Nov. 7-9 Professional Liability Underwriting Society conference in Chicago, 58% say they expect to see an increase in requests for media-liability policies to mitigate social-media risk. Of that number, 16% believe the increase will be significant. Thirty-six percent say they don’t think there will be a change in the number of requests, while 6% believe requests will decrease.

With numbers like this, it is no wonder that there are so many who want to stop stupid social media mistakes that so many others have already made. 

By adding the risk management API that we offer, you can feel more comfortable that unfortunate errors are not going to come your way in the form of stupid social media errors. Most of those errors come from casual posts from employees on the social media platforms. The API can help to search for some words that raise a red flag when it comes to these types of posts and help to make sure that they are not broadcast out to the world. 

Little changes like this to the way that your business does social media can be huge in terms of saving you from the headaches of dealing with going back and making corrections and appologies. If you would like to know more about what we can do to help you make an impact on your social media efforts, please contact us today. 

Every business that posts information about itself on the social networks is taking a risk. They are hoping that the information that they post will be used exclusively for positive purposes by potential customers, but that is not necessarily the case. There are frequently situations in which mistakes made even by individual employees can give a whole business a bad name. Thus the need for social media compliance programs. 

Every time a company posts something on the Internet, they are opening themselves up not only to the possibility of a bad public relations situation, but also the chance that there could be legal issues that crop up out of this. This is particularly true for those companies that are traded on the stock markets. A leak of some type of information, however innocent it may seem at first, could lead to problems in the legal realm. 

It is wise to consult with a social media expert before opening up any type of profiles or pages on the social media sites. It is important to listen to the advice that they have to give you. For the most part, they are going to inform you of the ways to help your business grow through social media and how to help connect with customers, but it is likely true that they will also have a few words of advice about how to remain safe on the social media sites as well. 

No business wants to get off on the wrong foot when it comes to the social media world. Early gaffes like that can be very difficult to bounce back from. Make sure that you are taking the time to learn more about what you need to do to keep your business and reputation safe. Contact usfor more details on how you can go about doing this. 

Social media firestorms happen quickly.

Case in point:  a Facebook photo posted by Lindsey Stone while on a business trip to Arlington National Cemetery.  One of Stone’s co-workers took a picture of Stone making an obscene gesture and pretending to yell next to a sign requesting “Silence and Respect.”  Stone posted the photo to her Facebook account, the picture went viral, and thousands of people signed an online petition demanding that both Stone and her coworker be fired.  Incidentally, Stone works for an organization that serves disabled people—including veterans.  The company made a public statement condemning the photo and both women were placed on unpaid leave.

Social media has advantages, but it’s also risky. As the Stone case shows, one employee’s thoughtless actions can negatively impact an entire company—even when it’s a post made on an individual rather than a corporate account.  Yet it’s impossible for companies to demand that their employees not use social media.  Even if a company were to ban the use of social media, employees could still use social platforms after work hours and through personal mobile devices at work.  Blocking social-media isn’t terribly effective either.  There are always ways around.  Furthermore, companies that won’t allow employees to use social media may well find themselves at a competitive disadvantage, particularly in recruiting younger workers who consider social media a simple fact of life.& nbsp;

Most companies realize this, yet the social media risks are frightening.  Including social risk management strategies in your software solution can give you a competitive advantage.  The risks are real.  Businesses need real solutions for managing them.  If you can provide them with an easy to use, technologically savvy solution, it gives you a huge talking point when it’s sales time.

Kronovia is a simple, easy to use API for compliance and brand management that plugs into your app.  All you have to do is hook into the system, and Kronovia adds pre-built policy rules and critical content protections.  Your customers can customize their tools as needed, but you get the win for providing a practical solution to a very real problem.  Contact us to learn more about how Kronovia can help you provide your customers with a social risk management strategy. 

In today’s market social media is important in moving a business from one that is struggling to a one with a long life line. However, a poorly timed tweet can bring a company’s rise in popularity to a screeching halt.

In this era of social media mania, a simple error cannot only be costly.  It can be unfixable.  In an article on social media stupidity, social media writer, Jeff John Roberts writes, “Social media means not just that a company can damage a brand more quickly and broadly than ever before, but that it has far less time to undo that damage. In the past, a company could detect a bad news story early on and work with professionals to spin the story.”  He goes on to say that, when a social media debacle is made there is little roam for error. Before a company can fully grasp what has gone wrong “its chance to fix the damage has already come and gone.”

However, it is possible to ward off such social media liabilities. An API that adds risk management controls to a company’s software applications can make difference. It can intergrate an effective monitoring tool that allows software to zero in on potentially damaging social media messaging before it is too late. 

Protect your clients from a costly stupid social media faux pas. Our API can make the difference between successful brand building versus a social compliance nightmare. Contact us for a consultation.

The use of social media for business will offer many benefits, but also has many risks. Businesses actively using social media need to consider the potential opportunities and risks that exist. A study conducted by Stanford University’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance talks about the opportunities and risks of social media use at an organization.

“Directors and executives also understand the potential risks that social media can have, particularly the potential loss of control over company reputation and information.”

Social media is a tool that is used to connect with customers in a personalized manner. This is an advantage over a local competitor that may not provide personal communication. Awareness of the brand an organization promotes is beneficial to the building of customer relationships.

A video posted on a social media site has the potential to go viral. This generates interest in a specific brand. Interest in the brand is necessary to attract potential customers. 

Social media allows two-way communication between a business and their customers. The engagement with a customer is vital for the success of an online marketing strategy. One goal is to increase web traffic based on the content posted on a social media site. This cannot occur if organizations do not have good social risk management policies in place.

Posts that are not being monitored for a social media site have the potential to severely damage any brand in a matter of minutes. This will curtail the hard work that went into the marketing and promotion for the brand. Stupid social media posts can raise questions about the quality of a brand to a customer. This is a concern that has a direct impact on a company’s branding efforts.

A risk management API is a good way to prevent stupid social media posts by company employees that range from those at a low level to executive management. If you want to learn more about social risk management for your business, then contact us for details.

The chance that someone from your client’s staff might post inappropriate content is reason enough to consider employing a risk API. But Twitter’s new policy on copyright infringement brings up another one.

The just-announced protocol basically freezes — with a standard note of explanation — tweets that draw copyright complaints. Until now, Twitter has simply removed such tweets. From here on, the user who posted the tweet has a chance to answer, and perhaps even prevail, according to Technorati.

Sounds good so far, but here’s the flip side: Everyone who sees that note knows that staffer might’ve clipped copyrighted material.

And that reflects badly on the company.

Of course the larger point here isn’t limited to Twitter.

No matter where an employee puts up copyrighted information — Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or a company website — it can put that company in serious legal trouble.

It could also be devastating to its brand.

Just imagine, for example, that your client is a legal firm. Or what if it’s some kind of publishing company?

The list is as long as anybody’s apprehensive imagination gets — as is the number of potential damages that surface when someone cuts into copyrighted information.

That’s where a risk API comes in. It makes software safer, which helps keep business clients’ liabilities as low as possible.

Because even if staffers don’t realize they’re on dangerous ground, the API does.

Sometimes, the software just needs to save people from themselves. And that, in turn, can save a company’s reputation … and its resources.

Contact us — we’ll explain how it helps you help your clients.

Even if you lived under a rock, you wouldn’t have missed a KitchenAid employee tweeting to the KitchenAid’s  twitter account, when she should have been posting on her personal twitter account. She made the  unfortunate mistake of posting a very unsavory comment about the President and his grandmother. This may be old news, but it contains a very important lesson for every organization and business. Now is the time to be proactive and stop stupid social media posts.

I am certain that every organization sees how vulnerable they are to an impending social media crisis. So, how can you deter this from happening to your company? Elisha Tan suggests creating a social media crisis management plan. However, it is necessary to point out that if KitchenAid had a software package from Kronovia the nasty post would have never hit the tweetersphere. With Kronovia you are able to create your own custom software package. We have several options that allow you to plug all of your social media outlets into an API. In simple terms this means you can pick and choose which services you would like to use. Our service includes 50 dictionaries and programs that deter Spam, Porn, Viruses, and Phishing. Not only that,  you can choose services that will analyze your social media activity and create customized reports . You are able to create rules for your Kronovia package. If you are concerned about your employees making a KitchenAid blunder, we have the perfect software for you.

Please contact us to learn home our compliance API can protect your company from a social media nightmare.