As with web archiving, social media archiving enables enterprises to collect and retain the content they share across social media platforms for future use and reference. It is an essential measure to help ensure that businesses can meet changing compliance requirements, resolve litigation issues, and maintain solid data governance.
There are a number of reasons that companies are increasingly taking steps to archive their social media presence. It goes beyond the need to protect the reputation of the organization, also playing a role in making sure that sensitive data is protected, and keeping malicious false advertising claims at bay.
Access to a well-maintained social media archive gives businesses the ability to conduct long-term data reviews and comparative analyses. And when it comes to eDiscovery, with a rise in litigation cases demanding digital evidence, the relevance of social media data for modern organizations will continue to grow.
Let’s look at the five reasons your organization should archive social media data:
1. Meeting Industry Regulations
Official use of social media is often subject to record-keeping requirements. The severity of these requirements will vary in line with how heavily regulated your industry is. According to FINRA Rule 10-06, for example, financial firms are unequivocally required to preserve their social media records – failure to do so could lead to significant fines. As social media use and digitization increase, more organizations will have to prioritize data archiving to adhere to complex regulations and laws.
Social media archiving has also become crucial to education institutions because of how easy it is for underaged students to have their personal identifiable information (PII) posted on an official social media account. With this in mind, more schools have now started to archive social media communication records to resolve the privacy concerns of students in the future.
In most cases, the regulation and requirements surrounding social media archiving are stricter than organizations realize. If you want control of all your social media data, archive the information. Many businesses have started to see it as a cautionary practice to meet the challenges of future litigation and social media laws.
2. Improving Information Governance
Social media never sleeps, and the expectation for businesses to appear omnipresent across all social media platforms is by now well established. As a result, even for a company with a more ‘minimal’ approach to posting and online engagement, data can quickly accumulate and represent a substantial data source that needs to be managed.
Social media archiving can help businesses regain a sense of order, and facilitate much better access to the data in question, for the purposes of review and better business operations.
With instant access to archived social media activity, you enjoy much more efficient and effective data governance. This is especially important within a regulated industry, where your stakeholders may need access to specific information at a moment’s notice.
With an automated social media archiving solution like Pagefreezer, you can locate exact information, minimize legal risks, and manage data more efficiently. Data is stored in real-time and in its original context, meaning that context and visual presentation are perfectly preserved.
3. Litigation Readiness
When it comes to social media, you never know when litigation might knock on your door. Archiving social media data allows you to be prepared for any eDiscovery requests or ESI examination, without the need to hire costly external expert assistance. With a steady rise in the number of cases either centering on social media, or relying on social media content as evidence, it's never been more important to proactively guard against the inability to produce the data that you might find yourself relying upon.
Pagefreezer ensures that archived social media data is preserved in a format that meets the highly specific requirements rendering it admissible as evidence in a court of law, including the preservation of metadata and timestamping.
You can also use Pagefreezer’s advanced search functionality to cross-reference and search through thousands of social media records with accuracy and ease. Endless scrolling is a thing of the past, as you’re able to quickly find and focus on specific posts, comments and interactions. You’ll also enjoy the ability to grant specific team members or external parties access to your records for their own investigations.
4. Protection Against False Advertising Claims
As far as regulators are concerned, social media functions as an advertising platform. This means that the content you post will be held to the same standards as any other promotional content created for the purposes of furthering your business and held to the same compliance requirements. The more heavily regulated your industry, the more wide-ranging you can expect these conditions to be.
By preserving your social media records, you can show regulators an irrefutable, timestamped record of your social media output. Why is this so important? Claims of false advertising are on the rise, and the ephemeral nature of social media can often make it difficult to prove your innocence. By accessing an accurate historical record of all your data, you’ll also be able to disprove any malicious claims that are being leveled at your business and backed up by doctored screenshots.
With an archived record preserved in real-time, you allow regulators to review the context of the information posted. Pagefreezer not only empowers businesses to generate supportive evidence and clear false charges, it also enables your social media data to be easily and reliably placed on legal hold, ring-fencing it and protecting it from any scheduled deletion.
5. Monitoring and Data Loss Prevention
Manual monitoring of every single post across all social media platforms is not feasible within modern business. However, with an increase in use, and a rise in the number of employees who may have access to your accounts (or be communicating with customers over official channels) the risk of inappropriate use and data loss is elevated.
A business-specific social media presence requires robust security measures. Pagefreezer can help you spot the potential risk of data loss on your social media profiles through automated monitoring, automatically raising the alarm if sensitive information (for example, insurance or healthcare details) is shared publicly -- and immediately archiving that evidence for use during an investigation.
Keyword monitoring can protect your business from inappropriate usage, as well as data loss issues. You can automatically be alerted to misconduct or use that fails to align with your internal policies, and act swiftly to remove the offending content and address the issue with the parties involved.
Ready to take control of your social media data?
Regardless of your industry or business size, if you’re maintaining a social media presence, accurate archiving of your data is a modern-day must. From litigation preparedness, through to information governance, and more effective monitoring, social media archiving can bring peace of mind and dependable defense when it comes to the ever-changing demands of the digitized business environment.
An automated archiving partner like Pagefreezer represents the best and most reliable way to achieve full compliance, retaining comprehensive data without fear of data loss and giving you easy, accurate access to the information that you need.
Operating in a highly regulated industry? Speak to Pagefreezer today to learn more about how we can help protect your social media data.
