Marketing is a tough enough job as it is, but when you additionally have to deal with privacy concerns, that opens a whole new can of digital worms. If you’re trying to grow your business, you’re probably doing a lot of social media marketing along the way. But as you collect data about potential clients and customers, and as you absorb information from various digital realms, how much are you doing to prioritize the privacy of that information?
There are several different perspectives you can approach this idea from. First of all, everyone in your company should follow password best practices. Secondly, if you use Facebook ads, make sure you look into privacy concerns. Third, whatever website you use, make sure you have protection against hackers. And finally, whenever possible, encrypt client information, so it’s not free-floating around and available after your marketing team uses it.
Password Practices
As you do your marketing, you probably have to have profiles on various websites. Make sure every one of those profiles has a secure password. If you use the same password on multiple sites, it becomes very easy for hackers to access your information from various places if they get a hold of your data. If everyone in your company uses password best practices, there is much less of a chance of a privacy leak anywhere in the process.
Facebook Ads
If you plan on using Facebook ads, there are privacy concerns that you have to address. Facebook has gotten a lot of bad publicity in the last few years because they were so lax with their data. If you sign up to use Facebook as a promotional tool, they will be collecting information about you and the people that click on your links. You need to make sure that as this data is being harvested, it is not being collected by people who plan on exploiting it.
Securing Your Website
How well protected is your company’s website outside of social media profiles? If you use a WordPress site, there are often plug-ins that you can purchase that will help you secure all of the vulnerable entry points into your digital data. Especially if you have any data regarding client login information that hackers get ahold of, that can make your business look very bad. All you are trying to do is have an access point for potential clients to look at your business presentations, but privacy concerns can make relationships sour very quickly.
Encrypting Client Information
Whenever the option is available, use encryption on your websites, in your email, and even through private messaging if it’s part of your marketing strategy. There are different styles of encryption, but what you don’t want to do is assume that private messages are actually private. Instead, you should assume that people can read everything that you write back and forth, which is why having end-to-end encryption suddenly becomes such a high priority.