HootSuite adds enterprise social media security so Weinergate won’t happen to your brand

In 2011, Chrysler tweeted that “no one in Detroit knows how to f*cking drive.” The same year, New York congressman Anthony Weiner accidentally tweeted a picture of his crotch to all of his followers. And last year, KitchenAid insulted Barack Obama and, incredibly, mocked the death of the president’s grandmother.

All of those lapses in judgement or accidents can cause potentially irreparable damage to your brand.

Which is precisely why HootSuite is partnering with Nexgate to add enterprise social media security to your company’s social accounts. With Nexgate, HootSuite customers get automated content moderation, lockdown of social media profiles, and the ability to ensure only approved applications can post to your social outposts.

“Social media has become the frontline of many organizations for real-time engagement with their customers,” HootSuite CEO Ryan Holmes said in a statement. “In turn, online security breaches can really hurt a brand’s image and consequently its bottom line. Thankfully these crises are avoidable.”

Security breaches — like this year’s hacked AP account tweet that the White House had been attacked — are potentially even more damaging than social media gaffes. The new Nexgate profile lock that will be available for HootSuite Enterprise clients will help prevent hackers from hijacking your social media accounts by setting alerts when account changes are made, and by allowing you to immediately lock your accounts.

In addition, the newly available content moderating feature will automatically review content before it’s actually published, meaning that Chrysler’s accidentally profane tweet could haven been blocked by a content filter. In addition, any site addresses provided in tweets or shares will be automatically checked for malware, porn, or other potential problems.

One other neat feature that I wish I’d had when managing social for a national company is automated account discovery.

Often when companies grow organically, multiple employees in different departments build distinct social media profiles for different divisions, some of which are left dormant as people shuffle in and out of roles. Nexgate includes the capability to “automatically find, categorize, and monitor social media accounts affiliated with a brand,” HootSuite said, which should allow enterprises to find the potentially hundreds of accounts across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and more, potentially including some that no-one at head office is yet aware of.

HootSuite has over 7 million users at thousands of companies, including 774 of the Fortune 1,000, and has been adding enterprise tools to its arsenal over the last year. The company just closed an enormous $165 million funding round, which bolsters its ability to acquire companies and tools.

“Our goal is to build a multibillion company [and] we’re putting the money toward marketing and international expansion,” CEO Holmes told me at the time.

This new step will certainly help with multination corporations.