I just spotted the following retweet from Clare Curran on Twitter:
So I had to have a look at the blog post:
Josh starts out:
A week ago I found a few security concerns on the Conservative Party website.
Some time around 1am on Friday I started documenting these issues to inform the party about the risks involved and advise that they fix things up, as well as getting a professional security auditor in to make sure the job is complete.
I will let you head over and have a read of the blog, link in the image. But it raises another interesting point. Even if you aren’t running a social media presence, social media still requires you to lift your game.
Their unsophisticated web operation has attracted the attention of a blogger, and Twitter user with 94 (at time of writing) followers. Their tweet about their blog post has obtained over 25 retweets. It is focused on a very small part of the conservative party operation, that is not directly linked to social media. However it potentially has the ability to attract attention that could be used to cast them in a light that makes them look disorganised and incapable of running an organisation effectively.
This is not an uncommon element to social media use. Previously, if you had built a website that had these issues, a small number of people would have known about them and it wouldn’t have been an issue. But now with social media, it is possible for a a single person to blow the lid off the story. It is not uncommon to see stories that start in social media hitting the mainstream news. Look at the story about the Internet Party’s video, which has been floating around on social media for a number of days, until getting picked up by the media yesterday.
There is no point in organisations attacking those who start spreading stories like this one about the Conservative Party website. It is the responsibility of the organisation to lift their game and make sure the story isn’t there in the first place. Social media is the tool to get the story out there, it isn’t the source of the story. So if you work for an organisation and don’t want negative stories like this……lift your game.
