One of the biggest concerns executives and business professionals have is business risk.

A recent study highlighted on eMarketer showed just how important risk management was to business professionals.

From Which Are the Riskiest Social Media Sites?

In its August 2012 study “Guarding the Gates: The Imperative for Social Media Risk Management,” Altimeter Group found that companies considered the top three social networks the riskiest. Of professionals who cited social media risk management as part of their job, including lawyers, social media managers and compliance officers, 35% said Facebook was a significant risk. Additionally, 25% said Twitter was a significant risk and 15% assessed YouTube and other video-sharing sites similarly.

It’s obvious that risk management is important for business professionals. The biggest concerns were listed in the article so be sure to click through above and learn about that. What we’re going to focus on here is social media risk and how your overall social media strategy can limit the risks for your company.

Avoiding Social Media Risk

The biggest sites – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – seem to have business professionals the most worried. This is no surprise. These are the biggest social sites on the Web. These sites have the most people and there is a chance those people will say bad things about your brand.

Business owners are most worried about brand reputation followed by leaking of confidential information.

When it comes to the world we live in there is no reason to hide from the fact that people discuss your brand. Ten and even five years ago people didn’t really talk about brands online. However, there has always been discussion in the real world about brands. The difference today is that a bad experience by one customer can turn into a firestorm for a company on a large scale. The company could find an issue snowballing out of hand before they even have time to react.

That’s the reality.

It’s best to realize this happens. You’re already going about your business doing the best you can for your customers. Your customers realize that you make mistakes. They’ll let things slide as long as you keep improving. That’s a basic strategy to limit any damage that might happen.

The Bigger Risk for Brands

In other discussions about social media there is the issue of your risk of using social media. There is always the issue of your company becoming too dependent on social media for communication with followers and social media subscribers.

Even in the not-so-recent past there have been issues with Facebook and Twitter. The sites occasionally go down, but even more than that they limit the ability of a business to communicate with its followers. Does this seem right? Well, at the end of the day the followers may seem like they belong to you but they actually belong to the social media site.

This is why I advocate centering your social media strategy on your own properties like your website and blog. You have more control over assets you own. You can control what you say and how you communicate with your followers.

Instead of spending time building followers and fans you can focus on building subscribers to a list that you actually own. People will subscribe to the updates that occur right on your website.

There will always be risk in social media just as there is risk everywhere in business. People will say bad things about you from time to time. The best thing you can do is try to control the messages out there with your own property.

When you have control you can become the official voice of your company and limit any potential disaster that might occur in social media.