• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, September 5, 2013

Social media marketers are facing increasingly stringent compliance and policy management requirements. Hoping to ease their burden, social media monitoring service HootSuite has enlisted the help of security firm Nextgate.

Per the partnership, which is expected to be announced Thursday, HootSuite is promising that enterprise customers will be protected from employee misuse, hackers, spam, malware and even “hate.”

“Online security breaches are unpredictable and can be damaging to a brand’s image, but they can be avoided,” says Kevin Zellmer, global director of business development at HootSuite.

“Our partnership with Nextgate works to give enterprise organizations the best-in-class security and compliance tools to prevent these attacks and protect social media assets both internally and externally," he added.

Among other benefits, HootSuite is counting on Nextgate’s policy management features to help large organizations establish specific social media policies for their various business units.

Claiming over 7 million customers, HootSuite said it will now automatically pass social media posts through Nextgate to ensure that all content conforms with acceptable use and compliance policies, including scanning all URLs for threats or risks.

Social media risk management has become an industry unto itself. “The rapid rise of social media throughout the business world has left organizations and regulators in all industries scrambling to play catch-up,” Forrester Research noted in a recent report. “Social media … creates a slew of new regulatory and compliance ‘gray’ areas.”

HootSuite Enterprise clients include Virgin, PepsiCo, Sony Music Entertainment, Fox and ING Direct.