One of the most respected social media brand pioneers in the world has said companies which are having their Twitter accounts hacked are failing to be “cognitive” of basic lessons.

In recent weeks a number of high profile brands have been hit by hackers, with Burger King and Jeep this week both being taken over on the social networking site.

In an exclusive interview with B&T Dell’s global director of social media Richard Margetic said: “The learnings should have been beforehand, they’re there for most of these companies.

“The problems might be process. Hacking happens and social media is always being targeted, but processes should be in place to minimise hacking capabilities.

“At Dell we have a process that requires social media accounts to process their passwords in a regular cadence. So even if hacking happens it would be minimised because of our protocols.”

He said as soon as Twitter announced it had been hacked a fortnight ago every user, including brands, should have changed their passwords to help protect their online integrity.  

“Why Burger King and Jeep and a couple of other companies that got hit as well didn’t see that and address it, I can only imagine it was process. It’s being cognitive of what’s happening,” he added.

“One of the things we train our employees and social media management team on is to practice safe social.

“That includes some of the things around passwords, not clicking on unbranded shortened links, processing only through the Dell servers, there’s a who lot of things the team is aware of to make social’s practising.”

In a wide-ranging interview Margetic said Dell’s early and enthusiastic adoption of social media means the company has 7,000 employees who have been through a rigorous training program approved to be a voice for the brand.

He also explained how the adoption of the channels has helped lead the company to new product paths, after being asked repeatedly for help from other brands to get their social media strategies right.

He said: “It came about when we launched our command centre in 2009 people expressed a lot of interest in seeing exactly what that was.

“We got requests for tours and we’ve now conducted more than 1,000 tours of that area, more than half with external corporations.

“At the end of everyone was asking can Dell help them build something similar? There was a tremendous amount of need from it. “

In a World View article in the next B&T Magazine, out next week, Margetic also lays out his vision for social media in the coming years, explains where companies are going wrong on the medium, and what customers will expect of Aussie brands.