Facebook has released two new security features that will change security features throughout all of social media and likely even e-mail – in a good way. The best part, they provide some great preventative measures to assist with online reputation management.

As long as you have a phone number attached to your Facebook account (which I’m wary of for personal accounts, but fine with for business accounts), a text message with the word “opt” sent to 32665 will provide a temporary password that expires in 20 minutes and is good for only one login. If you frequent busy wifi networks (airports, libraries, universities, etc), you’ll definitely want to utilize this feature. Keeping passwords safe on unsecured networks is paramount to protecting your social identity.

Since I mostly deal with my personal page on Facebook, I’m most excited about the other feature that Facebook has released, but this has great implications for your clients’ accounts as well. If you visit your Account Settings page, under Account Security, you can view all the places you are currently logged into Facebook. Then, you can remotely log off. This may be one of the simplest features Facebook could add, but, in my opinion, one of the most useful. Think about the potential impact: had to respond to an urgent Facebook message and left yourself logged in at the Apple Store? Hop online and log off, from anywhere. Phone gets stolen? Don’t let some stranger facebooking your friends (or worse, fans) add to the burden of a missing phone. Simply sign on from anywhere and log off from that session.

So how does this affect your client’s business? If both features are utilized properly, you can save your clients a great deal of stress and take these preventative steps to assist with online reputation management. A hacked account can lead to countless problems: spam messages sent to all fans, incorrect/offensive content posted, deactivated account and more. It doesn’t take much to unlike a business, and nothing will entice users to do that more quickly than a hacker posting something bad.

The content in and of itself isn’t the main problem though. When somebody hacks your account, you lose your customers’ trust, threaten their online security and show weakness in your own. Facebookers want to feel safe and protected on Facebook. If your client’s account shows security weaknesses, unliking that account will help users feel safer with what they click in their newsfeed. At the same time, offensive and irrelevant content posted by a third-party (maybe a hacker, maybe the guy who found your client’s phone and thought an offensive joke would make for a good update) will clutter your fans’ newsfeeds. It’s easy to unlike a page or hide the clutter from your newsfeed that you don’t like or find offensive/irrelevant and, therefore, silencing that business. Even if the user doesn’t unlike or hide your client’s business from their newsfeed, they won’t likely be trusting anything posted on that page for a while. Especially if a spammer posts a bad link, users will be very wary about clicking on a shortened URL anytime soon after.

So what can you do for your client, or how can you direct them to protect their Facebook accounts? If you’re going on vacation, you’d make sure you’d locked all your doors and windows and that you didn’t have a spare key lying somewhere a burglar could find it. If you’re halfway to the airport and didn’t remember if you closed the garage door or not, you’d call a neighbor to have them check. Your client’s Facebook page should be treated with the same preventative measures as your home, especially now that Facebook has made it tremendously easier. Remembering to log out and then utilizing the new features from Facebook can be immensely beneficial.

First, always log off when you’re done with Facebook. It may be a pain to log in again and again, but it’s significantly easier than redoing all your Social Media efforts after a hacker has deactivated your account.

Second, utilize the temporary password if you aren’t in the most secure of locations. If you aren’t 100% sure that the network you’re on is secure, and that all users on that network are trustworthy, be safe, not sorry, and text Facebook for a temporary password. Storing the number in your phone can make this a very quick step to protect yourself.

Finally, if you aren’t sure if you logged off from a certain location, hop on Facebook and check. Its quick to find out if you’re logged in somewhere and log out remotely. When I checked this feature for the first time, I found that I was still logged in on four different devices, when I should have only been logged in to two. You might be surprised where and how often you or your clients forget to log out of their accounts.

Facebook has even created an option where you can receive e-mails if a new device (computer, mobile) logs into your account. This would give you time to respond immediately if an unauthorized device logged into your account. If you travel a lot, this isn’t a bad idea. The e-mails may be annoying at times – if you often log in from different devices – but much less annoying than apologizing to your fans for spam links filling their newsfeed.

Online reputation management can really make or break a business. While there is a lot that goes into maintaining a good reputation online, your time is better spent taking every precautionary measure you can and using your time to focus on improving. If you’re spending your time dealing with hacked accounts, you’ll spend your time fighting a bad reputation instead of spending time building a good reputation.

Do you think the new Facebook tools are going to be helpful? How else do you keep your Facebook accounts safe as part of your ORM?

Post Script: As I finished writing this post, Microsoft and Facebook have announced an Instant Personalization partnership. If you visit Bing in same browser window as Facebook, you’ll get an option to “accept” using Facebook data in your search. Major props to Facebook on opt-in rather than opt-out, though, and I’m only speculating, this was probably Microsoft’s idea, not Zuck’s. Either way, let me be the first to say, this will NOT kill SEO. It may, however, deepen the marriage between Social Media and SEO, which I think is a great thing.