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Social media sites offer a range of new opportunities for communication, marketing and networking. But employees’ unfettered online engagement can be bad for business and potentially injurious to their employment and career prospects.
Social media present a huge threat to organizations’ reputations, especially those that don’t inform and educate their staff about their online responsibilities. That’s why Web 2.0 education must become a priority for HR departments, who should collaborate with PR teams to brief employees about appropriate online engagement. The same Web 2.0 education must become part of new staff induction programs.
Protecting your organization’s online reputation needs to start internally. A 2007 study done by Clearswift found an estimated 43 percent of office workers access social media sites from their work computers several times a day, and 46 percent have discussed work-related issues on social media sites. HR professionals should advise staff that inflammatory comments made online could result in legal action taken against them—by their employer, a fellow staff member or any defamed competitor.
With staff on computers at work, or creating content at home, the line between professional and personal communication can blur. As a result, more businesses face entirely new challenges with social media including:
- What’s our policy for dealing with online rumors?
- How do personal comments by staff affect our reputation?
- Are staff making us the target of online activists and snipers?
- How do we handle offensive videos uploaded to our company web sites?
Staff affect brand reputation
Today, plenty of businesses struggle to protect their name and image on the Internet. Just look at the North Carolina Domino’s Pizza franchise whose staff filmed themselves sneezing on customer orders. The staff then uploaded the unsavory footage to YouTube. The negative video was shared all over the world, online and in traditional media. Social media coverage damaged the Domino’s brand, that specific restaurant’s rate of turnover, and the value of the franchise owner’s investment.
Even bosses make mistakes. In New Zealand, the owner of the Gourmet Food Store derided several customers (via e-mails) who expressed dissatisfaction with her customer service. Her customers used the Web to share and spread her unprofessional attacks. The subsequent media coverage, reported by mainstream newspapers, damaged the store’s business standing.
Old media feeds off new media
The last case is influential for organizational reputation when you appreciate how modern news media works. Ninety-three percent of journalists surveyed by U.S. marketers, the Arketi Group, admitted they use the Net for story inspiration, while 84 percent said they read blogs as a research source. So what appears about your organization in social media spaces can inform or bias news reports. Most companies think that social media disasters won’t happen to them, so they don’t do any advance planning. But when an unflattering video shows up online, these organizations find themselves ill-equipped to combat the poor impressions the attack has created.
First steps in protecting your business
How do you protect your organization from employees who get active or reactive online? The first step is to accept that your employees are likely to be both participants and content publishers in today’s interactive social media sites.
Second, businesses considering social media engagement need to start monitoring the online environment to discover when they’re talked about. There are a few free and easy-to-adopt tools that make tracking online commentary pretty straightforward. Google Alerts provides instant notifications whenever your company name (or other requested key word) gets mentioned. To find out if bloggers are talking about you or your business, visit Technorati and use the free search bar to track blog conversations.
Web 2.0 policy and guidelines
Prevention is invariably better than any cure, so PR and HR must work on an established set of guidelines—specific to the organization—which tell employees what they can and cannot do within social media environments while on work time. Your Web 2.0 insurance policy should certainly cover these areas:
1. Identity disclosure
Social media is all about transparency, so staff or associates should:
- Disclose their true identity or allegiances online, avoiding pseudonyms.
- Disclose their organization and provide appropriate contact details.
- Not be covertly represented by a third party or agency.
2. Personal versus professional publishing
When online, staff may find themselves involved in social media conversations that could touch on work-related issues. Accordingly, they should:
- Be sensitive about separating their personal opinions from professional ones.
- Watch their language when referring to company matters.
- Not reveal confidential information.
3. Blog relations
Blogs and bloggers should be afforded the same professional courtesy as traditional media sources, meaning that employees should not spam them, but rather target carefully, and ask bloggers to be transparent.
4. Commercial transactions
Companies and their representatives need to be careful about the relationships they develop with online publishers, and should be clear that:
- Ideally, they will not seek to buy or otherwise compensate for favorable commentary (cash for comment).
- The organization wants bloggers to be open and transparent in how they engage with or review products or services.
5. Laws and regulations
Businesses can be held legally responsible for materials authored, created, produced or posted online. If staff-created content is defamatory, inappropriate or libelous, the author can be disciplined by his/her employer and even sued by other parties affected. Therefore, employees should:
- Comply with all relevant laws and regulations (especially those relating to identity and representation).
- Respect competitors and detractors; don’t get hostile or snide.
- Adhere to corporate confidentiality, legal and privacy guidelines.
6. Confidential and protected information
Companies should always respect brand, copyright, fair use, financial disclosure, trademark and trade secrets regulations. It’s critical that staff understand they must:
- Not share confidential, proprietary or sensitive information.
- Not use copyrighted materials—audio tracks (speeches), footage (video), graphics (graphs, charts, logos), images, photographs or music—without seeking appropriate permissions from the originator or copyright owner.
- Respect the privacy, position and prerogatives of fellow employees and associates.
Speak to a pro
Though still in its infancy, social media is gaining acceptance as a credible form of communication. Since staff members are reliable brand touch points for their organizations, they’re either going to be brand assets or brand liabilities in this new space. Educating them about how social media works will determine which they will be.
Get an expert to help you set up a safe social media sandpit where staff can try out the technical aspects of social media in-house, before going live online. And get your online engagement guidelines written soon. For social media, honestly, it’s the best policy.
Gerry McCusker is the author of Public Relations Disasters and founder of Engage ORM, a PR company that offers training and consultancy for businesses looking to do more with online audiences. Visit Engage ORM, or e-mail Gerry at:
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