Why Your Business Needs a Social Media Policy

On LinkedIn, the online business social network, there’s a lively debate raging with more than 800 comments: someone posted the question “when hiring, is it ethical to check out a person’s social network activity?”

Linda Zimmer is a veteran Internet strategist and president of MarCom:Interactive, a digital strategy consulting firm.

With that many opinions, it appears the rules of this road are murky.  The truth is that prowling around a job candidate’s social media activity may place your company at risk.

Social media is everywhere. Recruiters are tapping sites like LinkedIn to locate the next business superstar. Marketers are pulling out the stops to ignite a viral buzz. Customers are publicly exchanging love stories and horror stories about products and services.

But these forms of “conversational media” like blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube introduce new risks every businessperson must have on the radar.

An innocent misstep could cost real dollars in the form of brand reputation, regulatory fines or even a dreaded lawsuit.

Let’s circle back to that LinkedIn discussion. If your employee is checking out a job candidate’s social network activity and hiring based on the information found there, your company could be violating privacy laws, or laws governing background checks, such as the Fair Credit and Reporting Act, or perhaps the Equal Employment Opportunity Act. And, if the employee happens to go home and post something about the hiring on Facebook or Twitter, well, that could spell “discoverable” trouble—it could later be used as evidence.

Avoiding social media risk, like most other business risk, means crafting a sensible policy and educating your employees. A social media policy is simply good management.

There is no one-size-fits-all social media policy, but a few key things to consider in a policy are:

Respectful Workplace

Update your existing policies. Your company likely has policies that cover appropriate workplace conduct. Update them to encompass social media conduct and connections.  Online interactions can trigger harassment or discrimination charges, or privacy violations.  In once instance, a manager fired an employee by commenting on the employee’s Facebook profile because she disliked something the employee posted.   Make sure employees receive updated training about appropriate behavior extending into social networking with colleagues, and most importantly, subordinates.

Brand Reputation

Employees should understand that the line between personal and professional identity is blurring online. Our inter-connected web means that personal profiles, opinions or social content likely will wind up in Google, or on other social networks and can easily be tracked to a professional affiliation. Sometimes people don’t consider the distributed “network effect” of comments made online to friends. Outsiders may view remarks and construe them to be the company’s, potentially impacting your brand’s reputation.

Marketing

Marketers and agencies that work on behalf of your company should adhere to all social media website terms and conditions, including identity disclosures, age restrictions and rules regarding contests. Equally important, when they engage bloggers and others for word-of-mouth endorsements, they must follow new FTC rulings mandating endorsers to reveal any relationship with your company.

Workplace Safety

Employees should not use private contact information or private social network profiles for company-sponsored online activity. Revealing private information may place the employee’s safety at risk, and tying a company activity into an employee’s personal profile means the employee “owns” it, not the company.  Also, geo-location networking, where users publicly share their GPS locations, may jeopardize an employee’s privacy or safety. Be sure to review and address this increasingly popular tool.

Compensation

Specifically address whether after-hours company-sponsored social media activity is compensated or considered volunteer time.

Don’t be tempted to simply adopt another company’s social media policy. But to get you tnking, Social Media Governance, a website by an author on the subject, has a database of more than 100 social media policies. Institute a policy that addresses your specific business culture and regulatory environment. Consult a digitally knowledgeable attorney, and if needed, bring your social media specialist into the conversation.

Linda Zimmer is a veteran Internet strategist and president of MarCom:Interactive, a digital strategy consulting firm.  Connect with her at LinkedIn or Twitter.

Tags: branding, facebook, harassment, marketing, OCLNN, Social Media, twitter

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Business . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.