Brands can benefit in a big way by having solid social media strategies, but they can also be hijacked. The recent Domino’s disaster raises questions about how much control you really have over your brand online. Employers also have to be asking themselves how to monitor their employees’ use of social media in relation to their brand and business.
It also reminds me of the issues that were raised when Tim Russert died and his Wikipedia page was updated before his family was. How do you stop the freight train of “news,” user-generated content and citizen journalism?
I don’t think there is any easy way to make your brand and business bulletproof–but I do think that every company would benefit by setting some social media policies for its staff. This, too, raises interesting questions, such as:
- What can and cannot be posted about your company by employees?
- Should employees sign an NDA of sorts regarding specific points and practices?
- Should you keep employees’ twitter handles on file?
- Should you friend them on Facebook?
- What should be considered personal and private information about co-workers?
- At what point do you encroach upon personal privacy in social media with employees?
I sent a tweet out to the twitterverse asking people if their company had a social media policy. I got a response from someone with OrangeSoda.com. In essence, they’ve had the conversation with their staff, and their rule of thumb for social media is to “use your best judgment.” I agree with that, and I think it’s important to at least have that conversation and set those expectations.
It still doesn’t necessarily solve the Domino’s problem–as the two Domino’s employees obviously didn’t use any common sense. However, I do think that it would be a good preventative for businesses to simply have the conversation. Moreover, I think a basic agreement should be signed outlining the standards that employees agree to abide by both from a customer service and social media perspective.
What is your company doing?
This entry was posted on Sunday, May 3rd, 2009 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Social Media. 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.Leave a Reply
