Kevin Gibbons’ post last year on how Ryanair staff responded to “idiot bloggers” ties in very nicely with my post last week about how Liverpool footballer Ryan Babel broke club protocol to tweet that he’d been dropped from an important game before the official team selection had been made public.
As Kevin points out:
You cannot control what your staff do online, anymore than you can control what they do in the pub, and nor should you try to.
However, that may mean reminding some staff not to define themselves online as being your employees, because the second they do, they are ambassadors for your brand.
In today’s era of brand management, blogs and Twitter, it’s may be advisable to consider implementing some kind of policy for employees regarding social media and your business.
Very quickly a few snide comments, tweets, blog posts (or even outright aggression) will come back to haunt you. Google remembers what’s been said and once something is out online it’s there for a good while, if not ever.
Training, Rather than Policy
In an ideal world I’d love to see business’s bringing in people to run a morning training session on how to use the blogosphere sensibly rather than bashing people with yet another corporate policy.
Just like practising the fire drill or learning how to use PowerPoint properly, an introduction to “Protecting Big Company’s Reputation Online” when using social media, blogs, Facebook, etc, could save a lot of heartache further down the line.
The customers I’ve talked to about social media activities grasped things very quickly and it was much better to talk about this over coffee and a 45 minute presentation rather than handing them another glossy protocol document to file away.
How are you dealing with social media at your office?
[This post was originally published on March 2, 2009 but it seems applicable today just as it was last year given what happened last week with Ryan Babel and Twitter..]
Image: Flickr CC
Related posts:
- Is it Time You Introduced a Twitter Policy at Work?
- How Would Your Company Respond to an Attack from the Media?
- Blogs Are Great for In-Company Newsletters
- How Visible is Your company?
- Blog Marketing Plan for a Small Business
Jon Buscall - Communications Consultant
I'm an available-for-hire online communications consultant based out of Stockholm, Sweden.
What I do:- Online Marketing and Communications Strategy
- Speaking
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- Write stuff: articles, blogs, brochures, copywriting, presentations, the works!
Contact me today to set up a free consultation to discuss how I can help your business succeed online.
