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Blog posts tagged social media
Facebook suicide: is it your time?
June 15, 2011
Georgina Harris reveals the growing trend for grown-ups to switch off – and why it could help your career
Always a reliable source of new fashions, the latest craze in social networking is… walking away. May 2011 figures saw over 100,000 Facebook users in the UK deactivate their accounts –six million US users also left, never to return.
Site monitors Inside Facebook revealed that despite vast growth in developing countries, newbies worldwide are holding back – just 11.8 million new users joined in May, down from 13.9 million users in April. Countries such as the UK, the US, Canada and Russia, with their millions of veteran Facebook fans, are starting to lose their user base with a wealth of site deregistrations, or Facebook suicides. Why?
Industry experts have a simple answer: adulthood and the right to privacy. But Facebook doesn't agree, which is the nub of the problem. This month, for example, UK Facebook introduced face-recognition software that checks online photos and suggests who they might be – identifying the site’s users without their permission.
Now if you’re on someone else’s page and sporting a bikini or less, Facebook will try and identify you with a name tag. Even committed tech fans wince a bit at this latest cleverness - Will Heaven, assistant comment editor at The Telegraph, blogged: “That midnight skinny dip at the Majorca beach party was a laugh – but there’s no need to share it with your boss.”
Being broadcast peacefully asleep in a phonebox dressed as a chicken is funny for teenagers at 15, and funny for everyone at 70. But most of us of working age want to control who sees the joke. Risks to professional integrity, and more, are obvious. Legally, cases of unwise and absent-minded social networking, whether it’s a snap of a small swimsuit or a small snap at a client, are growing too fast to ignore.
Facebook has defended itself, saying the software only offers tags with ‘high confidence’ that the names are the right ones. That just makes it worse if you’re frantically denying owning a chicken suit.
Various privacy groups are petitioning the EU for restrictions on how social networking sites use, gather, and publish information on people’s private lives. But until the law changes, many users aren’t pleased. Earlier last week, when Facebook admitted the photo-tagging software had launched, one grumpy ex-user Tweeted: “Facebook switches on facial recognition by default, without telling anyone. Not cool. On any level, why would you trust that site? Glad I left.”
People over 25 now realise that the 20 hours they spend a month on Facebook Walls probably aren’t anything like as bad for their career as Facebook itself broadcasting their private moments to passing clients and colleagues. Could it be that those who take their work seriously have one new option – user-generated discontent?
Georgina Harris, Law Donut editor
The Dos and Don'ts of social media: guidelines for your employees
January 04, 2011
The heart of the term social media is the word 'social', suggesting that the online world is for interacting, communicating and sharing knowledge. The aim of having social media guidelines for your business is that they should mirror this mindset with the idea that employees should behave as they would do in the offline world — with inhibitions, decorum and common courtesy. This is especially so as it is still common for people to alter their online and offline personas. Many still use the internet as an outlet for airing their thoughts with little consideration of the severity and long term effects of their actions. This is not to say that employees cannot be trusted, instead they can be positively guided to utilise their talent and act in a way which protects their own and the company’s online reputation. Some do's and don’ts for setting up social media guidelines for your employees are listed below:
1. Do choose trust and empowerment.
Social media use can instill fear and angst in the minds of businesses. Most instantly assume employees cannot be trusted or will not act in the company's best interest. Nevertheless, they must learn that the paradigm shift is here to stay. Rather than fretting about the potential negatives they must realise its benefits. It is never a good idea to set stringent controls on social media in the workplace or via guidelines. Banning social media in the workplace or heavily restricting use could result in a backlash. Employees are potential social media representatives and to make social media work properly across the enterprise they must be empowered to leverage social media in support of the brand and its products. Therefore guidelines should protect and advise on social media, not control or restrict.
2. Don’t forget to cater for all platforms.
This includes blogs, forums, message boards, social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc), user generated content (ie YouTube, Flickr etc) and any other relevant channels. Create an individual framework for participation in various online communities. Covering all platforms avoids any confusion or loopholes, increases social media presence and identifies how social media channels overlap (ie status updates, uploading photos and friend/connection requests). Social media guidelines could include how to use each platform for business and personal use, how to utilise each platform’s functionality and suggestions on the most appropriate behaviour for each platform.
3. Do stress the importance of privacy and confidentiality.
It is essential to outline what information is regarded as private, confidential and sensitive, and which should never be disclosed in any circumstance. The next step is outlining how to behave when something is a grey area ie tweeting about a new client project — does the client want to be mentioned and is the project 100 per cent finished? Hold a team meeting at the beginning of each week to identify tweetable topics or assign a person as point of contact to give consent on disclosing potentially sensitive information. Privacy should also extend to client information, geolocation check-ins, other brands and competitors.
4. Don’t diminish personal responsibility.
It needs to be stressed that posting content online becomes permanently available thus you are accountable for your own reputation and digital footprint. Your online relationship changes and becomes even more essential as soon as you identify that you’re an employee of a firm or speak in any kind of professional capacity. Therefore, disclaimers should be encouraged to make it clear that you are an employee of a firm, but are interacting on behalf of yourself and not the company. It should be made clear that this doesn’t give a person a reason to be dishonest, rude or inappropriate. If someone would like to represent the company on a deeper, professional level there should be a point of contact or training offered to do so.
5. Do persuade employees to add value.
This leads onto thought leadership. Social media is about people, not logos. If employees want to communicate in a professional capacity then put suitable guidelines in place to cater for this. Guidelines for acting on behalf of the organisation should include:
- obtaining official backing from an assigned point of contact (see point 3, above)
- how to define purpose and outcomes which fit with the business’ objectives
- how to create valuable and unique content (ie blogging, forum participation)
- how to respect and engage with your target audience.
By encouraging employees to demonstrate the depth and breadth of their expertise with information tailored to your clients’ needs, it can help position your company as a leader and trusted resource.
Overall, the ideal guidelines should protect the reputation of the company on all platforms, be in line with the company's vision and act as a best practice engagement strategy.
Your Christmas present from the Law Donut - how to excel at LinkedIn
December 08, 2010
Award-wining marketer Rob Wilmot has devised a fail-safe, efficient, and fun presentation that shows you how to boost your profile and your business in 2011 through LinkedIn.
Among professionals, particularly lawyers, LinkedIn is increasingly essential to thriving trade. Launched at London’s Online Info Fair this month, Rob’s presentation shows you how to make the most of the site and its potential.
If you’re still dithering about using social media – for yourself or your work – Rob’s snappy slides will convince you to take the plunge (then show you how). And even if you’re a particularly seasoned user, Rob’s inventive tips explain how you can build more genuinely useful connections, master the delicacies of online etiquette, reach the people you need to know, and network yourself new friends and new business.
Employee promoting your business on networking sites – who owns his contacts when he leaves…?
April 22, 2010
An employee whose job is to promote his employer’s business on Twitter has handed in his notice to go to a competitor. Most of his followers on Twitter are clients or suppliers of the business, or good prospects. Do their details belong to the employee, so he can take them to his new job, or do they belong to the employer, so he can’t?
This is an issue facing an employer friend of mine. There is nothing specific in his employee’s contract of employment stopping the employee (let’s call him Alan) from using or disclosing his employer’s information, but my friend is arguing that the details are his ‘trade secrets’ – confidential information that would be likely to cause real or significant damage to him if they became publicly known. If he is right, Alan cannot use them because ex-employees are under an automatic and implied legal duty to keep their former employer’s trade secrets confidential, whatever their contract says.
Three issues
But Alan is arguing three points. First, he is saying that the Twitter profile – and everything on it – is his personal profile, not his employer’s profile, so my friend has no right to the details on it.
Second, he is saying that the details aren’t trade secrets, they are just ‘confidential information’ – information that my friend would not want rivals to find out. ‘Confidential information’ is wider than ‘trade secrets’. Current employees are under an automatic, implied duty not to use or disclose confidential information. But ex-employees can use or disclose confidential information unless it is also a trade secret, or unless they have a contract of employment that specifically says they must.
Third, Alan is saying my friend authorised him to build up his followers on Twitter – where anyone signed up to Twitter (including competitors) can see them – so my friend has authorised their disclosure. This means they are no longer trade secrets or confidential information.
My friend disagrees on all three counts. Who wins?
Confidential information – court backs employer
A recent court case helps my friend. An employer encouraged employee X to invite business contacts to join X’s network on a business networking website. X then left to set up a competing business, and started using those contact details. X’s former employer objected on grounds that the details were the employer’s confidential information, and there was an employment contract between them that prevented X from using confidential information after he left. X argued that the contact details stopped being ‘confidential information’ when they became available on the site. They were not therefore covered by the terms in his contract of employment.
X lost the case. One reason was that the judge found that the employer’s authority to Y to use such sites had been limited to using them in the performance of his duties as an employee.
As a result, X was ordered to disclose the contacts’ details to his former employer, and also all documents showing his use of the contacts, and business obtained from them since he had left.
However, if the employer had not put a limit on X’s use of such sites (for example, had allowed the employee to use the site for non-work purposes too), or there had not been a specific contract clause protecting confidential information, the decision may have gone the other way.
What’s important
So it’s important that there are contract terms and/or staff policies that:
- Specify which employees are authorised to use networking sites for work purposes.
- Specify the sites, and the profiles (or accounts) to be used for those purposes.
- Set restrictions on what those employees can and can’t do and say using those profiles or accounts.
- Particularly, make it clear that employees are only allowed to post work-related information, and that they are only being allowed to do so for the purposes of their employment – so that they cannot use or disclose that information either when they leave.
- Above all, make it clear that the information – about customers, suppliers, referral sources – or anything else work-related – posted to such sites is, and remains, the employer’s ‘trade secrets’ and ‘confidential information’, no matter who can see it on the site.
Confidential information v trade secrets
This leaves my friend with two problems. First, Alan’s employment contract does not specifically stop him from using or disclosing ‘confidential information. So if my friend cannot show the details on the Twitter profile are ‘trade secrets’, he may find they are not protected.
Worse, it turns out that Alan was, quite innocently, also using the Twitter profile to post personal, non-work items on it too. So, given the court case we looked at earlier, it looks like my friend has two problems … hmm, time for legal advice.
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