I wanted to share an article that I read on LinkedIn by Ryan Holmes, the CEO of Hootsuite. In the article, Ryan makes the argument that business leaders need to develop a well thought out social media policy.
The point he makes is that, especially in certain industries, every communication coming from your company can be subject to disclosure. This means that the funny little tweet your CEO sends can come back to bite your company in court.
It gets worse. Firms can be held liable for tweets fired off from an employee’s iPhone, outside the office, and after working hours. Even something as innocuous as clicking the Like symbol next to a Facebook post could run afoul of the SEC.
Complicating matters, social media in large companies is spreading at viral speeds—whether employers know about it or not. “Go to LinkedIn and do a search for people currently employed by your enterprise,” says social compliance strategist and financial industry veteran Mike Langford. “You will likely see thousands of them… without any compliance process or technology in place.”
He goes on to show that there exists today technology which can help you form and enforce your social media policy.
Click HERE to read the full article on LinkedIn.