If you’re tuning in to today’s Academic Impressions webinar, Crafting an Effective Institutional Social Media Policy, please share your thoughts with the twittersphere by using the hashtag #aisocmedia. And if you aren’t tuned in but are interested in this topic, follow that hashtag to keep up with the conversation.
As always, if you have other thoughts to share, feel free to comment here. I’m always interested in feedback.
Last week, I blogged about the importance of developing social media policies/guidelines that make sense to the people they’re supposed to cover or protect. Later in the week, the Federal Labor Relations Board issued an announcement that drives home the point — and that probably makes many bosses cringe.
Coming to the defense of an employee who badmouthed her supervisor on Facebook, the FLRB issued a statement that says, in essence, employee criticism of supervisors on Facebook is protected speech.
In the FLRB’s opinion, anyway. In this case, anyway.
There’s been no investigation yet. No hearing. But still, the announcement is making waves in legal, HR and PR circles.
It also ought to make us rethink the way our social media policies are presented.
Why? Because the FLRB is claiming that the company’s social media policy went too far. According to the New York Times report on the case, the FLRB is arguing that “workers’ criticisms of their bosses or companies on a social networking site are generally a protected activity and that employers would be violating the law by punishing workers for such statements.”
The case centers around the firing of an emergency medical technician for “violating a policy that bars employees from depicting the company ‘in any way’ on Facebook or other social media sites in which they post pictures of themselves,” according to the Times.
This news led Forbes’ Media Mix blogger Jim Nichols to ponder whether overly restrictive social media policies could lead to similar lawsuits. “This case could have a tremendous impact on how social media policies must be drafted, writes Nichols in a recent post. “A blanket ‘you can’t say anything’ policy is simply too broad and can arguably violate our free speech laws.”
Then the money quote:
While businesses need a social media policy, it should be designed to help guide employees about their conduct online; it shouldn’t be a laundry list of what employees cannot say or do.
Chris Syme also posted her take on this case and its ramifications on social media policies. “Social media policy devised correctly,” she writes, “will teach employees to help protect the company’s reputation online, but that has to start with in-house culture.”
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One more reminder: Teresa Parrot and I will be delving into the particulars of social media policies and guidelines in our upcoming Academic Impressions webinar, Crafting and Effective Institutional Social Media Policy, on Dec. 7. We hope you’ll join us.
Sometimes when creating policies, it’s easy to forget about the real needs of people who are supposed to follow those policies. I’m sure I’m not the only higher ed administrator who has gotten tangled up in a rule created by HR, legal or some other department that sounds good on paper, but doesn’t quite fit the situation I’m dealing with. As you probably do, I scratch my head and wonder what the geniuses who created this policy were thinking.
I don’t want to be one of those geniuses. Do you?
Creators of policies sometimes get so hung up on viewing everything from 30,000 feet that they forget about the people on the ground. For those of us charged with creating social media policies or guidelines for our institutions, it’s important to remember the practical needs of people who are supposed to abide by or carry out our rules.
This point was brought home to me recently when I co-delivered a talk about social media policies and planning to a group of intramural and recreation staff last week at the NIRSA National Marketing Institute. My co-presenter, Teresa Parrot, and I interacted with staff who work with hundreds of students — intramural participants as well as student-employees — and face a variety of social media challenges.
What do you do about students who take photos and videos of intramural games and post the content on YouTube or Flickr?
What happens when a student gets hurt in a game, and before the campus administration even knows about the incident, other students are tweeting about it or posting it on their Facebook pages?
Chances are great that the communications and marketing staffers who are creating a campus social media policy, with counsel from HR and legal, haven’t given much thought to those types of circumstances, or many others.
It’s important to keep in mind the needs of those staff members, students and administrators who are supposed to benefit from our social media policies or guidelines. Let’s make sure we’re creating documents that are a benefit, rather than a restriction. Let’s make sure our guidelines are practical.
[shameless plug]If you’d like to learn more about developing a social media policy, join Teresa and me as we co-deliver an Academic Impressions webinar on that topic on Dec. 7. Registration for Crafting an Effective Institutional Social Media Policy is now open.[/shameless plug]
In the meantime, here are a few other resources to help you along in developing or tweaking a social media policy:
Photo via Red Shoes PR (www.redshoespr.com/blog/bid/9640/Creating-a-Social-Media-Corporate-Policy).
The webcast on developing a social media policy that Teresa Valerio Parrot and I conducted in June was apparently well received, so Academic Impressions has asked us back to do another one. So, the encore — Crafting an Effective Institutional Social Media Policy — will be held from 1-2:30 p.m. EST on Dec. 7. Registration is now open.
More details later. In the meantime, if you have questions about the webinar, leave a comment here, message me on Twitter (@andrewcareaga) or email me (andrew DOT careaga AT gmail DOT com).
Today is the day Teresa V. Parrot and I co-present our Academic Impressions webcast on creating a social media policy. The response to this webcast from the higher ed community has been amazing, with colleges and universities of all shapes and sizes signing up.
Follow along today on Twitter. The hashtag for this session is #aisocmedia. We start at 1 p.m. EDT.