By: Arthur Cooper
Submitted: 2011-01-15 04:54:29 | Word Count: 664
Though many businesses are still reluctant to get on the bandwagon, developing a legal social media policy for your corporation can be highly beneficial to their profitability.
Optimum7 can partner with legal counsel to develop a working social media policy for your corporation that will be legally binding, so that you can finally reap the advantages of allowing your employees access to social media sites while still protecting your businesses. As an SEO company, we understand the positive impact that granting social media access to your employees can have on your bottom line.
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The main thing is that you want to make sure that none of your company’s secrets, proprietary information or intellectual property will get out into cyberspace. If you write a policy that controls how your employees can talk about you—without limiting their access—you stand to gain a lot of free positive press about your brand, possibly gaining you a larger market share in the long run. You can decide what things your employees are allowed to discuss; that way you won’t have to worry about competitor’s getting an edge over you.
In the meantime, this policy can be integrated into larger existing policies about what ex-employees can talk about. This will protect you in the case of a disgruntled employee who is willing to hurt your brand to get revenge. You can never truly prepare for what an ex-employee will say about you, but if you allow those still working for you to be able to talk about the company on the internet, you will be able to establish early on and repeatedly, what things can and cannot be said. This will make an ex-employee doubly liable in court because they have been aware all along of what the company policy is. Not only will this practice protect you in court, but it will deter future employees from posting libelous comments or from leaking sensitive information about your company during and after your leave.
Many corporations believe that if they grant employees access to social media websites, the productivity will go down. In fact, corporations have been saying this since phones became available. However, the truth is that employees always find a way to use new technologies to make them smarter and more competitive in the workplace. They actually end up doing a better job because they have free, useful tools available to them, and they enjoy their workday more. The increase in productivity that accompanies happy employees has been documented ad nauseum, so what do you have to lose?
Actually, you have quite a bit to gain. Employees who are able to post tweets, blog posts, Facebook posts and funny videos of the office on YouTube don’t usually hurt business. In fact, employees are often the most ardent advocate of the brand they work for. Their user generated content posted around the web has the ability to take your brand to whole new audience: those who are the friends of your employees. Word-of-mouth advertising is still king, the only difference is that it is now conducted online. How much more visibility would you have and how much higher would your site’s ranking be on the search engine result pages, if users on social media sites were always generating an organic buzz about your brand?
Think about it and give us a call, we can help you create a social media policy for your company.
