Social-media minefields
The beauty of social media is that there are no hard and fast rules to go by. Instead, there definitely are conventions to follow and traps to avoid in order to fully leverage the medium to your company’s advantage and keep you out of trouble. Here are a few tips.
Remember that different social networks are for different purposes. Adding a business contact on professional networking site LinkedIn is all right, but that person may not appreciate a friend’s request on Facebook or Orkut.
Soliciting business, may be fine on LinkedIn. However, doing so on another service, even with a friend, will most probably irritate people.
If you must solicit business, do so with internal messages on LinkedIn, Facebook or Direct Messages on Twitter. Publicising a request, unless you are throwing a picnic or a party, could make you look silly.
Even if your organisation might not have any issues about social networks, do not reveal confidential company information. As a journalist, that would be akin to revealing what your next cover story is. Remember, that on services such as Twitter, anybody and everybody can read what you are writing by default.
If your company is launching a new product, you could put up teasers and even a video on YouTube, or even talk about it on topic-specific online forums (there are forums for virtually every subject under the sun on the Internet). However, please check with your marketing department if this is okay. If you are in marketing, be subtle in your communiques. Online communities loathe heavy-handed messages.
The same thing applies with bad-mouthing your competitors on social networks or even in a blog post. Other users might see this in bad taste and since your company name is associated with you (even if you put a large disclaimer) this could also lead to legal consequences.
Even if your Facebook or Twitter account is personal, remember that you also represent an organisation. See if your organisation has rules and regulations about social networks. Thus, expressing an opinion about a technology on your Twitter account—“This software sucks”, for example—may not be in good taste, particularly, if your company works on that system.
Avoid talking down your boss and/or colleagues, even in a private group. Just because you hate your boss, your “friends” might not.
Remember, this is the online medium. Just because you might be close to someone online does not mean that she/he is your friend, so be careful about sharing.
On sites such as YouTube, Facebook or Flickr where you can post videos and photos, remember that you can increase your privacy settings to exclude certain people from seeing your photos. You don’t want your boss to find photos of you at a party on a day you took sick leave, do you?
Be just as careful online as you are in real life when you are flirting. Just because you are on Facebook does not mean that sexual harassment laws and rules do not apply. Keep in mind that India’s cybercrime laws are extremely strict in this regard. If you are worried about people adding you, please keep a higher level of privacy such as protecting your account on Twitter, even though that does nullify the purpose of the site.
Remember that there is no such thing as total “anonymity” on the Internet, no matter how much you hide.
