How to keep out of court and not be out of pocket using social media
Posted by Matt
As with anything in business there are associated risks, so before you engage a social media agency to carry out a campaign on behalf of your organisation you MUST ensure that they involve all staff in formal training. Also a company wide social media policy on business / personal social media use should be implemented and incorporated into your employees handbook.
Once the ‘rules of the game’ are in place for the use of social media, the rest comes down to professional responsibility. You trust your employees to answer the phone to your clients in a professional manner don’t you? Well you should also trust them with social media once thorough guidelines and training are in place and empower them for social media success.
If your social media agency is carrying out any campaigns on your organisation’s behalf, make sure that they have sufficient indemnity and liability insurance to cover any legal issues that may arise.
Why should you bother with this paperwork and expense? Well I attended an excellent social media legal seminar yesterday, by Foot Anstey‘s Matthew Gingell, that highlighted the need for a thorough approach to all clients’ social media training.
The talk raised the following legal issues that we should all be aware of:
- The digital remit of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is to be extended significantly to deliver more comprehensive consumer protection online, that will cover company websites and social media as from 1st March 2011. So no false or misleading promises about your brand or products on social media!
- It is possible to be sued even over a Tweet, liable law broadly holds true in social media. So be careful what you say…
- As social media is considered to be worldwide, people seeking to sue others can ‘forum shop’, meaning they can select which country to sue your organisation in to get the best result.
- It is important that any SLA (service level agreement) for traditional communications and service are translated into dealings on social media too, as you may be in breach of contract with your customers.
- If you are setting up a corporate Twitter account using your brand name, you have grounds to force individuals to give up use of these when they leave. But if it is in their name (even though it has been used for company) you may struggle to retain the assets (such as followers).
- If an employee is saying defamatory things about your organisation on a blog or social media, and they have had proper training, there may be grounds for gross misconduct and dismissal.
To summarise: make sure that your staff are trained and corporate social media guidelines are implemented by a quality social media agency. Also make sure that they are fully covered with sufficient indemnity insurance, to avoid business risk if they are carrying out work on your behalf.
