StevenSilvers.com

Six standards for employee use of social media

PR lawyer Michael Lasky summarizes four key principals to include in company policies for how employees may use blogs, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media:

• Respect for intellectual property … Avoiding plagiarism and copyright infringement.
  
• Standards of truth … Attributing information, knowing the difference between fact and opinion.
  
• Confidentiality … Knowing what can be made public via the Internet, and what should be protected.
  
• Common sense … Using the same rules that apply to memos, emails, press releases, web sites and other company communication.

While these are broad enough to cover most concerns, I would also make sure that your social media standards address these two important areas:

• Transparency … That official communications will not be misleading, disguised or anonymous.
  
• Accountability … That the company will protect stakeholder interests by tracking social media use and content, and that employees will be held responsible for misrepresenting or maligning the company on the Internet, even if they do so on their own time.

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Why most companies should just ignore all those anonymous rate-your-employer sites

Internet Evolution blogger Chris Poley points to another aspect of employees using the Internet to ridicule the companies they work for. [Read Scatterbox: Managing the Unmanageable.]

One way they do this is through Internet sites that rate companies based on anonymous input from current and former employees, and even people who only tried getting jobs with a company. 

But the impact these user-generated sites have on a company’s reputation is debatable.  Glassdoor.com, for example, touts its “inside look” at more than 26,000 companies.  Large companies like Wal-Mart list hundreds of anonymous comments, which in reading lead you to the not-so-shocking revelation that some people like their employers and some people don’t.  Many other companies garner only one or two comments, most of them rants about stupid bosses and rotten culture.

Basically it’s like listening to strangers on the bus to work.

To be sure, some companies use search engine optimization – also hyped as “online reputation management” – to push negative comments deeper into the Internet clutter.  Other companies have their flacks post anonymous positive comments to counter the anonymous criticisms (the ethics of which are for another post).

Most employers, however, simply ignore the sites.  And in most cases that’s the best approach.

Why?  Because without attribution, scientific basis or mass context these opinion boards have as much information value as random graffiti.

It’s no surprise that a relatively few unhappy, unnamed employees are more likely to gripe online.  And that creates representations way out of sync with more credible reputation measurements.  Look up insurance giant Aflac on Glassdoor.com, for example, and you get a 5,000-employee company with a “neutral company rating” because half of the 26 comments that make up the score are from people like the agent who wrote that “they have no morals and they don't know what their [SIC] doing there.”

Meanwhile, Aflac was named 2009’s most reputable and ethical insurance company by Reputation Institute's Global Reputation Pulse, an annual public survey of the nation's 153 largest corporations.  Second year in a row, too.

It doesn’t take a PR expert to know which image matters most.
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Managing the unmanageable: Employees talking about your company on the Internet

Here's one of the questions I hear most:

"How are we supposed to manage what our employees say about us when they're on Twitter and Facebook all the time?"

Executives worry about social media in relation to two things: risk to the company and loss of productivity.  Both are legitimate concerns. Yet many of those same executives are downright tepid about bringing up the productivity issue. It's as if they're worried about sounding ridiculous, like the old dolt who doesn't get this World Wide Web hullabaloo.

Or perhaps they've seen studies like the one claiming that employees who use the Internet for personal reasons are nine percent more productive. Researchers in Australia report that "workplace Internet leisure browsing, or WILB, helped to sharpened workers' concentration."

There you go. Can't argue with an acronym.

But even CEOs who buy it are concerned about how social-networking employees might be representing the company. And they dang well should be.

Deloitte's 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey found that 75 percent of working Americans think it's easy to damage a brand's reputation via Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media services. Yet a third of all employees say they never even consider what their boss might think before posting something online.

This is scary stuff.  It means that a good chunk of any company's workforce could include people with the same kind of mental disposition as the two Domino's employees, aged 31 and 32, who posted a video of themselves spitting on food and stuffing cheese up their nose -- all while laughing that "somebody will be eating them, yes eating them... Now that's how we roll at Domino's!"

In the first 48 hours, more than a million people watched the gross-out video just on YouTube.  Internet exposure and news coverage hit like a hurricane. And in only four days of tracking, consumer perceptions toward one of the nation's most popular brands went from great to rotten.

Domino's responded comprehensively and is even being credited with being the "Tylenol crisis" of the new media era.  But winning a PR trophy doesn't come close to accounting for what that little video prank cost the company in lost sales, bad publicity and ridicule, penalties paid for health-code violations, costs associated with managing the crisis and the expenses of investigations and litigation.

And unlike the Tylenol crisis, the image of a smirking Domino's employee sticking cheese up his nose will keep showing up on the Internet forever.

In a New York Times story, a Domino's spokesman underscored the real bottom-line risk of social media:

"We got blindsided by two idiots with a video camera and an awful idea. Even people who've been with us as loyal customers for 10, 15, 20 years, people are second-guessing their relationship with Domino's, and that's not fair."

Companies must have comprehensive social media policies in place, and many do. But rules alone won't change how many people behave online. In a world where so many employees (and bosses) could give your brand a black eye, it will take considerable internal culture-building and communications programs to ensure they don't.

Technology savvy or not, that gives every CEO good reason to wonder how much time their people are spending on social media.  And what exactly they're doing there.
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Links & Resources

• Deloitte | 2009 Ethics & Workplace Survey Results
• New York Times | Video prank at Domino's taints brand
• USA Today  | Domino's nightmare holds lessons for marketers
• Domino's | CEO YouTube response: "Disgusting Dominos people"
  
• Scatterbox | Transparent generation realizes downside to growing up online

When the past becomes today's crisis

History is one of the trickiest areas of crisis management. Even with the most sincere intentions, an organization's presentation of the past can explode in emotionally charged controversy.

Here's a perfect example:

Many veterans are fighting the Indianapolis Veteran Administration hospital's decision to remove an old newspaper from a historical display because it contained the headline, "Japs Surrender."  The hospital replaced the newspaper with one simply headlined, "Peace."

The newspaper had been on display for ten years until a new employee complained that it was offensive.  The VA Ethics Office agreed that the hospital did the right thing to avoid creating a hostile work environment.

Supporters of the decision to yank the newspaper remind people that Congress passed a resolution in 1986 acknowledging that the term "Jap" is racially derogatory and offensive.

That doesn't fly with angry veterans and others who have inundated the hospital, media and government offices with protests.

"Any Marine will tell you that, in this day and age, they damn well know the term 'Jap' is a rude and insulting remark -- that is not the issue," a decorated Vietnam vet told one news outlet.  "But you've got people here who are trying to change history."

It's a classic damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't controversy.

And it's a reminder.  Your crisis plan must not only consider how you respond to events that might happen in the future, but also how you represent events that did happen long ago.
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Bottom photo: Historic newspaper display at Indianapolis VA hospital (Courtesy Indy.Com )

Best of Scatterbox - 2009 Edition

Based on comments, links and other highly unscientific measurements, here are the top ten Scatterbox posts from the last year:

Five things you didn't realize you learned from Obama's victory

Good intentions aren't good crisis management

Best worst excuse to avoid jury duty: Your studly hotness

Big brand doody from the toilet paper wars

What's missing from your communications plan

The low risk, high rise of phony grassroots groups

Hate mail and other comments from our readers

Blah Blah Nation: PR people promote the value of blogging by boring readers to death

John Edwards scandal shows conflicting truths about mainstream media

How the PR business is changed forever (And why you might not be in it)

... Have an idea or link to suggest? Send to scatterbox(@)stevensilvers.com.

Dirty laundry travels at the speed of light

Question: How long does it take for your company's problems to become news?

Answer: How fast can your customers send an email from their cell phone?

A friend of mine was waiting to board a United Airlines flight when he saw a pilot arguing with other crew members. He overheard the pilot saying that he was going to complain to the union.

Passengers boarded, but the plane didn't move from the gate. Finally, the captain came on the intercom. The confrontation at the gate, he said, upset him to the point where he could not focus on flying the plane.

A flight attendant told a passenger that the pilots union wanted pilots to not wear their hats in protest of United's management.  Other crew members got in the pilot's face when they saw him wearing his.

That passenger told my friend, who used his Treo to send a message to USA Today's "Today in the Sky" column.

The next morning, USA Today's print and online editions reported how a "United flight canceled when pilot says he's too upset to fly"

The company refused to comment in detail. The union refused to comment at all.

It's just as well. Customers probably have plenty comments of their own.

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Generalities are generally the wrong way to answer a crisis.

There's an old PR saying that you should never repeat a negative. I personally think it's an outdated idea.

But it's why many organizations respond to a crisis without actually acknowledging the events or allegations they're responding to.

In the information age this omission strategy just makes things worse. Take for example the flare-up that followed after a Veterans Administration supervisor in Texas sent an email suggesting that staff reduce costs by not diagnosing returning war veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. VA Affairs Secretary James Peake made a live video speech for VA employees around the country in which he praised them for their good work. Then he told them to be careful what they put in their emails, saying they never know who might see them. He made no mention of the controversial email or its contents.

As the story broke nationally, thousands of VA staffers wondered what their boss had been trying to tell them. Was he saying that the VA is not cutting costs by limiting PTSD cases? Or was he saying he didn't want any more of them to get caught talking about it?

Peake issued a statement later saying that Texas email was "inappropriate" and did not reflect VA policy. But with politicians and editorial pages screaming for investigations, the damage to credibility from inside the VA was already done.

 There are many ways to look guilty in the court of public opinion. Answering controversies with generalities is one of the most certain.
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• CBS News | Obama Demands VA Investigation Into PTSD Diagnoses
• OPED News | OFF WITH HER HEAD?
• Slate | PTSD Bingo

From USLAW Radio - A few thoughts on litigation PR

Here's an interview I did with USLAW Radio on how to approach litigation communications and media relations. The program is produced by USLAW Network, an affiliation of more than 60 law firms around the country.

You can also download a Podcast version here.
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What's missing from your communications plan.

Does your company's communications plan have a go button?

Many don't. Most follow some variation of the standard situation analysis, goals, objectives, strategies and tactics.

What's often missing is a plan to sell the plan internally. It's where you answer complicated questions like these:

• Am I able to lead implementation of all aspects of this communications plan? How am I going to address my weaknesses?

• Do I have the right people and resources to implement this plan? Where do I proposed getting them if I don't? Does management think I have everything I need?

• Should I use outside help, hire people, retrain the people I have? How would management react to hiring a new consultant or PR agency? How will I go about it?

• What will management think about my plan? What will get them excited about it? What will surprise them? What will make them nervous? Where are they most likely to be ambivalent? What will they not understand? ]
  

• What are the obvious challenges to and questions about my communications plan? What are the agendas driving them? How will I answer them?

• What is it I don't know that would influence whether or not my communications plan is accepted and implemented?

• What kind of internal consensus do I need to get support for this plan? How am I going to get it? Briefings? A PowerPoint presentation? Hallway lobbying? An internal ad campaign? Dinner with other managers?

• Who inside the organization is most likely to either not understand or have legitimate issues with my communications plan? Do they matter? How do I respond to them?

• How am I going to maintain strategic continuity as situations or people change while the communications plan is being implemented?

"The value of an idea is in the using of it," wrote Thomas Edison.  If you don't know specifically how you're going to get the green light for your communications plan, then you risk having created nothing at all.

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Check out the Colorado Municipal League's communicators conference, April 10-11.

I'll be presenting my thoughts on crisis strategies at the Colorado Communicators Conference, a two-day event being held by the Colorado Municipal League and Denver Regional Council of Governments on Thursday-Friday, April 10 through 11.

Other speakers include my good friend Andrew Hudson, corpcomm chief at ARCADIS and publisher of the popular Denver PR Jobs List, as well as former 9News anchor Ed Sardella and Karen Morales of Communication Infrastructure Group. I'm also co-presenting a section on social marketing and new media with my very talented GBSM colleague Tracy Boyles.

Registration is $150 for the conference, which is open to anyone responsible for communications and marketing on behalf of a municipality, county, district or other entity.

Click here for the full agenda and here for registration. Should be a great event with plenty of valuable insights.
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(Click here to ask me about speaking to your association or group.)