For the London Free Press – November 28, 2011 – Read this on Canoe

Social media blurs the lines between the personal and work life of employees, and employers are faced with the difficult task of regulating its use in and out of the workplace.

Social media can be beneficial for a business. It can be used for advertising, marketing, networking and keeping in touch with customers. On the other hand, it can be detrimental to a business if employees use social media to criticize their employers, customers or the products they sell.

Over a year ago, a Best Buy employee in Missouri was almost fired for making a video that portrayed an electronics store employee trying to convince someone to buy a phone other than an iPhone.

The video didn’t identify Best Buy, but the employee was suspended and almost fired because Best Buy found the video was “openly disparaging of our employees, our customers and our vendor partners.”

In September, a Starbucks barista from California was fired after he made a video of himself singing. In the song, called The Starbucks Rant Song, he makes fun of customers, products and the company.

Three months after it was posted on YouTube, Starbucks found out about it and fired him. Even though the barista said the video was just an attempt at satire, his lyrics were certainly a criticism of his employer.

In these two situations, both videos were made outside of the workplace. The question is whether they cross a line that allows an employer to do something about it.

The American National Labor Relations Board released a report on the outcome of investigations into cases involving use of social media. The board took the position regardless of whether there is a social media policy, an employer “can’t discipline employees who discuss workplace responsibilities and performance together online, even if the online conversation includes swearing or insults.”

It also states if a business does have a policy, they should “make sure it does not try to control what employees can say and cannot say about the company. If it does, you can be in trouble with the NLRB.”

That perspective rings true in Canada as well. But that’s not to say employees have free reign to say whatever they want on personal social media channels. If an employee discloses an employer’s confidential information in a tweet, the employer would have cause for concern no different than if the employee said it in a work e-mail.

But if the employee is criticizing his or her employer, or stating a personal opinion that might be different than management’s — the employer’s best response may be to do nothing.

A good way to reduce chances of misuse of social media is to have a social media policy that sets expectations. A tool to create a social media policy can be found at policytool.net.

That we are in the midst of a huge change in the way we communicate in our work and personal lives is no revelation.  But I think many of us don’t realize how rapidly this change is happening, and the many ways it will affect us.

It is a combination of things like mobile access, handheld computing power, inexpensive apps, cloud computing, location awareness, and social media.

Consider this: mobile devices are outselling PC’s, and digital media is equal to television in importance amongst ad executives. 

The explosion of smartphones and tablets enables us to get information about almost anything immediately wherever we are.  And to provide information to others just as quickly.  Tools like Google Goggles and Siri can do that by simply taking a picture of something, or speaking into our phones. (And really, the “phone” part of our phones is dwindling in importance to the rest of their features.)

All businesses and organizations should be thinking about how this is now affecting  them, and how it will affect them in the future – both in how it will challenge their current business models, and how they can use it to their advantage. 

And don’t forget to think about who your competitors will be.  For example, who is going to own the mobile payment space?  It might be the banks and credit card companies – but it could be telcos or Google.

It also raises interesting legal issues – like who owns the movie rights to a crowdsourced story, and how do privacy rights tie in with location aware services?

The one certain thing is that we ignore this revolution at our peril.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

ITBusiness.ca had a story yesterday about a Humber College professor named Tom Green who uses @tomgreen as his twitter name. Fans of comedian Tom Green have been campaigning him to give his twitter name to Tom Green the comedian, who uses @tomgreenlive.

While it is an amusing story, and professor Tom Green has every right to keep his twitter handle, there is a lesson here.

Even if you are not a social media fan, and you don’t have an immediate desire to tweet or update your facebook status, it is a good idea to at least register your name on twitter, linkedin, and facebook before someone else with a similar name does. Or before someone else who has an axe to grind with you registers it.

Anyone starting a new business, or creating a new brand should look at social media availability. The usual corporate name searches and trade-mark searches may not be enough for a business or brand that wants a social media or web presence. And let’s face it, every business or brand that has customers or deals with the public should.

So when making name and brand decisions, see if the corresponding domain names and social media names are available, and lock those down immediately. If they are not available, then you might want to reconsider the business or brand name. It costs nothing or next to nothing to do – but the cost of not doing it could be significant.

In what strikes me as a bizarre ruling, the body that regulates radio and television in France has ruled that presenters must say “follow us on social media”, rather than “follow us on Twitter”, or “follow us on Facebook”. 

The reason?  It violates France’s ban on secret advertising.  The regulator’s statement says ”.. the reference to these pages by naming the relevant social networks is an advertising character who contravenes the provisions of Article 9 of Decree of 27 March 1992 prohibiting surreptitious advertising”.

For more detail, see this Out-Law.com article, and this BBC report.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

London is slowly getting back to normal today after effectively being shut down for 2 days due to a massive lake effect snowstorm.  Depending on where you are we have had between 2 and 4 feet of snow since Sunday night.  You know its bad when I made a trek yesterday from home to the local convenience store pulling a toboggan to get gas for the snowblower and milk.   And when UWO, Fanshawe, schools, malls and banks close, Canada Post stops delivery, and the city stops bus service.  Some of those remain closed today.  While the main roads are clear this morning,  and we had no significant accumulation overnight, forecasters are threatening another 20 cm of wind blown snow for later today.

Things look like a winter scene on a holiday greeting card.   Check out the photo gallery on the London Free Press web site.

I worked from home Monday afternoon and all day yesterday, and learned something about the paperless office that I need to correct.  I’m about 90% paperless.   The only things that are not electronic are some correspondence coming in, and notes that I’ve taken.  I can access our systems from outside the office via a remote desktop connection.  Even though it is not as efficient as working at your desk, it allows us to get things done. 

Where it falls apart, though, is that 10% that is still on paper back at the office.   If that 10% is something that you need to take a next step with, the 90% you can access is of little use.  So from now on I will be making a better effort to make that last 10% digital.  For the most part that means immediately scanning and filing any paper that arrives, and either taking notes electronically, or scanning in handwritten notes immediately after I take them.

Another observation is how news of closings and comments about snow and road conditions often first arrived by Twitter.  That goes for both official notices, and individual comments.  #snowmageddon, (or the technically incorrect but equally popular #snowmaggedon) became a common hashtag.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows:

I gave a presentation this morning on social media issues at a TechAlliance breakfast club event.  Thought I would share this one slide.

If someone posts something about you or your organization that you don’t like, it’s best to so some sober reflection to consider the best response.  Sometimes attempts to suppress things on the internet can backfire and bring more attention to it.  It’s called the Streisand effect.

For example, you might be better off ignoring it if the comment is on an obscure place few will see, or if the person who posted it is clearly a lunatic.

If they are right and you actually did do something wrong, you may want to post an apology.

If they simply have their facts wrong, you might politely set the record straight.

Consider if there is a way to turn what was said or done to your advantage.

If a legal response is necessary, it must be drafted very carefully with the assumption that it will be posted and ridiculed.  The traditional throw in every specious claim and intimidate the recipient into stopping approach may not be the most effective.

On Wednesday November 10 I will discuss social media issues at a TechAlliance Breakfast Club event entitled Developing a Social Media Policy for your Business. 

I’ll talk about:

• The legal traps of Social Media use.
• That fuzzy line between work and personal account posts.
• How to respond to negative social media.
• How a social media policy can help you.

I’ll also create a sample social media policy using an online tool based on audience input.

For the record, my position on social media is not to exaggerate the theoretical dangers or suggest it should be suppressed in the workplace.  But there are a few things that should be kept in mind to reduce the legal and business risks that arise from it.

Hope to see you there.

Brian Bowman has a post on his On the Cutting Edge blog that says an Alberta court ruled that the University of Calgary violated students’ charter rights when it sanctioned them for posting critical comments about a professor on Facebook. 

Omar also mentioned it in a Slaw post.  (Somehow I missed them at the time.)

That is noteworthy for its position on the controversial issue of what limits there ought to be on what one can say about another on social media.  Also for the fact that the court decided that the Charter of Rights – which applies  only to government - extends its reach to bodies created and supported by government.   At least in the way it is done in Alberta.

Mitch Joel has an excellent post entitled What You Tell a Search Box that talks about the trend to social search (such as the  new Bing / Facebook search results that will factor your facebook friend’s “likes” into your search results).

Given how much we trust our friends’ recomendations, it makes a lot of sense.  But the dark side to be wary about is how much info about us our searches reveal, if that info was ever made public, or disclosed even to our friends.

The entire post is worth reading.  Here’s an excerpt:

Here’s a simple exercise:

Write down everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) you search for online in one week. Save it in a document. After that week, go and take a look at that list. Now ask yourself the question again: do you want all of this public?

It’s the little big things.

Who cares if people know you like a local pizza joint, or that you recommend a certain coffee house? That’s fine and that’s the majority of searches, but dig a little deeper. Imagine you have just been diagnosed with MS. You haven’t told your family or boss yet. You’re looking for support, trying to figure stuff out. You definitely don’t want the insurance companies to know just yet. Would you like that public? How about this: your child is acting up in school (in this instance, your kid is the bully). You start looking online for resources and information, would you like people to know that your kid is acting up? Take any addiction (drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc…), medical issue or any other personal issue (like the odd time you watch some adult content online), and keep asking yourself if you would like all of this made public?

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

There is a lot written about what people post about themselves on social media, and whether or not that is a good thing.   New location based services such as foursquare ramp up that controversy.  Letting others know where you are might have social advantages, and has the potential for interesting and useful services based on where you are at the moment.

But looming in the background are the dangers of that personal transparency.  Letting apps or friends know where you are is one thing – but how much of that detail do you really want the world to know?   For example, my son told me last night about a presentation made at Western’s orientation week about student safety.  They showed an actual student’s facebook page that was open to the world, where the student posted her detailed class schedule, and enough information that anyone could tell exactly were she lived.   Might as well post a sign saying when and where to take my stuff or stalk me.

And speaking of social media, it has been reported that Justin Bieber uses 3% of Twitter resources, and has dedicated Twitter servers. (BTW – Bieber’s popularity is a mystery to me -  its clearly not about his singing ability – my son, and others in the Amabile choir could out sing him any day – but I digress).  Apparently many large users have dedicated Twitter servers.  So is this the new social media metric?  Perhaps number of followers, numbers of friends, or number of visits is passe – the new metric: number of dedicated servers.