Free Speech vs. Your Business Cont.

Yes, I am reusing the title from Michael Osterman's blog posting today (March 25) and I am doing it intentionally. The topic Mike brings up is both amusing and serious – and he himself invites the discussion.

Here is an excerpt taken directly from Osterman's blog:

"…[S]omeone at a company that I follow on Twitter … yesterday tweeted a link to a very derogatory blog post about the CEO of a major software company, and tweeted this under the name of their employer. The blog post discussed the eternal fate of this CEO, implied he probably had multiple mistresses, and expressed the view that he looks like the 'child of Karl Rove and Stewie from Family Guy.' Not very complimentary stuff no matter how tongue-in-cheek might have been the intent of the author."

Funny story, indeed. But… What would happen, hypothetically asks Osterman, if at that same moment an executive of the company that employs the Twitter poster is trying to work a deal with the company whose CEO was denigrated in the blog post? Individual freedom of speech, corporate image and reputation, embarrassment during negotiations all enter into play.

Mike concludes by asking: what's the right balance between individual freedom of expression and potentially negative consequences for the organization an individual exercising this right may be responsible for.

In my mind, Osterman essentially extends the idea of acceptable usage policies – something we, at Messaging Architects, have been preaching for years in the context of email – to usage of social networking tools in the enterprise. The parallels between email and social networking tool usage are easy to detect: just like there are dos and don’ts about how you can use corporate email, so there should be rules and boundaries regarding Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter usage.

Easier said than done – the social network fabric tends to be way more heterogeneous (not to mention public and harder to both monitor and constrain) than the considerably easier boundary demarcation between work and private email.

As the person managing Messaging Architects' presence in the social networking space, I've found that having separate "corporate" and "private" Twitter profiles works quite well. When I post to the corporate profile – MPlusNews – I adhere to guidelines that are quite similar to our corporate email policy, though I allow myself greater flexibility on spelling and tone in line with the medium character limitations and register. On my personal profile, where I don't identify any company affiliation, I can be more "adventurous" as to whom I follow and what I tweet. In that case, I am solely accountable for the content and I am not a spokesperson for the company I represent.

Facebook, however, is a whole different story – worthy of a separate discussion or maybe a whole series…

There is no doubt social media can help businesses and raise an organization’s visibility – for some useful Tips on using social media for business check out Rick Wagner's Computerworld blog. But there are also risks and liabilities we need to recognize – as confirmed by Osterman's hypothetical scenario. And these completely discount the IT security risks and liabilities related to phishing scams, hacker attacks and other fraudulent threats that all these media are regularly exposed to.

So, in the end, it boils down to training the users and winning their buy-in not through restrictions but through setting the right expectations. Just like with email, the sooner some type of acceptable usage policy with respect to social networking tools is adopted organization-wide, the sooner some of the risks related to preserving the organization's integrity and reputation may be addressed.

– Roumiana Deltcheva