Buried within last week’s firestorm ignited by a couple of posts over at AgentGenius was an actually important issue that all social media practitioners and companies thinking about social media need to think about.
When is a company or an organization responsible for the social media actions of its employees?
Now, while I have gone to law school, and am a member of the Bar, I am not a lawyer, and what follows should not be construed as legal advice or any such thing. Consult your own attorneys for their take on the issue.
From where I stand, I believe the answer will depend largely on three factors: (a) the employee’s “day job” responsibilities, (b) the “social media act” at issue, and (c) employer’s level of knowledge. But this is a first stab, and I would love thoughts/comments from the readers, especially from those who are practicing attorneys.
Where's the can opener?
David Armano (@armano) has a provocative post up asking whether a company’s social media leader should be heavily involved in social media — what he calls “eating your own dogfood”:
But if you dig a little, you’ll often times find that some (not all) of the people placed in these positions have very small “footprints” in the space. A recently created Twitter profile with a very short history, a presence on Facebook that looks like an unfurnished apartment, no blog to speak of. You get the point. And it’s got me thinking. Should the people who lead the charge within your organization be active participants in the medium? Does it really matter?
It’s an interesting topic, and I urge you to read the whole thing. David ends up staking out a position on the issue:
I’ll put a stake in the ground on where I fall on this issue. It’s not critical to be a fully engaged active participant before you accept the responsibilities of leading social initiatives, but once you begin, you’d better show an intimate grasp of the space. Because, we’re all out there—Googling, Digging, looking for signs that you know what you’re talking about. Take a page out of Marcy’s book if you are in one of these roles. Engage people in relevant, meaningful ways and add a few notches of credibility to your belt.
But as I was thinking through what David was suggesting, it seemed to me that there’s another dimension to consider as well: subject matter expertise. This is especially poignant in real estate industry.
