By Adam Wakefield
How does Times Media ensure that its employees, including its reporters in the field, use social media in a way that does not bring the company or the employees themselves in disrepute? What is Times Media’ policy regarding social media, in short?
Times Media has a comprehensive social media policy that provides guidance for newsroom staff and for non-writing employees such as advertising sales staff. It contains guidelines on responsible social media use that benefits both our newspaper titles and our reporters.
Topics covered include advice on what not to say on social media; privacy settings; keeping one’s social media accounts secure; editorial integrity and legal risks; reputation management; researching stories via social media; and how to recover from making an embarrassing public mistake on these channels.
Is it a necessity for a company to have a social media policy, and how regularly should it be updated? Where can South African organisations draw on best practise?
It’s a necessity for any company. The complexity of the policy will, of course, depend on the nature of the business and the number of employees, among other factors, but these days no company or organisation can deny the impact and reach of social media. Even a simple policy can educate employees about responsible social media use and help protect the company’s public image.
Updating the policy should be done frequently enough to keep track with developments in social media – new platforms, new posts formats and so forth – though the nature of the business will determine the ideal timetable.
One should look at best practice within each industry when compiling such a policy: the requirements for a media house will be much different from those for a large manufacturing business, for example, so it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach. Google is your friend: there is plenty of advice online on essential elements to include in such a policy.
If a company suffers a PR disaster of epic proportions, what process should they follow to fix it – if it is fixable?
Don’t try to hide what happened: the internet will know. Someone will already have saved a screenshot of that embarrassing tweet or Facebook post. Acknowledge the mistake as quickly as possible and apologise, correct or retract without delay – and don’t try to shift the blame or make other excuses.
Such mistakes can often be avoided by having experienced staff who know the ins and outs of social media check all content before posts go live, but sometimes even just a badly timed post can be embarrassing. Swallow your pride, own up to the mistake and move on.
It almost seems like gospel that if you want your brand to matter then you should be on social media, but is this necessarily true, to take a devil’s advocate position? Can a brand survive without a strong social media presence?
The power of social media lies in its massive reach. If your business is in a tiny, specialist industry where it deals exclusively with a small group of expert clients, there’s probably not much reason for its social media presence to go beyond providing the basic details for anyone looking to learn more about the company.
If you know your brand already matters enough to the right people without using social media, that’s fine. Don’t get bullied into a time-consuming exercise for no reason; as with any marketing campaign, decide on the goals, the target audience, and the budget, and then determine where social media can be used to reach those goals.
How can media organisations ensure that social media is not represented as a definitive lens of public opinion? Given its accessibility and with budgets tight, there is a risk news reporting drifts in this direction. How is perspective kept?
That is a definite risk. The responsibility rests with the editors in a newsroom to ensure context around the reporting of opinions shared via social media. For example, don’t say “South Africa is outraged” at something when in fact it’s only a small number of South Africans on Twitter who complained about something. Lazy journalism is quoting four random tweets and pretending it’s a solid base for a story on public reaction to an event.
Don’t exaggerate the reach or importance of a single opinion shared on social media, but do take into account how information flows to ever-larger audiences on social media via popular personalities with big followings. Sometimes the source of a post might seem insignificant but the information takes on new value depending on who shared it with their own followers.