I went to an interesting event last week about Leadership Communication and one of the main points of discussion was from a comms executive that works for a well-known UK financial organisation that has been getting a lot of press attention recently. They've found that some employees have been posting sensitive information about the company on its group Facebook page - things that the company don't necessarily want to be in the public domain.
They are not the only organisation to have this happen. Last year there were several high-profile cases of the press picking up employees being indiscreet with social media (Virgin and BA to name just two). The signs are that this is a growing problem and something that will be a recurring theme in 2009. The question that is on a lot of organisations lips is how or if they should respond to these type of blog/social network postings.
The United States Air Force recently released a blog assessment chart (copied below) to evaluate communication responses to mentions of the organisation in social media. These rules of engagement are a good starter for ten when it comes to comms teams management of social media and could be a source of inspiration for a lot of corporate communication teams wondering how to react to their company's mention on blogs or social networking sites.
Daniel
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