Anti-business social practices

Do you really want your company linked to what your receptionist did or didn’t do last night? Or the fact that your IT manager is currently in the pub?

Microsoft employees are the most active on social media, according to NetProspex, a US-based sales and marketing contact database company, although before you get too excited please note: active doesn’t mean savvy.

NetProspex analysed social media usage of 100,000 employees from Fortune 1000 companies in the US. It then ranked the top 50 companies based on the number and frequency of updates by their employees and the number of social media memberships over nine networks including Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Microsoft topped the list, followed by eBay, Amazon, Walt Disney and Google rounding out the top five companies. The top 50 list was dominated by technology companies, but well-known brands like Nike, 3M, Coca-Cola and Gap also featured.

NetProspex trumpets this report as proof that social networking offers opportunities for business to business sellers and marketers, but for the chief executives of major corporations, it should also sound alarm bells.

On Facebook and Twitter users are increasingly comfortable listing the minute details of their lives. On geo-location networks like Foursquare, users don’t hesitate to regularly post their exact location. While this activity may be fine amongst friends, do you really want your company linked to what your receptionist did or didn’t do last night? Or the fact that your IT manager is currently in the pub?

Exacerbating this concern is the fact that in the next three to four years, generation Y will make up 40 per cent of the workforce. And who are the social networkers most comfortable listing their every move? Well, gen Y of course, the first digital natives.

Also worrying for management is when employees start commenting about the company they work for. Maybe venting at the boss’ new strategy or just sticking up for their company. A thoughtless post can be deleted by the user, but all it takes is for one person in their network to take a screengrab or cache a web page and an employee gaff goes from urban legend to front page news.

Social media commentator and blogger Laurel Papworth tells the story of an ExxonMobil employee who, in a thoughtless Twitter post, tried and failed to manage the company’s reputation by comparing their 1989 oil spill in an Alaskan sound to a competitor’s much larger spill. “Although the Valdez oil spill was tragic, it was only 10 million gallons, compare that to the 73mil in the Nowruz Oil Field in 1983,” the ExxonMobil Twitter account said. The internet is an unforgiving place and this kind of throwaway logic will never just be quietly ignored or let to slide.

Papworth has many examples of clumsy social media by employees. “Another example is Frank from NAB,” she says. “He jumped on every blog, anywhere where people were critical of NAB. He didn’t realise that we bloggers get the IP address [of commenters] and we can get the address and do a look up and we could see it was coming from an NAB address.”

Whether it’s overzealous loyal employees trying to do good or just hyper-active generation Y self-promoters, companies must be aware that a socially active workforce already online is potentially risking your reputation, and you probably don’t even know they are there.

BRW

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