Perils of social media pt.2

Further to my previous post about the unfortunate MySpace-rs of the Clay County Clerk's Office in Florida, Roma Luciw, a reporter with Canadian national daily Globe and Mail has posted a blog entry about how corporations can also get stung by social media.

The posting records tribulations at Wall Street law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP. The firm is fighting a battle against a series of anonymous bloggers who claim to tell of a highly negative corporate culture.

So virulent have the postings become that they threaten to put a permanent stain the firm's reputation. (Though a law suit brought by a gay employee alleging discrimination may also not have helped.)

Blogging, Luciw asserts, has become an easy way to throw open the curtain on corporate goings-on that would have previously been easier to cover up. But I wonder, does it make the role of the internal communicator in ensuring happy employees who won't feel the need to say anonymous nasty things about a company even more important?

 

Comments

[Judy Gombita]

Hi James,

That was a very interesting article, but I’d like to point out that it appeared in the January 31st *print* edition of the G&M (and was available for free online viewing for one week), rather than being a blog post. (It would be sad for the readers of Melcrum’s blog to think that the G&M required a paid subscription to read its blogs.) For those who wish to read the entire article, they might consider signing up for the free 14-day trial of the “Globe Insider” subscription.

Regardless, I’ve excerpted the last couple of paragraphs from the article, which I believe have a direct bearing on internal communicators:

* * *

Bruce MacLellan, president of Environics Communications in Toronto, says that "transparency in the corporate workplace has gone through the roof," which could prove to be a positive influence for corporate behaviour. "With blogging, the stakes have become so high that there is even more pressure to do the right thing.

"This is where companies are just going to have to recognize a whole new level of accountability," he said, adding that "those who act honourably will be recognized and those who don't will suffer."

He believes companies should monitor blogging so that they know what is being said about them, map out important sites, designate a senior employee who can post responses on behalf of the company, and establish official corporate blogging guidelines.

"You can't keep corporate culture behind a curtain any more," Mr. MacLellan said. "The Internet has opened that curtain."

* * *

Finally, a heads up about a G&M blog that is very good (and the content always remains open):

www.mathewingram.com/work/

Mathew serves as both a reporter/blogger for the Globe and Mail. He’s also one of the founders/organizers of last year’s mesh conference (i.e., Web 2.0) held in Toronto (and scheduled again for May of 2007), which many consider the benchmark social media conference held in Canada in 2006. (I hope to register and attend again, before it books to capacity.)

Cheers,
Judy

[Mark Darby]

Apologies for the rather simple question, but linked into the perils of social media.

At Visa we are currently in the process of building our internal blogging tool. Does anyone have views on anonymous responses?

The IC department is split between allowing all responses to be anonymous so people can say what they like, and the group saying that contributors must say who they are.

Mark