Enterprise 2.0

So I am here with the final post for Enterprise 2.0, and I would like to thank each and every visitor of my blog for your valuable support and comments, which helped me, keep my blog lively every week. This week I will be writing a post on, the risks and concerns regarding the usage of social tools in organisations. Well, social technology has got its own benefits and drawbacks. If you have read all of my blog posts, you will find ample of positivity on implementing social technology. However, this post will be specially focused on what would be the downside of using social technology, without knowing its consequences for improper usage. Although, I love social technology, there are certain factors which can disturb the standard and reputation of an organisation, if social media is misused. Following are few of the drawbacks of using social media in organisations:

1. Negative comments on the organisation: There might be few instances where employees write negative comments on the organisation over social media. This can have a negative impact on its consumers, which eventually might hamper its market reputation.

2. Fraud: It’s necessary for organisations to monitor its social presence even if they do not intend to use it. This is required because; any individual or an entity can create a fraudulent social identity for the organisation.

3. Reliability on an individual: At times organisations, hand over its social marketing responsibility to its social media manager/writer. The entire reputation relies on the person’s capability to reach out the social audience. This can damage the brand value of the organisation if not dealt with care and importance.

To illustrate the above mentioned factors, I will be writing on an organisation which was targeted for the misuse of social media. BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) is one of the oldest international broadcasting organisations, and is very well known in the industry of mass media. It was established in the year 1922 and has been successful in broadcasting its service worldwide. Today, BBC has been broadcasting its service over 28 languages to roughly 120 million people over the globe. It offers five radio networks, and national television channels which broadcast music, news and information services. It has not only reached people through television but has established its social presence through social sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook etc. Furthermore, they own the following popular brands such as Demon Music Group, BBC Shop, BBC Motion Gallery, Left Bank Pictures, Penguin Group, Immediate Media Company, Random House Audio and BBC Magazines.

Impact of misusing social media

Though BBC has been providing entertainment and information to millions of people, it has been found guilty for couple of instances for misusing social media by its own employees. As a result, organisation as well as the employees had to face certain consequences. Well social media cannot be blamed for being so effective in reaching billions of people instantly. I would say unethical behaviour and lack of professionalism in using social media by employees would be the prime reason for such unfortunate incidents. In this post, I will brief on two incidents where misuse of social media caused havoc within this organisation.

1. Inappropriate behaviour by BBC employees over social media

In the year 2012, BBC sacked two of its employees for their misconduct over social media. This disciplinary action was taken after the BBC broadcaster posted inappropriate content in social sites namely, Facebook and Twitter. The broadcasters had tweeted content relevant to various ‘Problems’ faced at their workplace. Further, the director of BBC news Fran Unsworth said that “Some of our problems were not played out publicly across the social media and in the pages of the national press”.

Solution: This incident certainly cracked the impression of the brand name BBC in the corporate sector. This could have been avoided if proper ethical guidelines on using social media were provided to the employees. Well this alone wouldn’t have sorted out the issue. In addition to the framing of ethical guidelines, employees should follow them, irrespective of any condition, situation or professional issues.

2. False information over social media

Recently, BBC was targeted for presenting false pictures on the ‘Israel Gaza conflict’. BBC allegedly posted fake pictures of Israeli airstrikes over Gaza under the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack over Twitter. However, BBC was found guilty in regard to this incident. One of the BBC journalists Tom Gross stated that, some of the BBC senior correspondents in the Middle East were responsible for such an irresponsible incident to occur.

Solution: As per my opinion, any organisation should inspect the sensitive content before it goes viral over the social media. A good practice would be to evaluate the content by different departmental levels, before sharing it worldwide through social media, instead of giving a single person or couple of employees the privilege of representing the organisation over social network. The bottom line is, any organisation for such, shouldn’t try to gain popularity or publicity by implementing unethical means for success.

Following are the three obstacles, organisations have to overcome in order to keep their social presence intact:

1. Inadequate social strategy and guidance: Some of the organisations avoid using the social media. This could be either due to the insufficient resources to maintain their social presence or due to the fear of implementing a different approach towards social business. As a result of which there is no proper guidance provided to the employees. This may lead to inappropriate use of social media by the employees.

2. Policies pertaining to social media could be hard to understand: Social policies should be easily understandable by the employees. If the policy is complex to understand and follow, then employees are more likely to ignore it. Therefore it’s necessary for the organisations to create social media policies which are simple to follow.

3. Avoid bad corporate culture: Organisations should build a positive and friendly corporate culture so that its employees share good feedback and opinions on the organisation. This could be beneficial for the organisation, since it can spread a positive vibe socially, which in turn helps in establishing a good social presence. Employees that hate their work are more likely to share bad experience over social media.

However, it’s very essential for the organisations to frame social media guidelines, but more importantly it’s necessary for employees to follow them. I came across a paper which was researched and written by ‘James Hohmann’ of politico for the 2010-11 ASNE (American Society of News Editors) ethics and values committee. This paper specifies 10 Best Practices for Social Media helpful guidelines for news organizations. Though they are specifically meant for news organisations, they can also be applied in other corporate sectors which use social media. Following are the 10 practices for social media, if followed:

1. Traditional ethics rules still apply online.
2. Assume everything you write online will become public.
3. Use social media to engage with readers, but professionally.
4. Break news on your website, not on Twitter.
5. Beware of perceptions.
6. Independently authenticate anything found on a social networking site.
7. Always identify yourself as a journalist.
8. Social networks are tools not toys.
9. Be transparent and admit when you’re wrong online.
10. Keep internal deliberations confidential.

I would like to conclude this post by associating the social media misuse case of BBC, with few of the practices specified above.

1. Assume everything you write online will become public: In case of ‘Israel Gaza dispute’, the organisation should have forethought before posting false pictures over social media. If the organisation had reconsidered about the impact prior to the sharing of sensitive information, this issue could have been avoided.

2. Keep internal deliberations confidential: In another case, BBC broadcasters shouldn’t have written on the organisation's work culture publicly over social networking sites. Irrespective of whether an employee dislikes an organisation's work culture, any issue pertaining to the work place should be resolved in a professional manner.

Finally, I would like to thank all of my readers for visiting my post and I am hoping for a good number of comments :p Please feel free to comment on your opinion and suggestion on this post. This post mainly consisted the consequences of misusing social media, which obviously feels so negative about this post. In order to spice up positivity, I have included a short video below. This video gives us a message on how social media could be useful for transforming a person from underdog to a real winner! So cheer up and watch this video:
(P.S. this video is not relevant to the context of this post. I liked it very much, so couldn’t help myself from sharing it :p)