ESPN has apparently banned its employees from posting any sports-related social media content on the web unless it’s approved by the company and is in ESPN’s best interest. The only reason this news may be slightly surprising is because ESPN has been outwardly very supportive of social media interaction, including sites like Twitter.
So is this another example of corporate America being unreasonable towards its employees regarding their personal life and activity on the web?
Historically (a short history, but a history nonetheless), corporate America has been wary of employees doing things like blogging. There’s a risk factor involved in the potential misrepresentation of the company at hand. This wasn’t really too much of an issue prior to blogging platforms enabling everyone to publish their opinions to the world, but now the issue has become large enough for companies to include stipulations in their regulatory practices.
What’s interesting to me is the long-standing push and pull corporate America has had with its employees regarding web usage, social networking, and the benefits and risks therein. When blogging first became prevalent, it was a huge risk for employees to blog about anything. I know many people that got their start under a pseudonym. But as blogs permeated our culture and further benefited corporate brand-building, the reigns began to loosen up.
So what’s happened?
Social media took over, opened up its platforms, and made it even easier for users to share information, interact with others and leverage their existing networks. This can be great from a marketing perspective, but it also means that a lot more attention needs to be given to the way a brand is being publicly portrayed. Now that a bit of the wild west has returned to social media, corporate America has to figure out (again) how to handle the fact that consumers and employees alike wield massive influence over their branding.
Back to square one.
I expect that we’ll see a similar push and pull between corporate America and its employees now that Twitter has taken over and Facebook is making its newsfeeds more accessible to a wider cast than just one’s immediate social graph. But it still begs the question; can corporate America utilize its employees to manage its brand online?
Now that brands have accepted the fact that interactive marketing practices are prevaling for online campaigns, they’ve begun to participate for themselves. They’re launching teams of social media experts to respond to tweets and manage forums. But what about the rest of the employees that have no direct responsibility for the portrayl of the brand online? Well, the brand company would argue that every employee has a direct responsibility for this, but I’m talking about the ones that aren’t working in social media as part of their daily job description. Can a corporate brand leverage these employees to manage their brand online? It would take a great deal of incentives and a large dedication on the part of all parties involved, but in many ways, this may be the direction in which corporate America is headed.
What are your thoughts on the matter? How would you feel if your company asked you to keep its brand in mind no matter what you’re doing online?