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Are you a networker who is a Twitter fan? Do you find it snappy and informative, cute or irritating?
Apart from the irritation many people feel at the volume of "tweets", the instant messages updating a host of recipients about activities and anything else that can be squeezed into a short communication spurt, adding business updates on financial news, emerging legal trends and product recommendations opens up yet another drawer in the Pandora's Box of electronic information management headaches.
It's not a yes or no equation as suggested in this YouTube selection. It's how you manage the challenge with a social networking strategy. Don't be twitterpated!
The zeal with which social networking applications (from Twitter to Facebook and beyond) are taken up by business can have surprising consequences. Even some law firms have jumped on the bandwagon, using Twitter to share knowledge with clients and prospects. But, advantages in one context may translate into risk for another. The greatest risk in social networking applications may come from not knowing if or by whom they are being used--or why.
Apart from the irritation many people feel at the volume of "tweets", the instant messages updating a host of recipients about activities and anything else that can be squeezed into a short communication spurt, adding business updates on financial news, emerging legal trends and product recommendations opens up yet another drawer in the Pandora's Box of electronic information management headaches.
Remember: your desire to keep clients and associates informed may be taken as your conscious endorsement of a view, trend or product. Further, the social nature of tweets--short, punchy, manifestly out of context--means that the author has no real grasp of the pattern created over time. Any good litigation lawyer will tell you how to work a pattern to best advantage in a court of law.
Our advice?
1) Recognise that social networking is hitting your business. Whether sanctioned or not, our informal reading across many sectors suggests that social networking tools from Facebook to Ziggs are blurring social/business boundaries. Yes, the first step is admitting there is a problem.
2) Turn that problem into opportunity. Map out your strategy for integrating social applications into business process. Provide training to optimize use of various tools, highlight risk areas and ensure regular, provable guidance to staff.
3) Establish policy, disclaimers and retention plans that demonstrate a defensible business practice.
4) Update your tweets: today we established a plan to limit company legal liability incurred through staff use of twitter at work!
Tweets, the instant messages broadcast through Twitter, are e-Discoverable.
Beware the twitterpation!
