I had to rant to the friends. A most suitable audience, I thought. These are PR and Comms professionals, as good as anyone can get within the industry across ad agencies, in-house, international, alternative and traditional media. They would be able to give me their objective opinions about this rant.
A foreign guest had left a comment on the organization's corporate fb page. I had very politely sidestepped MarComms' request to reply his comment from my personal facebook account and offered to set up a new team account to sort out the matter of replies. MarComms insisted on us replying from a personal account because it would sound friendlier, and had the cheek to suggest then, someone else who had seen the guest reply from his/her personal fb account. So I didn't let it go. I thought really hard and sent an email to all relevant people, demanding for clarity in this request and follow-up action.
Since when did this become a policy directive? How is it even possible to have it encouraged as a move undertaken by the Marketing and Communications department? I'm furious. As much as I understand that MarComms would like our attitude to clients to be friendly and warm, this is the wrong approach to take. It is frankly, a juvenile marketing strategy that doesn't thoroughly consider the can of worms it is opening.
What are these people in the department doing? Do they even understand what social media is before utilizing it? What happened to privacy and space? Even if we don't talk about privacy issues, is it fair to expect everyone to have personal facebook accounts? Have they considered the repercussions of such a reply from a personal account? It's very disgraceful when one takes this discussion (in context) to the professional public relations viewpoint. That avatar photo you put on your fb intro page might be completely contradictory to the organization's image. Is MarComms able to dictate and control what I say to the client from my personal fb account? Can they control what happens when I ignore the clients' 'friend' requests? What message I'm sending- that 'it's okay for me to reply you, but you can't be my friend?' What more if someone doesn't set privacy controls and opens up all sorts of political opinions and thoughts to all and sundry, and provides an ease of access to our clients? AND, when one leaves the organization, is it right that these fb contacts become one's personal liability? A bank would never allow that.
A visit that I hosted on Monday had its roots on facebook. Clients who made friends with a colleague, wrote on her wall that they would like to visit and thankfully, followed up in an email. I knew it first because I happened to be on facebook scrolling through her pages. Even if she doesn't mind work contacts talking about work on her personal account, I do. Other people would too. But do MarComms realize what this means to our department? If we set a precedent, our clients will simply use facebook as a platform to get to us because it's a communication tool. So our personal and professional spheres mesh into one.
If a reply from a name on a fb account is expected, then I want clarity from my senior management that I'm expected to set up a fb account in my name for work purposes only. Then, I want to find out what sort of personal life I'd have since this account has to be tended to 24/7 according to the service standards of the organization.
The nature of our business dictates the communication strategy and how we should maximize the potential of social media. Being friendly to clients like how social enterprises and small businesses or people-centred businesses need to be, don't quite cut it for us. Jumping on the bandwagon of the social media platform requires a modicum of brains. Obviously, this MarComms department doesn't possess that fully. PR and Comms professionals, you'll know exactly where I'm coming from. We know that this sort of a fb/twitter/plurk/tumblr account is heavily monitored and intentionally engineered by social media professionals to send out the right messages for a certain purpose.
If my organization thinks it's perfectly fine to answer clients from our personal fb accounts and sort out work issues from there, clearly, I feel that something is very wrong.
14 comments:
cannot lah. fb cannot lah. don't even go there. it will get super messy and with full of regrets later, because to unfriend a person, it will lead to so much complications. but if you don't, you'd need to group this and that and remember who can see what, and surely something will cock up wan.
haisay. typing and thinking what could happen is already giving me a headache.
What you guys need is your own Old Spice guy :)
Well, business and personal separate. I don't even use my real name in FB to make sure that nobody can find me there.
And yeah I told my boss very loudly once: "I DELETED MY FACEBOOK ACCOUNT!" Think he got the hint hee hee.
Madness! What are they thinking????
good pointz people, VERY good points.
See how the organization likes it if people reply clients from their personal fb account with a huge avatar of a whisky bottle, or a Hello Kitty or a quotation that speaks clearly of support for certain causes, campaigns and political parties. We cannot EXPECT people to recognize what is suitable to be displayed to international clients.
or reply from personal FB account that uses a screen name like mine? hehe
why would an organisation even consider that their staff use personal fb for work purposes?
Just don't hate me in the process.
pinkclothmicrophone: TOTALLY nothing to do with you. i'm very clear on that. :D it's also kinda upstairs- generational gap happens. Heeeee. your office, bullies you! it's your birthday. have a good one girl!
Wow, I'm shocked they'd even considered it. As a client, I'd find it quite unprofessional.
you have a FB account?!! heh.. it is quite silly. There are all sorts of nonsense stuff on FB that other ppl can post on your account. There is no reason to expect you to reply via a personal account.
Very interesting. Because today, I went to a feedback link set up by my organisation and I realized the feedback is hosted on FB. I am expected to respond to the feedback but I don't like to expose my FB identity. Neither do I want to set up another account for that purpose. So I choose not to respond.
Social media for corporations must be dealt with from a professional standpoint, not individual basis. Your marcoms don't understand that? How can?
mamapumpkin: yup.
wildgoose: a de-activated one now. exactly. restricted privacy settings to 'friends' don't mean you get tactful or savvy friends to post proper things online for the rest of the world to read.
sesame: some of my bosses don't comprehend the full implications either. it's just a matter of trying to hard to be hip, but painfully, falling short of professional standards.
thats quite unprofessional!(of the company i mean)
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