Social Media Engagement - Assignment Example

Name: Instructor name: Course name: Date: Word count: 1 (a) Why do you think it is appropriate to treat communication on a platform such as Facebook as form of public rather than private communication? When joining Facebook a person is required to provide personal information so that one can be allowed to join. This personal information and every other information that one post on the site can be accessed by friends and other individuals that one interact with while on Facebook. Facebook administrators retain the right to reveal ones identity and everything one post on their site to the authority whenever required to do so. Also according to Facebook policies they control the information and content being posted on their website. Therefore everything that a person posts on the website is viewed by the administrators (Wollan, Smith & Zhou, 2010). When a person provide a physical location or hometown it becomes easier for the businesses in the earlier to be able to provide or offer opportunities directly to the person. Also cyber-criminals are able to target your home due to the information you provide. A person also receives targeted adverts due to the information one provides and the sites one visits. Whatever information a person post on the Facebook it is stored somewhere on the server, which means that, it can be retrieved by the administrators any time. (b) Why shouldn’t you post anything you wouldn’t want your boss or future employer to read? The reason is that, your boss can be able to see these comments and in case they are work related the boss will take appropriate action in accordance to the company policies. For instance, if you posted something which might be defamatory or malicious, it will damage or dent the image of the company. If the post contains information about a sensitive issue such as political opinion, religious inclination or other social issues it might be considered as an opinion of the company (Tripathi, 2008). The boss is supposed to ensure that you face some disciplinary action which could be a verbal or written warning or, in more serious cases, terminate your employment with the organisation. Your future employer can be able to retrieve all the informations about you such as medical conditions, religious and political affiliations and family circumstances which may form the basis for a discrimination claim when you are applying for a job. This information about you could also make your future employer to overlook or fail to consider you for certain jobs or activities due to your religious and political affiliations or heath conditions (Wollan, Smith & Zhou, 2010). Also the information that one post on the social media becomes portrays what kind of a person one is. Your future employer is able to know whether you are outgoing, courageous, hardworking, how spend your leisure time and even your education level. By doing this he or she is able to know whether you will be able to fit in the organisation or not, even before they can hire you. This information reveals so much information about you even before a person is able to meet you in person. 2. How Telstra’s social media engagement policy provides protection for the employees. It ensure s that there shall be no posting of material that is obscene, defamatory, discriminatory, threating, harassing or hateful to any person or entity on the social media by anyone working in Telstra. By adhering to these policies it ensures that the Telstra employees are well protected from harassment or discrimination of any kind either form within the organisation or outside the organisation. It also ensures that there shall be no disclosure of personal information of any of the employees in social media by anyone who works in Telstra. This ensures that the information about the employees is not revealed to the outside world. The policies also ensure that the employees treat every individual and communities with respect when they interact. It also ensures that employees are polite and respectful of other people’s opinion at all time (Telstra, 2011). The policies also state that all the employees should conform to the cultural and behavioural norms. This ensures that the employees will not engage in activities which go against the cultural and behavioural norms hence ensuring the protection of the employees from any anti-social behaviour (Telstra, 2012). The employee should also ensure that the information that the information that they share on social media is correct and precisely accurate so as to avoid offending anyone or giving out information that might hurt the company or dent its image. The policies also ensure that the employees should use a disclaimer when offering their personal perspective on a matter so as to avoid a scenario where their personal opinion might be viewed as an opinion of the Telstra. The employees are supposed to identify them as Telstra employees or contractor if they refer to Telstra, its people, products and services, its competitors or other business related individuals. This ensures that whatever the information that they shall be giving it well calculated and cannot cause any harm either to Telstra, its competitors or other business related individuals or organisations (Weinberg, 2009). 3. Why the policies should be grounded in ethics. The policies should assign some level of responsibility in terms of their online behaviour concerning authorised business or personal use. The policy should be very clear to the employees that, they are responsible for their individual activities on the social media and that they should seek guidance and interpretation of the policies, if they have any doubt about how the policy works, before posting any information. The policies should also make it clear to the employees that they should disclosure their relationship with the organisation which should include indicating clearly whether or not they are sanctioned to speak or transact any business deal on the behalf of the organisation (Wollan, Smith & Zhou, 2010). The social media are supposed to offer the employees with an understanding of how their personal or business use of social media platform interconnects with the organisations self-interest, particularly the brand and the public image of the company. Therefore the employees are supposed to be made to understand that their activities on the social media platforms can have very dire consequences on the reputation of the company. The policies therefore will acts as a guideline to the employees whenever they are posting or commenting on various issues on the social media on platforms (Weinberg, 2009). As much as the policies are supposed to act as a guideline to the employees while participating on the social media, they should also recognise the rights of the employees to engage with the social media in their personal lives. The policy should not prohibit the use of social media by employees, but it should not give the employees freedom to comment or say whatever they like about the organisation. The policy should provide an opportunity to the employees to speak openly about the organisation but it should remind them to be careful of their activities on the social media platforms so as to avoid damaging the organisation’s reputation, commercial interests or bringing the organisation into disarray (Tripathi, 2008). The policies should also make it clear to the employees that they should always respect the privacy, copyrights of the organisation; disclose financial position and other applicable laws when publishing information on social media platforms. They should always seek clarification and advice whenever they are not sure or in doubt about the information they are posting. 4. Adherence to the Terms of Use and conforming to the cultural and behavioural norms of the social media platform being used. This provision makes sense in marketing communications perspective because when the employees interact with other people online, they will respect their opinion and also respect the other people who they interact with in their daily lives and in doing so, there will be no any case of employee conflict, either among themselves or with people from outside the organisation. An employee conflict is something which might dent the image of the company or bring the organisation into disarray (Wollan, Smith & Zhou, 2010). This provision makes sense in marketing communications perspective because when the employees post information on the social media they will ensure that the content is precisely accurate and complies fully with the relevant company policies especially that information which directly relates with confidentiality and disclosure of sensitive information about the organisation (Weinberg, 2009). This provision makes sense in marketing communications perspective because the employees will only disclose publicly available information. The employees will not comment or disclose confidential organisation information such as future business performance, financial information, imminent departure of key executives and future business performance and this will not harm the organisation image in the public domain (Tripathi, 2008). This provision makes sense in marketing communications perspective because when the employees will not post any information on the social media which is obscene, defamatory, discriminatory, threating, harassing or hateful to any person or individual within the organisation. If any employee does not conform to this policy they might post information which may dent the image of the company, competitors or other related business parties. This provision makes sense in marketing communications perspective because when posting information on the social media the employees are supposed to use a disclaimer in order to show that whatever information they are posting does not represent the opinion of the organisation, so that anyone viewing the information will not misinterpret the information and dent the image of the organisation. For instance a sale person of the organisation may post certain about the competitor and the competitor view that information as an opinion of the organisation and sue the organisation something which will damage the relation of the company and its image to the public (Weinberg, 2009). 5. Explain what the Telstra employee did wrong by maintaining the fake Stephen Conroy twitter site. The employee commented and disclosed confidential information about imminent departure of key executives without authorisation from top officials of the organisation. This is clearly against the social media policies of the organisation and therefore contravened the social media policies of Telstra (Telstra, 2011). The employee did not ensure that the information he or she published was precisely accurate and complied with relevant company especially that information relating to confidentiality and disclosure of sensitive information. And this clearly breaches the social media policies of Telstra as an organisation (Telstra, 2011). The employee did not ensure that the information he or she published was in accordance to the Telstra Social Media Conversation Calendar. In so doing so he or she went against the social media policies of the organisation (Telstra, 2011). The employee did not receive appropriate internal clearances and approval in accordance with Telstra’s policy for releasing information in the public domain (Telstra, 2011). The employee also disclosed personal information in social media venues and did not comply with the Privacy Policy and the Marketing Privacy Policy (Telstra, 2011). The employee did not adhere to the Terms of Use of the social media platform and did not seek to conform to the cultural and behavioural norms and hence breached the organisation’s social media policies (Telstra, 2011). The employee knowingly used the identity of another Telstra employee something which goes against the organisation social media policies (Telstra, 2011). The employee did not complete the Telstra social media authorisation process before he or she could represent Telstra in social media platforms and in so doing he contravened the social media policies of Telstra (Telstra, 2011). The employee was not respectful to other individuals and communities when he or she interacted with them online especially when he or she posted that “I nabbed seat 1B! A person in wheelchair was going to get it. Lucky IM CONROY! Trump card played!” (Telstra, 2011) The person implied that he was authorised to represent the organisation and transact business on behalf of others something that is against the policies of the organisation. In so doing he or she went against the organisation social media policies (Telstra, 2011). The employee contravened the organisations social media policies when he or she did not adhere to Telstra’s Policy on Acceptable Use of Provided Services and Information Systems when he or she used Telstra provided services that were made available to the employee while working for the organisation (Telstra, 2011). Reference Mandiberg M (2012) The Social Media Reader New York: NYU Press. Telstra, (2011) The 3Rs of Social Media Engagement, http://exchange.telstra.com.au/training/flip.html Tripathi (2008). Prinssciples of Management Beijing: Tata McGraw-Hill Education. Wollan R, Smith N & Zhou C (2010) The Social Media Management Handbook: Everything You Need To Know To Get The Social Media Working In Your Business. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Weinberg T (2009) The New Community Rules: Marketing On The Social Web. California: “O’Reilly Media, Inc.” Read More