Louis Halpern's View

Last night over dinner I was asked by a prominent friend of mine if he should let his kids go on Facebook. At first, this may not appear to be such a dilemma, but when he told me why he was concerned, it was easy to understand his reasons for being so cautious.

It’s an interesting dilemma. Children should be allowed explore the world whoever they are. However, I can also see that if you are a celebrity or a billionaire, then you have a different set of concerns to us mere mortals. My advice was:

• Encourage them to create an account
• Discuss if they are also on other services such as MySpace, Bebo, etc
• Really, really only accept friends they actually know
• Learn about the privacy settings
• Set the privacy settings to the maximum
• Think very carefully about the picture you put on your profile

Encourage them to create an account

You wouldn’t want them to be cut off from the rest of their real world friends. If you exclude them from these places then you are socially inhibiting them. Remember kids wonder how we ever managed to arrange to have a life before we had instant messaging, social networks, etc.

Discuss if they are also on other services

Most adults are aware of Facebook. A lot of grown-ups are on Twitter too. Well I have some news for those who are not in the digital communications business: there are lots of other social networking websites that your kids could and probably will want to use. The same sets of principles apply to these places too.

Really, really only accept friends they actually know

We all have acquaintances. Facebook encourages one to rate oneself by how many people are our friends. This blurs the boundaries. Quite rightly I was asked at dinner for this piece of reputation management advice because of the risk of acquaintances not being friends in anyway.

I advised that the real discussion my high profile friend should have with his kids is what is a friend? Whose house do they go to? Who comes to their house? And lots of similar questions – these are are criteria for accepting people as friends for this group (and perhaps everybody else).    If you want to be a bit extreme then tell the kids not to accept any inbound request, but my view is that we’re establishing some rules about being streetwise, which frankly, everybody needs to be.   Establish this and remember because of their unique concerns it is not rude to unfriend people too.

Privacy Settings

For these Celeb kids I think that the privacy and profile settings should be set to only “friends”. It’s no fun if your friends can’t see your pictures, posts, etc, but at the risk of being boring I’ll repeat myself – only accept those people as friends who are really your friends.

These guys have very valid security concerns, so one thing that’s very important is to monitor what other people are saying about them. The notifications settings are a very useful for this on Facebook in particular. My advice was to make sure that every time my friend’s kids are tagged they get an alert. They may even want to explain to their friend that they don’t want to be tagged as they have unusual concerns about their privacy. You can also limit who sees your pictures in the settings, that should be thought about too.

And the picture

In the case of my friend he’s not as paranoid as Michael Jackson, putting blankets over his kids’ faces when appearing in public. But there is still a desire in this case to limit the kids’ exposure, so obviously you should use the privacy settings so that only friends can see your picture and your profile can’t be found in searches. My advice is to be cautious here too. All your friends can see your picture and whilst they know what you look like, why not remove the temptation to cut and paste.

What an employee posts online, even in a personal guise, can have direct implications for their employer. This is a problem that we’ve seen before, from naked policeman in public sector organisations like The Met to offensive retail staff in Currys and PC World, and it’s a problem we can expect to see time and time again unless businesses start taking a proactive approach to educating their employees about online literacy.

Following the sacking of naked bobby Malcolm Thomas, a senior Met source said on the incidence that: “Firearms officers must behave impeccably in their professional and personal life. They cannot lay themselves open to blackmail or disclose information that could put them or their colleagues at risk. Armed officers keep surveillance on terrorists and serious criminal suspects. It is not appropriate that their most personal details should be open for anyone to view.”

Employers need to be proactive in ensuring that their workforce understands the impact of their online activity not just for them, but for the wider business. To make social media work for a company, employers must:

• Discuss it; social media is about engagement so talk about it
• Introduce social media standards as part of a company code of conduct. whilst giving individuals room to communicate their ideas
• Train key members of staff as social media Tsars (perhaps with some younger staff who understand the digital landscape)
• Provide training as part of annual and introductory reviews for all staff
• Set up official social media accounts across the major platforms

I keep hearing an old refrain that I was reminded of in an article in today’s Financial Times – “Twittering Workers Cost Businesses £1.4bn.” Oh yeah. All that time spent on social media at work. Shockingly, the article found the average person spends 40 minutes a week on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook (my casual observation is that this is an understatement) and valued the time wasted by employees at £1.4bn per annum.

I believe this research has the wrong spin. We should be talking about the potential for UK businesses to use their talent pool to spread positive messaging about their brands.

Just think… what do people do when they spend time on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc? They communicate, recommend, discuss and share thoughts. After all, everyone works for a brand, however big or small the organization. Customers will only continue to buy if they feel good about the service they’re receiving. So, it’s vital to tell everyone how good the company you work for is.

Your staff are going to take up time on social media whether you like it or not. The first step towards getting a return on your investment of time and money is to empower your staff to use social media to help your business.

Here are my tips to spreading the word on your organization:

* Find out who wants to be involved and own the project.

* Identify some true, positive things to say about your workplace.

* Discuss it – social media is about engagement, so talk about it!

* Set up official social media accounts across the major platforms.

Now, here are some starter points to make social messaging work for your company:

* Post true and positive messages about your company.

The logic of this strategy is twofold: If it’s positive, customers will like it. And if it’s not true… well, don’t lie.

* Encourage your staff to update their status in a work-related way.

Broadcast it, Retweet it, Digg it, the more honest positive reviews you have online, the better. Social media is about noise and engagement. If it’s not out there, no one will find out about, respond to, or be engaged with your product.

* Follow/Friend all your colleagues as a matter of course.

Friending your colleagues first encourages them to build an online social network that reflects the company’s real life one. In addition, it creates a powerful motivator for employees to advertise their company, connect and share ideas with one another.

* Encourage messaging about your achievements.

Social media is a great platform to increase awareness. Why not publicise positive performances in the workplace? If you do your part to encourage your employees, they are also more motivated to respond in kind. Who knows, all that extra visibility might even get some of your best people a pay rise.

* Drive traffic to your company’s website by encouraging the broadcasting of relevant links in posts.

Simultaneously enhance both your company’s visibility AND its reputation. Also, your website becomes associated with quality links and quality content – a great reflection on your brand.

* Communicate collaboratively with colleagues, suppliers and customers.

This strategy can help your business to increase productivity and provides an additional platform upon which you can build strategically to grow your business.

* Connect with thought leaders to get pushed industry information.

You don’t have to read the book, buy the magazine or attend the conference to connect to best minds in your industry. Using social media, get these ideas instantaneously and monitor the industry response.

* Contribute to idea formation in your industry by posting your thoughts and innovations.

Social media can help make you a leader in your own right. If your colleagues understand they can have an accessible, instantaneous and cutting edge stream of business-relevant information, they’ll return, link, comment and subscribe. Everyone wins.