Benham Publishing Businesss Magazines February 2014 | Page 37

PatronsView Clear the fog – tweet or blog Social Media can be a scary prospect but if you use it strategically your business could see the benefits very quickly. Before you decide to start blogging their Facebook page with very little who are your “friends” (or people or tweeting remember the 80-20 effort. with permission) share your Is there any common ground documents. rule. 80 % of your posts must be informative and not sales based in nature and the remaining 20% of your posts can be promotional. between Cloud Computing and Social Media? The simple answer is “Yes”, both provide a level of file You may not feel brave enough to sharing available anywhere you tweet or blog yourself, but there are have a computer and an Internet Just as well, really, can you imagine a law firm using Facebook to store their files and records? Conversely, cloud computing is no place to tell Danny Walker the world what cereal you had for Managing Director IT Farm ways you can benefit your business connection. Both have the “friends” by finding out what your competitors or “sharing” concept, but with cloud breakfast. The two overlap in what are up to by looking at their tweets, computing the approach is driven they can do. They rarely overlap in blogs or what they are posting on from privacy, only letting the people the reasons for their use. 0845 600 1652 [email protected] www.itfarm.co.uk Social media and the law The conflict between the advantages of and risks posed by social media will always be difficult for employer’s to reconcile. A strong social media presence can be an invaluable tool for communication and marketing, but in the wrong hands social media can facilitate bullying, behaviours likely to harm business reputation, and even criminal activity – so much so that the Director of Public Prosecutions has issued guidelines for use by the Crown Prosecution Service in determining when to bring charges in cases involving social media. employer – this will allow for consistency in message and a degree of control over the social media activity. I would also strongly recommend that all employers have a social media policy that sets out what is and is not permitted behaviour – from accessing Facebook from a work PC to making comments that may implicate the employer’s business on Twitter (even if made outside normal working hours). database of contacts has shifted to I would suggest that employers consider limiting the number of employees who are permitted