by McKenzie Boyle, Valerie Wiebmer and Makenzie Hammond
On Thursday, April 16th, we had a great class learning about the risks and responsibilities of social media. We started off class getting to check out the first episode of the Dew Tour PUSH featuring Josh Matthews (Kelli’s brother).
Once we got into the lecture we learned that some of the common concerns for companies joining social media are time commitment, information overload, unofficial accounts, and loss of control.
Kelli’s comment that “social media isn’t free” struck many members of the class. Lots of us who have ran social media accounts for organizations chimed in to agree that it takes time, management, and resources in order to be successful. When time and resources are not dedicated to managing organization twitter accounts, they are almost bound to fail.
Another interesting debate we went over was the presence of parody accounts and how to deal with them effectively. It can be difficult to try to combat them because that involves acknowledging them and giving them the power. Kelli’s advice was to take the high road and ignore the parody accounts, and let them die out slowly as new scandals appear and take the spotlight away.
We also discussed the importance of guidelines for employees if they are active on social media as representations of the organization. Companies need to have set policies on what is and isn’t okay for employees to say, and what behavior is appropriate to portray on social media.
Overall, we had a very interesting discussion about the risks of organizations using social media and the responsibilities needed to avoid those risks as much as possible.
