Rules of Engagement for Social Media - Keep it Ethical and Legal
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The first pillar, integrity, fits well with being honest and transparent. CIPR advises its members to “be accurate when disseminating information…never use social media knowingly to mislead clients, employees, employers, colleagues or fellow professionals.” It’s probably also not a good idea to mislead potential customers of your clients! Users of social media have finely honed BS detectors, and will call you out if they go off.
Competence, quite simply, means knowing how to use social media in a way that won’t get you in trouble. One example the CIPR gives is remembering to disclose any financial interest you or your client have when, for instance, you contribute to a blog that recommends a particular supplier. There’s also the little matter of “ghosting” a blog, which is not quite the same thing as the fake blog committed by the PR firm working for Wal-Mart. (I’ll talk more about that in a bit).
Confidentiality as applied to social media means never revealing privileged information. As CIPR explains, “Confidential information should not be disclosed unless specific permission has been granted by the parties concerned; or unless it is in the public interest; or unless required to do so by law.” It's wise to keep in mind that anything released on the Internet can travel around the world in seconds, and is extremely difficult if not impossible to recall. Think about that before you go live with anything.
I’ve quickly covered ethics; what about the law? The CIPR points out that a lot of the same considerations that apply to print and broadcast also apply to social media (hence the earlier reference to not throwing out the rulebook). The areas that you must consider include intellectual property, disclosure/confidentiality, defamation, and invasion of privacy.
Here is where it gets a little tricky, since your country might have different laws from those of the UK, which is where the CIPR is based – and again, those are different from the U.S. laws on those issues. But there are certain similarities and "common sense" things to keep in mind. Take copyright, for example. If you use music in a podcast, you need to make sure you have permission. Nowadays there are web sites where you can find music for use under a Creative Commons license, which spells out explicitly how the music can be used. Generally, Creative Commons licenses are less restrictive than what we think of as full-fledged copyright, but more restrictive than the use you would be permitted to make of a work that is in the public domain. Covering the legal aspects of promotion in social media is almost worth an article in its own right; the reader is advised to do his research, with the CIPR’s guidelines as a starting point to understanding which areas deserve the most attention.
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