For most businesses, modern marketing, advertising and promoting involve having a presence in social media. Though a business may not be engaged in social media at present, social media participation, whether official or unofficial, seems to be an inevitability for all. Whilst the number of social media networks may be incalculable as previously non-social sites develop a social aspect, one thing is certain: the number of people, and thus potential customers and critics, who use social media is staggering. Facebook alone garnered 1.15-billion users by 2013. Twitter and Google+ enjoyed 500-million users each last year. Whilst Facebook, Google+ and Twitter are social media giants, business gains can be derived from countless social media outlets.

The benefits to social media participation include the ability to engage more personally with individual customers and critics, being able to “listen” or monitor what is being said about the business or other topics of interest, scanning for potential employees and getting to give a business a unique voice. Some businesses use big data analytics on social media activities to derive valuable consumer data to use in advertising. The biggest concern with social media participation is privacy.

At first blush, one might think that social media and privacy are on almost opposite sides of the spectrum, but privacy is a fundamental right protected by the EU under article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and article 7 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and therefore must be guarded. More specifically, in the UK, the Data Protection Act of 1998 protects the processing of data of identifiable, living individuals. These pieces of legislation were developed before social media really took off. The future of legislation in the EU in regards to social media is being debated for the proposed General Data Protection Regulation, which contains protective provisions such as the “right to be forgotten” and restrictions on profiling.

In addition to wider privacy concerns, businesses must also consider privacy concerns of their employees that use social media, whether during the course of their employment or from their homes. Employment contracts naturally contain disciplinary policies that businesses now seem to have to turn to routinely in reference to social media activities. At the same time, however, businesses must balance their employees’ right to freedom of expression.

If your business or your business’ employees participate in social media, be sure to make your expectations clear. For those who have a social media voice with an official presence: make sure that the employee management team is well-trained and kept abreast of all company policies, activities and stances so that their interaction with customers and critics is intelligent, informative and appropriate. Please contact us if you are ready to speak to your employees about social media behaviour or ready to train a social media team to give your business a new electronic voice.

SHARE THIS: