Question: “Our staff met yesterday to “brainstorm” different ways we can engage in social media and one of the things that we got hung up on was Facebook and how to get staff involved. Currently, posts are made by various staff but always under the corporate identity. We have differing opinions as how to represent ourselves on Facebook. Some feel that all the staff should post under our corporate identity and others feel that those staff who are posting should be identified individually. This turned into a conversation (heated discussion) about setting up accounts for each person. There is lots of concern about linking their personal FB accounts with the corporate account.”
At the end of it … my boss turned to me and said … “why don’t you ask Rodney what he thinks!”
Great question! This is a problem that we encounter over and over so you’re not alone there. Strict social media rules would say that you should be transparent and identify who you are, be personal – Paul Cubbon would argue for this until he’s blue in the face. See The Peak radio station’s page as an example – they do an amazing job of this. It works for their business because each of the people posting have very public, client-facing personalities.
However, Facebook doesn’t make it easy logistically. If you are an admin, your posts appear as the organization. You could set up a second account but Facebook policy says you’re only allowed one account (although, cough, some people have many). They have created a new business account option to solve this problem.
I’m personally on the fence with this one. Transparency is essential when using social media. I think there’s room for both and it should be judged on a per-business or even per-post basis. On our Think Fan Page, you’ll see that we do it on a case by case basis. If I’ve just been meeting with a client, I’ll identify myself. If I’m sharing information, I’ll send it from the company.
Consistency is really important. If you have multiple people posting, there should be very clear guidelines on the voice/personality that you create. Some admins identify themselves in the post itself but this looks strange to me.
A tourism marketing organization on the other hand, to the consumer, is one organization. It’s a little less personal and you’re dealing with a ton of people. That is, at least until they’ve met your staff. How many of the fans you intend to attract will have met someone who works there? This is one of the reasons that establishing a personality (Hotel Dog) is a work-around.
The simplest solution could be to have one person responsible for FB until you have a clear strategy and guidelines on who does what and how they should be doing it. You could always allow users to sign off with their name too if its appropriate. I haven’t seen anyone doing that. Eg:
Think! Social Media [insert message here] – Rodney
Helpful or confusing? How do you do it?
