Social Media: Are You Trusting Your Company Reputation to Your Most Low-Level Employees?

[image error]

Many years ago I was the communication officer for a home health care company. All our patient referrals came to a centralized call center or to the receptionist at our corporate headquarters.

This meant that the people answering the phones were the most important employees. If they messed up, we lost patients.

But unfortunately senior management did not realize this potentially weak link in the company's reputation – the weak line of low-paid employees with little invested in doing a good job at encouraging patient referrals.

My answer to this dilemma was to conduct phone training sessions for these employees. We worked together on effective ways to answer the incoming calls and to recognize outstanding employees.

Why bring this up now in the era of the Internet?



Because I just read several articles in the November 14th Wall Street Journal's special supplement "The Journal Report: Small Business." And a recurring point in these articles is that many companies are allowing their least-trained and least-invested (in the company's well-being) employees to participate on social media sites for the companies.

I should not be surprised, especially as a partner in a communications firm told me that he had never seen his company's Twitter account. Imagine this! It is his company's reputation on the line, and he doesn't know what is being said publicly in the company's name.



Bottom line? Your company needs to consider the risks of having your lower-level employees doing your social media.

I recommend that, if your company truly cannot allocate resources to have more senior employees doing social media as part of a strategic company plan, at the very least conduct periodic training sessions for the lower-level employees doing the company's social media.

And regardless of whether you yourself know how to use these tools, at least once a week check your company's social media activities on Twitter, Facebook, etc. to ensure that these activities are in line with your company's reputation and goals.

Otherwise you may be very surprised when your company gets in trouble because of something tweeted, for example, in your company's name by a low-level and untrained employee.

© 2011 Miller Mosaic, LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the marketing consulting company www.MillerMosaicLLC.com that helps clients effectively use social media and other online marketing strategies.

You can learn about Phyllis' fiction and nonfiction books – including her ebooks – at http://budurl.com/PZMbooks