The Social Media Marketer

What Are Your Employees Saying?

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You've worked hard to get your company's message out on Facebook and Twitter.

You have a staff whose sole job is to work on getting potential clients to notice you, and to spend their money with you. You SEO team is full of professionals and you have a marketing message that seems to be getting results.

Then it happens. That lonely little typist out there in the office has also discovered Facebook. Tired of trying to meet her men in all the wrong places, she reads in Cosmo that Facebook and Twitter are great places to get hooked up. She builds her profile and puts her very favorite photograph on there, the one where she visited the Mary Kay party and they did her all up in their finest paints.

She puts on there she's looking for men, and she posts a whole list of bizarre interests - and yes, I did once have a co-worker whose interests included nude underwater crocheting, of all things - carefully aimed at getting the fellows to talk to her.

She argues, squabbles, engages in all sorts of flirtatious banter with men, real and imaginary, and has herself a grand old time. All harmless fun, right? Isn't hurting anyone?

Wrong.

It's all fun and games until that little typist puts her real name and where she works on her Facebook site.

It's all a real riot until she gets angry at the girl in the next cubicle and rants about her on her wall.

And when she turns her ire on you, the company owner, for some perceived slight, all your carefully planned SEO efforts and marketing work goes right out the window in the name of gossip.

That's because when someone types in the name of your company on Google, looking for information, they'll probably find your website. They might even find your company's Facebook or Twitter account.

And unfortunately, they'll probably turn up the Facebook page where your little typist is merrily whining out your company's secrets. Of course, you can't stop your employees from using the social media sites. After all, it's a free world and they have the right to have some fun too.

What you can - and should do - is implement a company policy about the use of the social media sites by your workers.

It's okay for them to make a profile and meet members of the opposite sex. It's even okay for them to post some weird interests. What's not okay, though, is for them to use your company's name - which you have worked so hard to build - while marketing themselves.

It's also not okay for them to share your company's confidential secrets and even your embarrassments on their own Facebook pages in order to make themselves look great.

Take some time, maybe even tonight, to run a search on Facebook and Twitter and see if your company's name is mentioned anywhere on there. See what's being said about you and if it matches your carefully tuned marketing plans and if it doesn't, take the appropriate action.

At the very least, you'll know that your little typist might just enjoy a new crochet hook and scuba mask for her next Christmas bonus.