Social Media PolicyHow Law Firms Build Trust for Your Business Online

Things we will cover✓Opportunities and risks in

using social media for your business

✓Protecting your business with a custom social media policy

✓How to leverage social media organically through partnering with a law firm

What is social media?

• Social Media describes the do-it-yourself-online (DIYO) tools and methods used to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media.

• DIYO tools turn each of us into a small publisher, news station, gossip column, and expert in the connected world.

These tools connect us across the globe 24 hours a day 7 days

a week

Why should you care?

• Traditional marketing costs BIG money and is considered successful if only it reaches a mere 2% of its audience.

• Explosive growth of blogs, Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter

• Pew Research: Adult internet users with a profile on a social networking site has more than quadrupled in the last three years.

Source: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1079/social-networks-grow

Getting your business into social media is only half of the message: managing

risk is key• *Recent survey of 123 CMOs:

✓ 2/3 of CMOs plan to increase social media budgets

✓ 3/4 of CMOs who had no 2009 revenue expectations for social media will have such expectations for 2010

• Deloitte LLP’s 2009 Ethics and Workplace survey found that only 17% of executives surveyed worked at a company with a program dedicated to mitigating the risk of social networking.

*Source: http://www.bazaarvoice.com/resources/research/543-cmo-club?q=cmo

Your employees are talking

• Employees access social media from work and home.

• When they do they represent you whether you like it or not

• Ignoring employee social media participation and potential misuse poses risks of real financial and legal consequences

Legal & Business Framework

Opportunities and Risks

There are Many Opportunities: Listening and Growing Revenue

Listen to, value, and retain your customers

Add to the bottom line and see more revenue*

Make a dialogue instead of a marketing monologue

Procter & Gamble's internal math shows that a dollar invested in its BeingGirl.com community is four times as effective as the same dollar spent on television

Josh Bernoff, Forrester Research

Source: Howard Greenstein, Creating Social Media Policies

Create an Army of Customer Evangelists

• Sony launched a community in 2003 (Sony 101) to educate, build interest in products, and increase customers.

• By 2008 the social media experiment yielded:

Using the “Crowd” to Reach the Public

Dell Ideastorm: gave direct voice to customers for online “brainstorm” sessions, sharing ideas, and collaborating with Dell. Result: community crossed the 10,000 idea mark and implemented nearly 400 ideas.

Gold Corp (failing gold mine): “we’ll show you all of our data on the Red Lake mine online if you tell us where we’re likely to find the next 6 million ounces of gold.” Result: 4 out out 5 mines yielded gold & prizes awarded to volunteer geologists.

Lending Industry: breakthroughs in community lending by companies like Zopa, Prosper, Community Lend, and Zillows

• “Crowd-sourcing” = public collaboration on a project

• Businesses can innovate and solve problems by enlisting the customer:

What Can Go Wrong?• Intellectual property issues

• Speech related issues

• Invasion of privacy

• Negligence

• Discovery issues

• Financial loss

• Reputation and loss of trust

Intellectual Property Issues

IssuesTriggering Scenarios Potential Solutions

Copyright infringement: using or sharing content you don’t own

Employee blogging Customer postings Use of multimedia

Clear fair use policyTake down provisionsUpload certifications

Trademark dilution and misuse: creating confusion about the source of goods or services

“Profile jacking” - competitor registers profile with your mark Facebook fan pages and customer evangelism Misleading posts about brand

Register first on all sites Third party use guidelines Brand monitoring (Radian 6)

Exposure of trade secrets: sharing confidential information that gives the business a competitive edge

Employee discussion posts Document sharing (cloud computing and Google Wave) Status updates

Confidentiality trainingTrade secret auditPolicy on status updates that cover work and home (NDAs)

Speech Related Issues

• Defamation: false statements of fact, harmful to someone’s reputation, published with negligence or malice. (Patent Troll blogger gets Cisco sued)

• Harassment: unwelcome conduct that unreasonably interferes with an employee’s work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.

Employer Liability Related Issues

Issue Triggering Scenarios

Potential Solutions

Discrimination – treating an employee differently based on a protected characteristic

Employee posts objectionable content to the employer on a personal blog (see Delta Airlines “Queen of the Sky” case)

Create blogging guidelines and maintain an open communication channel with employees about content they post

Invasion of Privacy – an unjustifiable intrusion into the personal information of your employees

Employers force employees to turn over passwords to social networking sites so they can view content (see Houston restaurant case)

Make it a condition of at-will employment that employees register social media accounts, and provide clear guidelines of how this information will be used.

Litigation Related Issues• Negligence: having a

social media policy can potentially protect a company from claims of negligence for harmful act’s of their employees to others in social media spaces

• Discovery issues: adversaries can look at your employee’s social media profiles as part of the fact gathering process

Public Relations Crisis• Two Dominos Pizza

employees posted this video on You Tube

• Viewed 1-million times in a week

• Google search for Dominos showed this as 1st hit

• Cost money and time for PR department to clean up

• Exposed business to potential class action suits by disgusted customers

Crafting a Custom Social Media Policy

Why is a Custom Policy Necessary?• The needs of each company

are different: there is no one-size-fits-all model policy

• Employee guidelines minimize the risk of abuse and mistakes, allowing the company to join the conversation

• Having a custom policy in place can negate negligence claims

Evaluating Your NeedsSMP Equation: if growth opportunities > current media

impact ÷ (liability) = need to join the conversation

How to Craft an Effective Social Media Policy

=

Based on these answers your lawyer can craft a policy that protects the legal interests associated your business goals, concerns, and potential outcomes.

Deployment: Putting Your Policy to Work

• Communication: publishing the policy (email, intranet, open web)

• Training: mandatory for all employees (modules, live classes, “pass-it-on”)

• Monitoring activity: listening to what is being said by your company and about your company with period reporting to your lawyers

• Employee input on the policy: quarterly reviews with focus groups

• Revising the policy: based on changing needs of the business and social media landscape, work with lawyers on annual reviews and revisions

Protecting yourself against litigation: partnering with a law firm through each stage of crafting, deploying, and revising your policy helps avoid legal issues

Making It All Work• Social media is here to

stay

• A law firm will help you craft a policy that fits your legal and business needs

• There is a continuing need to maintain law firm involvement after the policy is deployed to protect against potential litigation

How to Contact Mike Mintz

Direct Contact Online NetworksEmail: fragmintz@gmail.com Linkedin:

http://il.linkedin.com/in/mikemintzPhone (Israel): 052-591-6816 Twitter:

http://twitter.com/fragmintz Phone (US): 973-883-1064 Martindale-Hubbell Connected