Social Marketing to the Business Customer is a book written by Paul Gillin and Eric Schwartzman about how to best utilize social marketing in the B2B market. One interesting topic that the book discusses is how companies should draft their social media policies and the many specific issues that may come up when companies and employees engage in social media in the public. The list of issues that may arise include privacy issues, employee right to free speech, use of disclaimers, potentail conflict of interest, compensation for bloggers or any other party for endoring products, confidentiality and copyright issues.
The list of potential problems raises a host of red flags and potential legal issues for allowing all employees to engage freely in social media without providing adequate training. Although employees have the right to free speech, a company policy encouraging employees to engage in social media marketing and communicating with the customers should not be implemented without significant investment in time and energy training the employees.
It also does not make sense to encourage all employees to participate freely in social marketing since it is impossible to control all communications and provide adequate training for such a large group. Instead, it make sense for companies to designate a select number of people with different expertise to advocate, communicate, monitor and engage in the social media arena. Social media policy and training can be provided to these employees so that their communications will engage the customers without causing legal, privacy and other issues for the company.
But what happens when an untrained employee mentions the company they work for in a social network using their personal account? The beauty and frustration of social media marketing is that you cant control most of it, much like the world of public relations. So should B2B companies avoid social marketing?
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