On Monday evening I had the pleasure of helping to present a masterclass for up-and-coming women business owners at the Women Into Business network in Glasgow. I gained a tremendous amount of practical skills and confidence from the WIB network when I started up, so it was an honour for this former student to be invited back as a teacher.
Morag Malloy from Fission Creative and I spoke to the group about using social media as a marketing tool. We spoke about how social media should be used as a means of branding and positioning, but not overt selling. We spoke about using the major social networks to build your prospects, gain respect and assistance, and grow your brand.
I took some time to explain to the group how social media is also about monitoring and protecting your brand: knowing what is being said about you, knowing what your competitors are up to, and spotting potential trouble before it manifests itself.
This morning, though, I wish I could assemble the group again and show them another example of why monitoring your brand through social media is about so much more than customer gripes and PR.
It can be a matter of life and death.
I followed and connected with a very talented professional in her field. I’ll call her Becky.
Becky was bubbly, chatty, and incredibly clever. Not a day went by when she did not share a useful piece of information, teach a new skill, or share a development in the field.
If you followed Becky, though, you knew that she was a troubled soul. These were not troubles of her choice or her making. Becky had the black dog at her heels, and she could no more get rid of him than she could stop the sun from rising.
Occasionally Becky’s professional tweets would be interspersed with sad indicators that she was struggling to get through the day. She would post that she hated herself. She would post self-loathing with as many expletives as she could fit into a tweet. She would post that she was trying hard not to let her co-workers see her cry. She would post threats to herself.
None of this, of course, is exclusive to social media. I had a friend do all of this a decade before social media existed. I learned to ignore 90% of it. So did Becky’s followers. But there came a point where the professional tweets disappeared altogether and her social media accounts turned into something very dark.
Over the summer I stopped following Becky when she posted some things which frankly made me feel embarassed for her. Aggressive and unsafe sexual behavior is a known side effect in severe depression. I didn’t need those details in my tweet stream. I wanted to mind her for the talented professional she was, not for the sad things her illness was making her do.
Last night I checked Becky’s account to see if things had gotten better for her. But I knew what I was going to see.
And I did. Not long after I unfollowed her, Becky died.
And that is that.
But one thing does trouble me.
Becky worked in a connected workplace. Everyone was online, all the time. Everyone was being social. The business was social. Her social media work was what got her the job. Her social media work was what made her the star.
Becky made no secret of the fact that she was hiding her depression from her employer. But she posted her struggles under her own name, her own profile, her own job. Her job and employer were public knowledge.
Did Becky use her social media duties to hide her illness in plain sight of the people sitting next to her? Was she solely in charge of social media monitoring at the company, allowing her to filter out the information she did not report to her employers?
Even if she was, was no one following her personally? Did no one see her switching between her work and Twitter all the time?
Did no one see her crying?
I do not know what went on at her workplace. For all I know they were fully aware and getting her help. For all I know they bent over backwards to help her get past the black dog.
Maybe they really didn’t know.
Maybe she made sure of that.
On Monday’s masterclass the topic of knowing what your staff are up to online was raised in the classic context of drunken party photos. Monitoring your brand was discussed in the context of avoiding negative PR.
But maybe monitoring your brand’s social media presence is also a way of supporting the talented and troubled staff member who can say things online she could never bring herself to say out loud to your face.
Maybe knowing what your employees are saying online is about more than ensuring they keep to the marketing messages.
Snooping on staff, you say. Noseying into their private business, you say.
Cleaning out the desk of someone who is never going to come back.
There will come a time when your gut tells you that the person you are working with is a special soul. Special souls need special handling. That may mean engaging with them in ways you find distasteful or intrusive. That may well mean monitoring them online. That may mean pissing them off, creating a tantrum about their rights, or implying distrust.
When the time comes, you will know. Weigh the ethical issues against the weight of your conscience. You will know what to do.
Thanks for that, A very thought- provoking piece. There are all sorts of issues surrounding ‘monitoring’ of employees’ social media, but if they involve their colleagues in their posts, by ‘friending’ them or putting them into the ‘Twittersphere’ I think we should treat this information just as you suggest. As part of the information that forms the relationship. Where a person acts in a worrying way, whether face to face or by social media, then businesses should think about how they support that. Also, I have also recently had friends who found the love and support of their extended social media circle to be priceless when their spouses have been seriously ill, and in one case died. The immediate feedback they got through long days gave them the strength they thought they had exhausted.