Should Companies Allow Employees to Develop Professional Brands From A Personal Twitter Account?

If you're enough of a player to be involved in the discussions, you'll recognize the dilemma.  A company, perhaps your company, wants a Twitter presence, although they may have no clue why they want it.  With this is mind, they start to understand the tech behind Twitter a bit and they come to this shocking realization - Twitter is driven by personality and you really need a person to dedicate time to the effort to have any type of impact.

Then another realization hits - if we allow employees to develop followings based on their professional identities and our company brand, if they leave, those followings walk out the door with them.

So, the company keeps thinking about the best way to approach what I now call the "Twitter problem".  Sally is already tweeting in customer service, and she's developed a nice little following.  Here's the problem - Sally's the perfect candidate to handle the corporate Twitter account, but she's already doing her own thing. 

With that in mind, the company has three options:

1.  Ask Sally to clearly identify herself as an employee of the company and piggyback off her already robust efforts;

2.  Establish a corporate Twitter presence and create an account where multiple people can update it, which usually means it won't be done very well - people are people, after all, and have other things to do; or

3.  Ban Sally from tweeting about anything work-related and force her to handle the corporate twitter account with all work/industry related tweet content...

Which one did/would you choose?  ESPN just chose the last option.  More from the New York Times:

Soon after ESPN issued 12 guidelines to its employees about social networking on Tuesday, Ric Bucher, one of its N.B.A. writers and analysts, wrote on Twitter, “The hammer just came down, tweeps: ESPN memo prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN.”

He then added, “My guess is I can still tweet about my vacation/car shopping, etc.”

The guidelines are more detailed than Bucher described them. But they restrict the freedom that ESPN employees might previously have enjoyed.

The guidelines say that on-air talent, reporters and writers are prohibited from having sports-related blogs or Web sites and that they will need a supervisor’s approval to discuss sports on any social networking sites. They will also be restricted from discussing internal policies or detailing how stories are “reported, written, edited or produced.”

The guide that Bucher focused on reads, “The first and only priority is to serve ESPN-sanctioned efforts, including sports news, information and content.” Violating the new guidelines could lead to suspension or dismissal.

ESPN will soon deploy modules to simultaneously link ESPN employees’ tweets and other social networking feeds to various ESPN’s Web sites. “The key phrase is write it once, publish it everywhere,” LaPlaca said. He said the policy is “not meant to diminish our having conversations with fans, but to do them so that if you’re not on Facebook, you can still get the information.”

ESPN is in the content business, so part of me understands the edict.  After all, Bucher (the guy cited above) is a great NBA reporter - but if the Bucher brand becomes prominent, he becomes a worthy competitor once he leaves ESPN.  Better to contain him and others like him before it becomes a problem.

Still, it bears asking the same question for your company.  Are you willing to allow employees to build their personal brands on your dime?  I am, and I believe the greater good is served by allowing employees max flexibility.

But, if I was in the content business like ESPN, I can't say I wouldn't do the same thing...

What about you and your business?

Comments

[Paul Hebert]

You may have missed a fourth option - the one I would do... help them drive their brand even higher. The issue is that if Bucher's brand grows then ESPN suffers - or so it seems. But what if ESPN helped grow Bucher's brand - to the point that he wouldn't be able to find someone to support him to the same degree - or if he did leave he would have a great relationship with ESPN to the degree that he would reciprocate when he could.

[Steve Boese]

To me it isn't just about Bucher, or any other current talent. It is about the message ESPN sends about their interpretation of what employee success looks like. Bucher is at ESPN, and if he grows his personal popularity while at ESPN, it is a win-win for both of them. Sure, he may then leverage his fame and leave,then ESPN has to find the next 'Bucher'. Prospective candidates would likely see ESPN as a supportive place, a place where they could go and become superstars themselves. ESPN is such a colossus that it won't have trouble finding talent no matter what this policy is, but most of our companies don't have that kind of juice. But if your company is known as one that supports its staff, cares about their personal success as well as the company results, then I think long-term it will be easy to find great talent to replace the ones who take their ball and move on.

[Aaron Lincove]

Unfortunately, many companies do not see how sites like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo, etc can benefit recruitment and retention. Allowing Ric Bucher to utilize Twitter is a fantastic recruitment strategy. ESPN already has an established brand, but for other organizations that are striving to establish a brand, the utilization of these sites makes the brand more attractive, It is so hard to retain Gen Y and Gen X employees. Now, the use of these sites are rising in popularity with the Boomer generation. Not allowing access to these sites at the work or not allowing the use of internal blogs can stifle creativity and positive communication. Could someone post disparaging comments about their employer or share sensitive information? Of course. Is there a good chance that employee is going to be around in the short/long term? Probably not. I don't know about you, but I will gladly take that risk for positive employee engagement.

[Joshua Letourneau]

I'm sure ESPN has some pretty smart people working there . . . and I'm sure they mapped out all the Pros' and Cons' of each strategy. Personally, I don't think ESPN needs social media to drive their recruiting - they're already the creme de la creme of sports reporting. Whether or not someone has a Twitter account and likes to tweet out meaningless updates has no bearing on ESPN's recruiting brand.

My bigger question is in regards to the talent that isn't working in a direct reporting capacity, and rather operates in an valued-opinion capacity. An example would be a personal favorite of mine, Skip Bayless (http://twitter.com/RealSkipBayless). Would they limit him?

And while I write this, I return to the central point: If you're well-known due to your role at ESPN, and you're going to have a social media presence, keep it to sports-related issues. We don't care what you ate just now, but we're interested in your thoughts :) That's why we watch you on TV! :) It's all about relevance.

[Brett Farmiloe]

A great example is what happened to the Phoenix Suns and Amy J. Martin. She helped Shaq and the whole organization become the first professional sports team to tweet. Twitter recommended her as a user to follow when people signed up for a new account. Then, she decided to start her own social media consulting business and took her 700,000+ followers with her. She also changed her name from @PHXsunsgirl to @DigitalRoyalty. I'm sure ESPN might have considered this case when determining their options.

[Kris Dunn]

Paul/Steve/Aaron/Josh/Brett -

thanks for checking in. I generally agree with the win/win thing. However, with a big content provider like ESPN, I actually understand their stance. What they are saying is basically write your story/notes once (with us), then you can link from your personal account as much as you want. I really get that as long as they have an avenue for someone like Bucher to provide quick hitting points - but they need to provide that avenue....

More on Brett's Amy Martin point tommorrow. I thought of the same example...

Josh - good points about Bayliss - I think what this is heading to is that if talent comes to ESPN with a brand, they'll have to protect their independent rights via their contact. Talent without an established brand before they came to ESPN will have a much tougher time cranking out that right...

Thanks - KD