I recently wrote a post about using hashtags within your crisis communications, why it’s important and how to develop your hashtag strategy. Although this post mainly refers to the use of hashtags within your Twitter crisis communications, it’s not to say that hashtags across the board, throughout social channels do not present the same crisis management opportunities.

How do Facebook hashtags work?

When you create a post and include a hashtag (i.e.: #crisismanagement) that hashtag becomes clickable once the post is published. When you click the hashtag, a stream of other posts with the same hashtags will appear, allowing you to see what others are writing and discussing about the given subject.

Hashtags will also be searchable within the Facebook search bar and you’ll be able to compose posts directly from the hashtag feed.

The purpose? Facebook has announced that this is one of the new features (more to be announced in the coming weeks and months) that will make Facebook content more searchable and findable across the platform.

Note: Be sure to check your privacy settings when hashtags roll out to your personal account.

What do Facebook hashtags mean for your crisis management?

As a brand, you’ll now have the opportunity to have a better understanding and better monitoring abilities when it comes to what is being said about you on Facebook. Like we have always been able to do on Twitter, you will now be able to search for specific hashtags and see all public posts containing that hashtag. This is something you’ll want to utilize within your everyday monitoring, and especially throughout and proceeding any future social media issues and crises.

As for your crisis communications, it’s time to incorporate a Facebook hashtag strategy into your crisis communications plan. Including a targeted and strategic hashtag strategy into your Facebook crisis communications will give your audience an efficient and easy way to find your communications and messages during a crisis. This is an extremely valuable function.

It’s once again time to update your crisis plan!

As I say often, your online crisis communications plan is not a static document. It needs to be updated and kept relevant as social media accounts and new features roll out. Now is another time for you to review your plan and incorporate these new features and functions that, when used properly, will seriously help your company or organization towards becoming a crisis communications super-star! These functions and features are free and were developed to make your Facebook experience more valuable, connecting you closer to your audience – which is exactly what you want when handling a crisis or issue online.

Need help developing a strong online crisis plan, or need the right person to be responsible for making sure your crisis plan is kept current and relevant as social media evolves so regularly? Contact Melissa Agnes Crisis Management today!

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I’d like to give a big and sincere thank you to the wonderful Judith Delaney for this week’s social media law series! Judith specializes in social media law, online privacy law and new media compliance issues. She has a blog titled “Minimizing Social Media Legal Risk” which is worth checking out and subscribing to. She also writes regularly, providing invaluable content to this very blog. If you missed out on this week’s social media law series, the links are below and you’re in for quite an interesting and important treat!

Have an awesome weekend everyone!

This week’s social media law series:

• Can You Sue Former Employees for Social Media Accounts?
• Do Social Media Accounts Legally Belong to the Employer or Employee?
• How to Create Policies to Legally Protect Your Brand’s Social Media Accounts
• Local and International Laws for Protecting Your Social Media Accounts

Other articles worth your attention:

• Decentralized Social Communications: Scary Stuff! - by Kim Stephens
• With Ethics, the Stakes are Higher Now than Ever – by Stefan Pollack
• Facebook Officially Adds Support for the Hashtag – by Nick Cicero

The Social Media Crisis Management Toolkit

The Social Media Crisis Management Toolkit was designed to be your guide to online crisis management planning.

The Toolkit will help you in the beginning stages of creating a solid social media crisis management plan for your small to medium sized business. Learn more here!

The post Weekly Roundup of Awesome Links: Week of June 10th 2013 appeared first on Melissa Agnes Crisis Management - Online Crisis Management Firm.

Over the course of this week, we’ve looked at a 2011 case, PhoneDog vs. Kravitz, where a company sued a former employee for that employee’s Twitter account, used to solicit to clients and prospective clients, for the amount of $340,000. We’ve called upon Judith Delaney, an attorney who specializes in social media law and online privacy laws, to answered the following questions (click on each question to be taken to its answer):

1. Do companies have a legal right to do this? Under what circumstances does the company have the right to claim the account if it was always owned solely by the employee, even if it was at the brand’s request?
2. Under what circumstances is it just too bad for the company, meaning they have no say or rights in the matter?
3. Does it require a signed policy/agreement at the opening of the account, and if so, what is legally allowed to be included within this policy/agreement?

And today, the final question remains…

Answering question #4

Q: Do these laws differ from state to state and from country to country?

Judith’s answer:

United States: Currently adjudication of these lawsuits is at the state level. Therefore the final ruling, if any, would most likely vary from state to state.  This is why it is important for employers to be careful of what they draft in the agreement(s) and/or policies discussed here and here, as limiting an employee’s use of their social media accounts may be in violation of other state laws. (For an example of some of these “other state laws”, click here)

International: As of  this writing, each country has its own (or not) process to adjudicate the subject matter even down to local law, so for the practicality of it, the answer is yes, it varies from county to country!

Concluding this week’s social media law series

I hope that you have found this week’s blog series as interesting and informative as I have. A big, warm and humongous thank you goes out to the fabulous Judith Delaney for providing us with this invaluable information and a wider understanding of the ever-forming laws around social media. If you’d like to learn more from Judith, you can visit this page, which sums up all the awesome content she provides to this blog, as well as check out her own blog: Minimizing Social Media Legal Risk.

Disclaimer:  The information contained in this article is provided only as general information and may or may not reflect the most current developments legal or otherwise pertaining to the subject matter thereof.  Accordingly, this information is not promised or guaranteed to be correct or complete, and is not intended to create, or constitute formation of an attorney-client relationship. The author expressly disclaims all liability in law or otherwise with respect to actions taken or not taken based on any or all of the content of this article.

The post Local and International Laws for Protecting Your Social Media Accounts appeared first on Melissa Agnes Crisis Management - Online Crisis Management Firm.

This week we’ve been exploring a 2011 case of an employer and former employee battling it out legally, over a Twitter account valued at $340,000. It’s a case that has only existed once to-date, but is still a high-risk scenario that can potentially affect you, if you aren’t careful.

So far, we’ve answered the following two questions in regards to this type of situation (click on each question to be taken to its answer):

1. Do companies have a legal right to do this? Under what circumstances does the company have the right to claim the account if it was always owned solely by the employee, even if it was at the brand’s request?
2. Under what circumstances is it just too bad for the company, meaning they have no say or rights in the matter?

Today, the fabulous Judith Delaney will take us a step further in understanding our legal rights in this matter by answering the third of four questions, which will be answered in two parts:

Answering question #3

Q: a) Does it require a signed policy/agreement at the opening of the account,
Q: b) and if so, what is legally allowed to be included within this policy/agreement?

Judith answers Q a): 

The obvious answer to the question is: employers should implement policies and proactively develop agreements specifically relating to the ownership of company social media accounts, but is it currently “required” by law or otherwise? No.

* Note: The plus side of the PhoneDog Vs. Kravitz case is that because of the media exposure and expansive interest in the case, according to research by law firm Proskauer, the number of employers who now have written specific policies about social media use at work has climbed to 69% in 2013 from 55% in 2012 (source: Cary Kletter, Phone Dog vs. Kravitz; Fortune Magazine)

For you, the employer:

• Accounts should be set up by the company’s management (using the company name in the handle or account name), the company should maintain the passwords and only give access to those who need it as part of their job duties and to direct the content.
• The employer must communicate to the employee in writing that it owns the accounts and the content, and that contributing content as part of the employee’s job duties is owned by the company. This can be done by incorporating specific language relating to an employee’s duties and how the ownership of social media accounts and contacts will be handled, so as to protect them just like any valuable company asset. (Such specific agreements could be an offer letter, a non-disclosure agreement, a non-compete agreement or one or more of the foregoing.)

For you, the employee:

• You need to make sure that you understand, from the beginning of your employment, the company’s ownership policy of social media accounts and discuss ownership of any personal social media accounts and following (fans, followers, etc) that you already have, if you have agreed to use your personal social media accounts and following to promote the company’s business. Then, any changes/ additions/ deletions could be addressed by an amendment to the applicable agreement between the company and yourself, as agreed between both parties.

Judith answers Q b): 

When two parties enter into an agreement for which there is a bargained-for exchange, generally, such agreement is legally binding upon the parties as to their obligations and rights respectively, unless the text of the terms and conditions are so convoluted to be misunderstood or onerous or impossible for the reasonable person to understand. Unless such a policy is associated with a legally binding agreement, the policy is just that – a policy.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, following are a couple examples of suggested points of understanding to be considered for such an agreement related to such a policy (courtesy of Anthony Zeller, employment litigation attorney; VanVleck, Turner & Zeller, LLP) :

• Clear understanding of who owns an employee’s social media accounts that will be used for business purposes (or license to use the accounts) and any restrictive terms of use of the employee’s social media accounts during employment.
• Ownership and use of the company’s social media accounts. Who retains the right to change the passwords? Who retains the right to edit and approve content? What is the process to approve content prior to publishing?
• What control, if any, the company will have after the termination of the employment relationship over the employee’s or the company’s social media accounts. Is there a time frame after employment that the employee cannot use his or her own social media accounts for competitive business uses?

To sum up: The above are some guidelines to use, as both an employer and as the employee, when creating policies and agreements that detail the rightful ownership of social media accounts, their followers and their use. Remember that, to this date, there are no official laws in-place on the subject, but, as people sign a prenup before marriage, the safest precaution you can take, as both a company and an employee, is to protect your assets from the start, under amicable conditions.

Last but not least, in the fourth and final post of this series, we evaluate whether or not these guidelines and laws, outlined within this social media law series, apply on a state-by-state, federal and/or international basis. Click here to find out.

If you haven’t yet subscribed to receive daily or weekly updates from this blog and you don’t want to miss out, subscribe now!

Disclaimer:  The information contained in this article is provided only as general information and may or may not reflect the most current developments legal or otherwise pertaining to the subject matter thereof.  Accordingly, this information is not promised or guaranteed to be correct or complete, and is not intended to create, or constitute formation of an attorney-client relationship. The author expressly disclaims all liability in law or otherwise with respect to actions taken or not taken based on any or all of the content of this article.

The post How to Create Policies to Legally Protect Your Brand’s Social Media Accounts appeared first on Melissa Agnes Crisis Management - Online Crisis Management Firm.

Yesterday we looked at a 2011 court case that involved an employer and employee battling over a Twitter account valued at $340,000; and we answered the question of whether or not this type of legal pursuit has grounds, whether for the employer or the employee. (To read yesterday’s post, click here.)

Today Judith Delaney, an attorney who specializes in social media law and global online privacy laws, answers the second of four questions I asked her, related to this type of social media risk:

Answering question #2

Q: Under what circumstances is it just too bad for the company, meaning they have no say or rights in the matter?

Judith’s Answer: 

It was with great interest and expectation on the part of both employers and lawyers, that the outcome of the PhoneDog vs. Kravitz case would establish legal boundary lines between employees’ personal use of social media and employers’ claims to those channels of communication, thereby answering the question. But it was not to be. The lawsuit was resolved by a settlement agreement between the parties, the terms of which have not been made public, leaving both communities with no clear legal path to adjudicate the subject matter.

However, what we do know is that courts have long held client lists, cultivated over time on a company’s good reputation and using its resources as company property. The question is: does the same standard apply to Twitter followers, LinkedIn contacts and/or Facebook friends and fans – and how does one measure the value? (PhoneDog estimated $2.50 per follower per month, but it also claimed the social media accounts and contacts a trade secret for which most would agree translates into the value as priceless.)  Again, because the case was settled between the parties, there was no precedent-setting opinion by the court in the PhoneDog vs. Kravitz case, as the opportunity to form an opinion by the court was never given.

In addition, courts may consider the following factors when determining ownership of social media accounts:

• Who set up the accounts and directed the content?
• Were the accounts set up before or during employment?
• Who had access to the accounts and passwords?
• Was the name or account associated with the employer’s name or brand?

To sum up: Due to the fact that this case, the only one of its kind for the time-being, was settled out of court, no judge has ever ruled on such a matter, therefore it is not possible to fully answer the above question – yet. However, as Judith points out, in order to protect your social accounts (whether you represent a brand or yourself as an employee) consider the above four important factors when setting up and assigning social media accounts that are to be used in representation of, or on behalf of the company or organization.

The question remains…

How can you better protect your social accounts? What types of policies and agreements can help you do so? What should you be sure to include within these policies and agreements, whether you’re the employer or an employee? Click here to find out!

If you haven’t yet subscribed to receive daily or weekly updates from this blog and you don’t want to miss out, subscribe now!

Disclaimer:  The information contained in this article is provided only as general information and may or may not reflect the most current developments legal or otherwise pertaining to the subject matter thereof.  Accordingly, this information is not promised or guaranteed to be correct or complete, and is not intended to create, or constitute formation of an attorney-client relationship. The author expressly disclaims all liability in law or otherwise with respect to actions taken or not taken based on any or all of the content of this article.

The post Do Social Media Accounts Legally Belong to the Employer or Employee? appeared first on Melissa Agnes Crisis Management - Online Crisis Management Firm.

I recently came across a very interesting lawsuit between a company and their former employee over ownership of a Twitter account. It’s the case of PhoneDog vs. Kravitz and it dates back to 2011. The case, though the only of its kind to-date, is extremely interesting and has a high-risk potential of being applicable to YOU, so listen up!

PhoneDog vs. Kravitz: The battle over a Twitter account valued at $340,000

Noah Kravitz was a PhoneDog employee. At the brand’s request, Kravitz had a Twitter account with the handle @Phonedog_Noah and used it to communicate brand messages as well as non-brand-related messages, in order to engage with and develop relationships with PhoneDog customers and prospective customers.

Over the course of his career with the company, Kravitz accumulated 17,000 followers. When he eventually left the company, Kravitz changed his Twitter handle to @NoahKravitz, kept all his followers and continued to engage with them – periodically promoting PhoneDog services and promotions at the brand’s request.

When PhoneDog owed him too much money in back pay, Kravitz stopped promoting the brand and the company sued him for having kept the account, valuing it at $2,50 per follower, which translated into a lawsuit in the amount of $340,000.

How does this situation potentially apply to you – as the company and/or as the employee?

After reading about this lawsuit, I was left with a mouthful of questions that I took to my good friend and colleague, Judith Delaney, an attorney who specializes in social media law and online privacy laws. I asked Judith the following four questions (click each question to be brought to its answer):

1. Do companies have a legal right to do this? Under what circumstances does the company have the right to claim the account if it was always owned solely by the employee, even if it was at the brand’s request?
2. Under what circumstances is it just too bad for the company, meaning they have no say or rights in the matter?
3. Does it require a signed policy or agreement at the opening of the account, and if so, what is legally allowed to be included within these policies and agreements?
4. Do these laws differ from state to state and from country to country?

Judith, being the fabulous and knowledgeable professional that she is, sent me back detailed answers to each of the above questions.

Because there is no simple answer to this rarely seen situation (for now), I’m going to spend the week providing you with Judith’s detailed answers, in hopes that they will give you a clear legal understanding of this type of situation and what it means for your organization and employees.

Let’s begin with answering question #1

Q:  Do companies have a legal right to do this? Under what circumstances does the company have the right to claim the account if it was always owned solely by the employee, even if it was at the brand’s request?

Judith’s Answer: 

It is of great importance that a company protect what they consider their social media assets (in the case of PhoneDog vs. Kravitz these “assets” were referred to in-part as trade secrets) especially for companies that use social media as part of their marketing platform.

So, if there is a dispute about ownership, employers are suing for trade secret protection of these social media accounts, and also alleging common law theories of misappropriation or conversion against former employees for taking these contacts, or the passwords to the accounts, upon their departure from the company;

And in the reverse, former employees are also using the misappropriation and conversion theories to sue their former employees (e.g.: Eagle v. Moran, No. C 11-4303. This was a personal LinkedIn account that an employee’s former employer gained  access to, making it so that those seeking Eagle (the former employee) were linked instead to her replacement. The record from the November 2012 bench trial in this case remains under seal. No final decision has been entered.)

To sum up:  It is all based on precedent in case law. What this means is that, based on lawsuits such as PhoneDog vs. Kravitz and the Eagle case, it appears that precedent is being set  to use those “standards” as grounds to file a lawsuit (meaning yes, you can file a lawsuit) – whether they are factual grounds for suing depends on the outcome of the case. In other words, you can sue because others have, but the outcome of the case has yet to be determined since no judgement was passed on either case (more to come on this later this week).

What does this mean for your organization?

It means that, whether you represent the brand or are an employee of the brand, you need to take clear measures to protect your social accounts. Good intentions are great when everybody is happy and working together. But what if the employer/employee relationship turns sour? You absolutely do not want to find yourself in a situation where assets, trade secrets and ultimately lawyers are involved. So what can you do to better protect yourself? Read the second part of this 4-part series to find out!

If you haven’t yet subscribed to receive daily or weekly updates from this blog and you don’t want to miss out, subscribe now!

Disclaimer: The information contained in this article is provided only as general information and may or may not reflect the most current developments legal or otherwise pertaining to the subject matter thereof.  Accordingly, this information is not promised or guaranteed to be correct or complete, and is not intended to create, or constitute formation of an attorney-client relationship. The author expressly disclaims all liability in law or otherwise with respect to actions taken or not taken based on any or all of the content of this article.

The post Can You Sue Former Employees for Social Media Accounts? appeared first on Melissa Agnes Crisis Management - Online Crisis Management Firm.

The first week of June has already come and gone, how time flies! I hope you all had a great one.

I’ve got an extra hot roundup of awesome links for you this week, so be sure to check them out!

Enjoy and have an exceptional weekend!

From the Melissa Agnes Crisis Management blog:

• The Use of Hashtags in Your Crisis Communications
• Taco Bell’s Social Media Crisis Communications Fail
• Better Protect Your Linkedin Account with Two-Step Verification
• How Having a Social CEO Will Benefit Your Company (Infographic)

Other articles from other awesome professionals:

• #SMEMChat Makes it to Congress
• Social Media use by Emergency Managers: Survey Says!
• New Data: How Twitter is Changing The Way We Speak
• Getting Folks to “ShakeOut” via Social Media: Lessons for all Hazards
• Sec OKs Use of Social Media to Share Corporate Information, But do Investors Want That?
• Filter This!
• Defining “nano news”

The Social Media Crisis Management Toolkit

The Social Media Crisis Management Toolkit was designed to be your guide to online crisis management planning.

The Toolkit will help you in the beginning stages of creating a solid social media crisis management plan for your small to medium sized business. Learn more here!

The post Weekly Roundup of Awesome Links: Week of June 3rd 2013 appeared first on Melissa Agnes Crisis Management - Online Crisis Management Firm.

In support of this, Weber Shandwick recently did a study and found that the majority of companies without a social CEO want theirs to become social, and those with a social CEO would like to see them be even more social.

Their study also shows that:

• 61% of organizations with a social CEO believe that it makes their CEO more effective in managing crises; and
• 78% have seen a positive impact on their company’s reputation

The below infographic visually demonstrates the results of the study – though they are not surprising they are very interesting. Take a look:

Infographic: The benefits of having a social CEO

Click to enlarge

This infographic was originally published here.

The post How Having a Social CEO Will Benefit Your Company (Infographic) appeared first on Melissa Agnes Crisis Management - Online Crisis Management Firm.

It has all the same benefits as I mentioned in my Twitter post (click here to read all about them) and the below Slideshare will show you how to set your Linkedin account up with this very important, very necessary feature.

Don’t forget that it was only one year ago that 6.5 million Linkedin passwords were hacked. So don’t delay, make sure that you set up your two-step verification today!

How to set up Linkedin’s two-step verification

Slideshare by Linkedin

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Does it make you think of the Dominos social media crisis of 2009? It sure made me think of it!

As I watched in anticipation last night, to see how Taco Bell would respond and reassure their customers, I went to bed with little hope that they actually knew what they were doing – that they had actually prepared and pre-planned for this type of predictable crisis situation.

Is this actually a crisis situation?

I speak often of the differences between a social media crisis and a social media issue. So is this situation that Taco Bell has found themselves in a social media crisis? Well, let’s see…

• Does the situation risk having a negative impact on their reputation? Yes.
• Does the situation risk having a negative impact on their bottom line? Yes (especially if they don’t respond and react accordingly)
• Does the situation risk having a strong negative emotional impact on stakeholders? Yes.
• Does the situation have a high-risk potential of going viral? Yes, especially since it already has!

So, yes, for the reasons listed above, Taco Bell is facing a real, live social media crisis.

How did Taco Bell fare in their online crisis communications?

Although I believe that they were quick to learn about the situation, and possibly even quick to react, nothing was really made public. (Again, this makes me think of the Domino’s social media crisis of 2009.)

They posted the below message to the news release section on their website – only thing is that the majority of their audience was on social, not on their website.

This is a good first response. It lets the public know that Taco Bell is aware of the situation and looking into it and it buys them a little time. However, having published this response to a page on their website that is rarely visited by customers and fans, nobody really knew where to find it or that it even existed. This should have been followed with a response made directly to their Facebook fan page, as well as tweeted from their Twitter account.

They did respond to some individual posts being published to their fan page, but that wasn’t enough. In these situations, companies have to assume that the only way to make sure that everybody coming to their page to complain, voice their opinion and seek further information, is going to look in one place and one place alone: directly on their timeline. You have to assume that no one will go searching within comment threads.

If I went to bed feeling a little disappointed then I woke up feeling totally disappointed!

I woke up this morning and first thing I did was check Taco Bells’s Facebook and Twitter pages in hopes that I would find a nice shiny update/statement addressing the situation, informing the public how they dealt with it and a believable promise as to how they will make sure this type of predictable situation will never, ever, ever happen again.

That’s what I hoped. Wanna know what I found?

Not only did I not find any statements made to social, but I also found that Taco Bell disabled their comments on Facebook. Not only did they not respond where their customers were seeking, asking and demanding a response, but they attempted to disable their customers’ voice as well.

They did update their news release page on their website with a thorough and more complete statement. But this is not enough. They absolutely needed to respond to the crisis on social, linking to this more thorough response.

Lessons and take-aways

You can’t be scared of social. You need to respond to crisis and issue situations ON SOCIAL. You need to respond in real-time, as events unfold and as you move forward with the appropriate actions and reactions. You need to plan for these things in advance. In 2013, there’s no excuse to not know and implement the new rules of crisis communications.

Let Taco Bell be a wake-up call. This was a predictable crisis. It happened to a competitor and that situation is still used and talked about in classrooms, corporate trainings, blogs, seminars and webinars to this day. This should have made it easy for Taco Bell to know how to respond and react on social. Instead, due to their lack of being prepared, they got scared, overwhelmed and failed at their social media crisis communications. Please, please, please, don’t let that happen to you!

How can you make sure that this doesn’t happen to you?

By planning, preparing and training your team before a crisis strikes. Learn more about how to plan for and prevent a social media crisis by clicking here.

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