I had a high school history teacher named Mr. Rose. Every
day Mr. Rose would give our class a quiz over the material we studied the day
before. He would hand out a six-question quiz and leave the room for ten minutes.
Now everyone knew that Mr. Rose left the answer key in the middle of his desk.
What do you think happened? Someone went to the front of the class and read the
answers out loud to the six questions as soon as the teacher left the
classroom. Stupid old Mr. Rose would come back into class, have us exchange
papers to grade and proceeded to read the answer key to us. This
went on for several weeks. Right before report cards were to come out, Mr. Rose
gave us the quiz like he always did before. He left the room, a student read
the answer key out loud, Mr. Rose returned, sat at his desk and proceeded to
read the key. Only something was different on this day. He pulled out another
answer key-the correct answers-from his desk drawer. At the astonishment of all
the cheaters, he announced that anyone who had gotten all six answers wrong
would receive a failing grade on their report card. Crafty old Mr. Rose had
taught us all a valuable lesson. No matter how foolproof you think your devious
plans are, if you cheat, you will eventually be found out. You may think you
are hiding behind the opaque wall that cannot be penetrated, but we all are
living in the glass house when it comes to our actions.
The same is true about your company. Just how transparent
does your company need to be? In the aftermath of the Enron/Arthur Andersen
scandal in 2001, the federal government enacted the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX)
that made it illegal for the management of corporations to falsify their
accounting records to overstate their financial positions. SOX was meant to
keep corporations honest so investors would not be cheated. Beyond investors,
since the days of the Enron scandal, the public has demanded more and more
truth about business be laid upon the table. Social networking has only
heightened this. How many corporations are now using Twitter to make press
releases? The idea is to get the message as soon as it happens and to be
completely accurate.
Ah, there are two flies in your soup. How much do I reveal
about my company and is social networking the most reliable source for
releasing corporate info? There was a day when you could over-sensationalize a
piece of advertising and create a buzz around claims you could not back up.
Those days are gone and for good reason. If you own a fast-food restaurant
called "Buck’s Burgers” and you advertise you are selling 100% beef hamburgers,
you cannot add tofu filler to your Big Buck Burger. First, there are laws
against those types of claims without any backing. Second, the public is too
informed and connected to continue buying your tofu burgers when you are found
out. But how much is too much? Does the public need to know every little nuance
about the way you grind your meat, where the beef comes from and how the cows
were living prior to the slaughterhouse? Some companies have taken the stance
that they need to be completely transparent with the customer about their
supply chain and internal methods, such as manufacturing, processing, etc. They
have made this a central part of their marketing message, for example:
"No child labor was used in the manufacturing of this
product.”
"Made with 100% recycled material. No trees were harvested
in the production of this product.”
"We only use organically grown produce from local farms.”
Here is my rule of thumb: if transparency sets you apart
from your competition and you will not get in trouble with some special
interest group, go ahead and show the world your inner workings. It adds
credibility when you can convince your customers that you are operating in a
responsible manner. However, be aware that you must remain consistent with
this. Today’s public is quite unforgiving for any corporation who appears to be
saying one thing and doing another. Hypocrisy does not sell well.
That brings us to social media. There is a fair amount of
this transparent information that is spread through social networks. They offer
an inexpensive way to get your marketing message in front of the marketplace in
a hurry. However, in the past week, we have seen how things like tweets can
become a source of inaccuracies spread by those seeking publicity, and those
tweets make liars out of reliable news sources.1 There seems to be
no rules for hyped-up-and-made-up information on social networks like there is
in traditional advertising media. You can find yourself defending your company
from a completely unfounded comment on a medium over which you have little
control. If you are going to depend upon social networking to carry your
marketing message, you must stay on top of what is being said and be prepared
to move quickly to resolve any issues that arise – whether they are founded or
not. And you have to be accurate in what you post. In your haste to get
information into the hands of your social network followers, don’t shortcut the
truth. The same rules that apply to the rest of your marketing efforts should
apply to corporate social network posts as well.
It is predicted that most of the personal information on
social media is made up.2 Don’t let that tempt you to shade the
truth about your company on social media sites. The Mr. Roses of the world are
still keeping watch and grading your corporation by what you say vs. what you
do.
______________________________
1.
Rob Lowe Tweets End to Manning's Career: How Social
Media Shapes Sports Stories by John Talty,
International Business Times online, January 25, 2012
2. Do we tell the truth in social networks? Does
it matter? By Matt Rhodes, Fresh
Networks blog post, January 7, 2009
Photo by ilkeryuksel