Since March of this year I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to conduct over 160 Twitterviews (Twitter + Interview) with a variety of people from various fields of work. Most of the time when I offer people the opportunity of getting Twitterviewed, they say yes and are excited about it. Some though do say no for various reasons, and I’m just fine with that. It’s not a requirement of anyone. It’s just a different means to use Social Media and for people to share things about themselves online. Recently though, I had an interesting situation come up that was a rejection unlike I had received before.
When I had approached this potential Twitterview candidate, they told me that I needed to e-mail them a list of my credentials and history so that they could share it with their employer and then they’d get back to me. I thought this quite odd since I had never been asked to do this before, but I agreed and sent off the e-mail to them. When I followed up and made contact with them, I was told no because, get this, the company lawyers would not allow this candidate to be Twitterviewed by me. What? Am I missing something? I am not affiliated with any news agency. I do not conduct in-depth / hard-hitting Twitterviews to reveal hidden secrets of people and expose these on the internet. Why would lawyers not want an employee to talk about themselves and the company that they work for? How they enjoy their job and the company that they work for.
Let me start out by saying that I totally understand the liability issues that companies, especially their lawyers, may be concerned about. You want a clear, clean and concise message transmitted about your company and what it represents. You don’t want arguments created and saved online. You don’t want to be misquoted in what is shared or expressed online. But when does fear override need?
Many, many, many companies have seen the need to become active with Social Media and have taken steps to do so in a safely controlled way. Does this mean that their people who Tweet, post and do videos have their “hands tied” in a proverbial way? Maybe to some degree, but hopefully it doesn’t stop their creativity to draw in existing as well as new customers in this newer form of media.
Think too, if you are a company that provides customer service via telephone or email, how much restriction do lawyers put on what they say to the public in response to inquiries, complaints or assistance? There needs to be some training and some screening of the applicants to ensure that the people taking these calls will be mature, professional and will put the company that they represent in a good light. So why do lawyers seem to be even more afraid about their company using Social Media? Having some hesitation or fear about it is normal, but to have so much fear that the company doesn’t do anything and appears “frozen” online in the Social Media hemisphere isn’t normal. So what do you think?
Why do lawyers seem to have more fears of using Social Media as a means to connect and communicate with customers, as opposed to the telephone, letter or e-mail? What are your observations?