Barbara Walters Price

When Can You Fire an Employee for Social Media Misbehavior? (or When Can You Be Fired ...?)

Kashmir Hill has an entertaining and informative article on Forbes entitled "When You Can and Can't Fire Employees for Socia Media Misbehavior."

After summarizing some pretty interesting actual examples of socia media misbehavior (or is it?), she links to an August 18, 2011 National Labor Relations Board report written by its acting general counsel about the seeming rules of the road for employers and employees regarding social media use.

Kashmir's article states:

After a deluge of employee complaints about firings and discipline resulting from their social media use, the National Labor Relations Board has issued a report about the many cases in order to shed some light on when employers screwed up and when they didn’t. As you know, the Constitution doesn’t apply to private employers, so employees can’t claim the right to freedom of speech. But all private employers must respect their workers’ right to “protected concerted activity” — in other words, the right to talk among themselves about their horrible working conditions. This right is not limited to union workers; it applies for all private employees....

Last year, the NLRB got lots of media attention for bringing a complaint against an ambulance company for firing a driver who had complained about her bosses on Facebook. That seemed to be a wake-up call for employees who hadn’t realized that they didn’t have to be part of a union to be able to contest firings for badmouthing their bosses, says a NLRB spokesman.  The NLRB’s general counsel put together a “Report Concerning Social Media Cases” [pdf] (via Above the Law) because the agency has been getting so many inquiries from employers and employment lawyers about what exactly the rules are when it comes to social media. 

The report itself begins with:

During my term as Acting General Counsel, I have endeavored to keep the labor-management community fully aware of theactivities of my office. It is my hope that this openness will encourage compliance with the Act and cooperation with Agency personnel. As part of this goal, I continue the practice of issuing periodic reports of cases raising significant legal or policy issues.This report presents recent case developments arising in the context of today’s social media. ...

I hope that this report will be of assistance topractitioners and human resource professionals.

Read the article first and then download the NLRB's report and read that to say up-to-date on your rights as an employer or employee when it comes to social media. 

Best (and Worst) Times to Send an Email

I found this infographic, created by Pure360, at Be Relevant! Email Marketing Blog by Tamara Gielen. Take a look. When do you send your email newsletters? What about client communications? Does the time of day sent affect open rates? According to this, it might.

Infographics in 15 Minutes

Infographics are the rage now. However, for professional services firm, they could be useful for, say, communicating about trends in a particular industry. Take a look at this short presentation by Eloqua. To create your own infographics, there is a slide which lists both free and paid resources.

Infographics in 15 Minutes

View more presentations from Eloqua

How to Change the Order of Your Groups in LinkedIn

Maybe I'm a member of too many groups on LinkedIn (I am a member of 31 groups), but from the profiles I see every day, being a member to, say, over 15-20 groups is not that unusual. While I am a member of many groups, there are about 2-3 that I participate in and about 5-6 others that I pay attention to for marketing/industry intelligence purposes. The others I check in with as appropriate. Therefore, the default alphabetical listing of the groups has always frustrated me. I'm not frustrated anymore because I found the answer.

You can specify the display order of your groups. Let's walk through how to do it.

Under your name at the top right, choose Settings

 

Choose the tab "Groups, Companies & Applications"

 

Under "Groups," choose the first item, "Select your group display order"

You'll see a page with your groups listed in alpha order. Reordering is cumbersome from here but doable. Decide which group you would like to appear at the top of your list and then click that up arrow next to the numbered box. HINT: this up arrow moves the group to the #1 spot, not just up one notch. From here, choose which group you would like to appear second and place a 2 in the box, and so on. Depending on the number of groups you belong to, you might have to play with it a while but it does work. You see here a few of my groups and their order.

Another useful tool is the option to display between 1 and 10 groups in the navigation on your page. I've chosen 6 as you can see here.

After you're finished, hit Save.

Then, from when you click the "Groups" menu item, you'll see the groups as you ordered them. Remember, I chose to see only the first 6 and here they are.

So, that's how you do it. I hope this was helpful to you. If you have any LinkedIn hints, let me know.

Which Economies Have Fared Best and Worst During Global Financial Crisis

This chart, from The Economist, reflects GDP per person as a measure of relative performance. For further background, see here.

Testing New Item for the Blog

At left, you'll see a box entitled "Barbara's Shared Items." These are items I find interesting from my Google Reader account that I want to share with you. Hope you find the links useful.

Marketing Info You May Have Missed

• 10 Awesome Google+ Presentations to View Today - Hubspot
• Author Highlighting is a Google Must for Bloggers - Duct Tape Marketing
• Facebook Advertisers Can Target Users by Zip Code - Mashable
• Remove Yourself from Background Check Services - Business Insider
• How to Build Better Relationships - Inc.
• 5 Bad Habits of Experience Speakers - Speaking About Presenting
• How to Create Emails with a 47.8% Open Rate and a 28.3% Click Rate - ProBlogger

101 Awesome Marketing Quotes via Hubspot

101 Awesome Marketing Quotes

View more presentations from HubSpot Internet Marketing

Happy Monday

Under the category of "there is nothing new under the sun" ...

LinkedIn Messed Up, Then Fixed It, and Is Still Worth the Effort

I blogged on August 10th about LinkedIn "pulling a Facebook" on us and posting our data to third party advertisers. That was followed by instructions on how to opt out. 

On August 11th, the "internets" was abuzz with protest about it.

Today, August 12th, LinkedIn announced a change to this privacy issue in a blog post entitled "Privacy, Advertising, and Putting Members First."

In this blog post, after telling us ...

• that they told us way back in early June that this is what they were planning to do and how to opt out ("In early June, we announced changes to our privacy policy — including the new ad format’s opt-out policy — ahead of the first small test of these social ads."), and then ...
• telling us again that they reminded us ("We also reiterated the same during the launch of social ads, explaining how members could opt-out of sharing their recommendations with their network."), and then ...
• in case we didn't notice what they had already told us, they told us visually ("For those members who may have not read this on our blog, we included a banner ad on the site that contained a link to the new documents, including a summary of the changes, and links from which all members could easily access their account settings.")

So, the good people at LinkedIn told us three times. To be fair, their second link (the launch of social ads) provided not only a text description but a visual example. They did tell us. Nobody listened, or maybe nobody cared, until people started seeing their pictures in ads. Now, they have fixed it and we won't have our pictures in ads.

Hopefully LinkedIn has learned a lesson about privacy - even if you tell us you're going to put our pictures in ads, don't.

The Platform Still Works So Don't Let This Hiccup Sour You on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is still a valuable platform for professionals. I believe it is the best platform for professionals. An August 9th article in Forbes by Susan Gunelius (Study Reveals How Professionals Use LinkedIn), affirms LinkedIn's usefulness.

In terms of how frequently LinkedIn users log in and actively use the site, 2 out of 3 members use the site at least a few times per week or more. Specifically, 35% of users access LinkedIn daily and 32% access the site a few times per week. Another 16% log into LinkedIn a few times per month while 8% log in whenever they get an email from LinkedIn.

Compare that to the 2% of users who log in monthly or the 6% of users who access LinkedIn less than once per month, and it's clear that LinkedIn users are satisfied enough with the user experience that they actively return and want more. Just 1% of respondents to the Lab42 survey indicated that they never access LinkedIn. That's a rate that a site like Twitter would love to have!

Yet, as the article notes, LinkedIn is now a public company and has revenue goals to meet. The recent Social Media Advertising kerfuffle might be one of a string of missteps. I hope not because it is a useful platform and one on which you should have a presence.