Social Media Management by Dominic Sparkes at SMWF

Dominic Sparkes, CEO & Founder

1,000,000’s messages moderated

60+ clients

50 platforms

15 languages

140 staff

24 / 7 / 365

We spend our time

managing social

media…

Since 2003, brands have entrusted their reputation to Tempero…

Explore the legal & ethical framework of SM marketing

Slight change to format today…

Joined by:

Kate Atkin, Partner, M Law

What legal and ethical issues should be considered?

Why consider them?

Recent changes to the ASA guidelines

Common pit-falls and how to avoid them

This is an open debate with free legal advice

Questions at any point please.

The next 30 mins…

Legal

- Copyright

- Contempt of Court

- Libel

- Trading laws

- Privacy

Industry Compliance

- ASA (Cap codes)

- DMA (Code of practise)

- Portman Group (Responsible marketing of Alcoholic

drinks in Digital Media)

- UKCISS (Moderation & social networking guidance)

Ethical & Practical

- Honesty & Transparency (Trust, Integrity, Respect,

Privacy)

- Moderation

- Resourcing

What needs to be

considered…

Legal

In UGC land you may be seen in law as a Publisher & Editor

-Copyright

- Video, brands or trademark characters as avatars risk

areas

- EU E-Commerce directive may protect you

- Quality not quantity is looked at. Tweets are not too

short to infringe copyright

-Contempt of Court

- Users often don’t realise they are in contempt

- Some purposefully try to sabotage court orders

- Notice & take down is vital

** Are these issues more or less of a risk on 3rd party sites

such as Facebook? **

What needs to be

considered…

Legal

- Libel

- New proposals aim to encourage freedom of speech

- Libel tourism hopefully reduced

- Claim only first publication (unless material difference)

- Non jury trials

- Trading laws

- OFT robust enforcement action

- Handpicked Media

- ‘The snow covered Lapland village’

- Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations

- Privacy

- Cookies and the new e-Privacy Directive

** Is our right to be forgotten a restriction of trade? **

What needs to be

considered…

Industry Compliance – ASA / CAP Codes

-Expanded to now encompass elements of UGC

-This means social media sharing features, user generated

content and marketing comms in non paid-for spaces fall

under the code

-Tweets should clearly state marketing intention (link to terms

and conditions for example)

-Inaccurate claims by users endorsed by brands fall foul

-Retweets of offers must be relevant and true

-Moderation must be sensitive to removing all negative

content

What needs to be

considered…

Ethical & Practical

-For outreach honesty & transparency are key

-Review WOMMA’s code - Trust, Integrity, Respect, Privacy

-Moderation is a useful if not essential layer of protection

-Consider resourcing early as managing social media

effectively needs skilled staff

What needs to be

considered…

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to

ruin it.

If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

Warren Buffet

Why consider these

issues?

Office of Fair Trading

- Hand Picked Media

Brand reputation

- DKNY

Ethical

- Kenneth Cole

Why consider these

issues…

Office of Fair Trading

- Hand Picked Media

Why consider these

issues…

“Please note that Drew

Brees is a paid endorser

for several companies

and promotes them

through his social

media. For a complete

list, please visit

www.drewbrees.com

and click on the

Disclaimer section. “

Thursday 3rd Feb

Thursday 3rd Feb

Thursday 3rd Feb

Be prepared

• Review the objectives

• Create guidelines for process, moderation & tone of

voice

• Review time and resource

Common pitfalls &

how to avoid them

Responding is vital

• This is customer service whether you like it or not

• Respond quickly

• Respond with care

Publishing

• Hijacking inappropriate topics is a big no no

• Publishing at inopportune times reduces value

• Over 90% of retweets and replies occur in the first hour after

a tweet is published)*

• Over publishing is annoying & a waste of resource (1 FB

update, 4 tweets a day is a good average to use)

*AccuraCast 10/10

Content

•Content needs to be viable (relevant, up to date, useful)

•Avoid spam dressed up content

•Check your facts (even the smallest detail can cause

problems)

•Don’t confuse quantity with quality (RQIV)

Common pitfalls &

how to avoid them

Managing Risk

•Carry out a risk assessment to evaluate the potential issues

•Be prepared to manage a social media crisis.

•Create your own internal guidelines for what is and isn’t

acceptable (keeping the (fuzzy) law in mind)

•Create and publish clear, non legalese terms & conditions so

your users know the rules

•Implement a robust notice and take-down procedure - robust

means it must stand up to scrutiny and actually work!

•Encourage users to highlight inappropriate material

•Don ’ t over moderate – you’ll kill your community (and

possibly fall foul of the cap codes)

Social Media

management 2 routes to providing Social Media management

In-house

• Recruit new staff or use your existing team

• CRB check them if the content is mainly for children

• Create the guidelines

• Define escalation procedures

• Create a moderation rota that considers sickness & tech

issues

• Train the staff on the guidelines and technology

• Ensure user comms are set up

• Create standard responses

• Have legal advice ready if needed

• Assign a manager that can make key decisions

• Ensure consistency between staff

• Regularly review guidelines and procedure

Social Media

management 1 easy solution…

Get someone else to do it!

Thank you for your time

For further information please contact:

dominic.sparkes@tempero.co.uk

@domsparkes / @ temperoUK

www.tempero.co.uk

20 7278 3222

kateatkin@mlaw.co.uk

www.mlaw.co.uk

020 7927 6240

The key elements of Social Media Management

The key elements of

Social Media

management

1. Preparation

2. Moderation

3. Management

4. Technology

5. Reporting

The key elements of

Social Media

management

Resources:

social-media-governance.com/policies.php

Preparation

• Objectives (Cost, impact and outcome)

• Risk Assessment (Content, users, technology, staff)

• Customer-facing Terms & Conditions / House rules

• Moderation guidelines

• Editorial guidelines / tone of voice

• Escalation paths

• Technology

• Risk mitigation & crisis plan (find the weakest link)

The key elements of

Social Media

management

Moderation

• As much about content curation as editing and deleting

• More skilled than many think

• 3 styles – pre, post and reactive

• Moderators need life-skills, attention to detail and patience

• Audit trail helps quality control

• Remit needs to be clear (user comms, admin rights etc)

• Support will be required

• Consistency is vital

The key elements of

Social Media

management

Resources:

Emint.org.uk

Management

Two key functions (although split differs from company to

company)

Community Administration

• Setting up the technology

• User and admin accounts

• Quantitative reporting

• Managing rotas

Community Management

• User comms

• Engagement

• Qualitative reporting

• Supplier management

• Central role for stakeholder contact

Technology

• Platform – what moderation and management tools

exist?

• Moderation plug-ins (Conversocial, Syncapse)

The key elements of

Social Media

management

Resources:

conversocial.com

profiler.conversocial.com

The key elements of

Social Media

management

Technology

• Publishing tools (e.g. for Twitter & Facebook)

• Bespoke

• Full Social CMS (Lithium, Scroon, Crisp Thinking)

• Monitoring (Brandwatch, Radian 6, Buzzmetrics)

Reporting

• What is really needed?

• Data for data’s sake

• Garbage in garbage out