Does Your Company Need a Lawyer to Handle Social Media, Twitter and Facebook?

At least one company, Clorox, is looking for a full time, in house lawyer to clean up their social media policies and presence.  Is that necessary?

A marketing person (or even an astute college student) could likely develop and monitor Twitter feeds and a Facebook fan page.  But is that enough?

Developing a social media policy and handling questions about “new” issues (tech, advertising, responses to comments) is a task probably for a lawyer.

For businesses looking to enter the Social Networking sphere, I would recommend a Twitter feed, Facebook fan page, and an announcement on their own webpage (media release is optional).  I would further recommend setting up an automatic Google search for your business name appearing on the Internet as well as routine searches/monitoring of Twitter and Facebook.  Finally, you need a clear social media policy.

This is actually a fairly good task for a lawyer and paralegal working with the client.  The client could develop the content and have the law firm handle the updating and monitoring.  With a cost-effective paralegal on the front line with some concise supervision by counsel, this would be cost effective.  Moreover, it would ensure (a) the corporation has a social media policy, (b) the posts and entries are appropriate and not patently violating policy or laws, and (c) major social networking sites are monitored for defamation, copyright, unfair competition and other issues.

Depending upon the frequency of the posting/monitoring, this likely could be accomplished for a few hundred dollars a month.  A lot of PR firms could run up that tab in a week.  In good hands, this could be transitioned back to the company full time after 6-12 months.

Meanwhile, follow Clorox on Twitter to see how they are doing.  Some basic good advice on cleaning up your Twitter service is here.  Email if you have comments, experiences or questions about lawyers providing social media services.  I’m interested to see who else out there is providing that service.

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