Is it such a bad idea to Reflect our Company’s Brand?
Posted by Siddeley on May 11, 2009
In one of the many newsletters I get via email I ran across an article on Social Media: Our Take: Social Media Lose Their Edge.
A pretty interesting article about how the businesses we work for will eventually, in the author’s opinion, control what we blog or tweet or discuss on the web.
I have definitely thought about how I would handle a situation in which I wanted to write an article, or twitter a sentence for that matter, with an opposing view to that of my employer. I would hope that I would be able to approach the issue in a professional manner with an agree to disagree stance. But truly I would be torn and here is why: One of the things that we do as part of a “team” is to appreciate other view points. We may not always agree with their platforms, actions, dispositions, etc. But we also realize that a great customer service representative is probably a very social person, whereas a developer might see every phone call as an intrusion on their work. If I am that developer I probably do not understand why anyone would want to sit on the phone all day, but I appreciate that difference none-the-less. Better you than me I would be saying!
So back to my point – To me a company is a team of teams. Many different types of people at many different points in their life all working toward common goals for the company(one would hope anyway). Do I really want to discuss publicly company actions that may not only cause the company problems, but could affect all of teams? Understand I am not saying we should overlook discrimination or abuse. And thank the founding fathers for our freedom of speech! But I don’t think that it is such a bad idea that our writings reflect our company’s views or our company’s brand. Not kowtow to them, but reflect them. I mean isn’t this what working as a team is all about?
There is so much more to this discussion. As more tools are created that blur our working world with our personal life, such as Facebook and LinkedIn have done, we will all have to find the balance between being true to ourselves/our own brand and remaining part of a team that blends and morphs us into something bigger than ourselves.
Add A Comment