Bringing Business to Business

Tweet for the Home Team

May 5, 2010 at 7:44 pm 1 comment

It’s my favorite time of the year.  Its baseball season . . .  The crack of the bat, the zip of the fastball, the roar of the crowd and a season of watching Ozzie Guillen tweet.  For those new to baseball, let me explain the beauty of Ozzie Guillen.  Ozzie is the manager of the Chicago White Sox and an inappropriate sound bite waiting to happen.  So, when he joined Twitter, it gained a lot of media attention.  Ozzie’s response:  “Too bad.”

While the White Sox seem to have three official Twitter accounts, they have not yet put a stop to Ozzie’s tweets.  Maybe they don’t have a social media policy.

According to the Associated Press, the Arizona Diamondbacks, another Major League Baseball team, has a social media policy that “bans employees from dispensing confidential information and from disparaging the organization, other franchises and the league along with any of their players, coaches or officials. Using Diamondbacks or D-backs in a username is forbidden, as is posting logos or photos without consent, and violations could ultimately result in an employee’s firing.”

In addition, Major League Baseball urges players to treat online posts as interviews, to use good judgment and can punish them for inappropriate comments

Maybe if the White Sox took the advice of Traverse Legal, they would implement a social media policy that provides the employees with guidelines and any best practices for representing an employer on a social media networks.

More than likely, they agree with Safe and Savvy that banning social media may even lead to a decrease in productivity.

Personally, I agree that an outright ban is not the best policy.  Every company should have some type of social media policy, not only for protection, but to give employees some guidance.

So while the White Sox work on their policy, be sure to follow Ozzie and enjoy his insights into the baseball season, haircuts and his new sunglasses.  Oh yeah, also don’t forget to root, root tweet, tweet, tweet for the home team.

–          Chuck Brown

Entry filed under: Social Media. Tags: best practices, guidelines, Major League Baseball, MLB, Ozzie Guillen, Social Media, social media policy, Twitter.