Employment Labor Law Social Media

Employment & Labor Law - Social Media

Social Media Policy Analysis

The social media policy that I selected to analyze was Wal-Mart's social media guideline which is available online at http://corporate.walmart.com/social-media-guidelines. Wal-mart engages in several social media including Foursquare, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook. The social media guideline has been broken down into five major components: guidelines regarding engaging in the company's activity on twitter, guidelines regarding engaging in its Facebook activities, guidelines for Wal-Mart associates, guidelines for firm-sponsored location based programs' usage by associates, and the company's mom program.

Guidelines for activities on Twitter

As stated in its online policy, the company does not handle its store or service complaints through this medium. Those employees who have been assigned the responsibility of official representation on Twitter are recognized by the unique URLwalmart.com/twitter. Wal-mart addresses its Twitter followers as well - it promotes them to express their opinions on the forum, and for that it recommends the usage of the message tool. It requests its followers to incorporate links within their messages and tweets in order to have factual evidence of their requests, claims as well as opinions. It replies to messages of the highest relevance and the selection of messages to be replied to is left upon the official representative's judgment. Finally, it encloses by stating that the company is not endorsing other twitter accounts which it follows or has included in its list on the official page. It also states that it would not be responsible if its messages get re-tweeted on other accounts (such as fake Wal-mart Twitter profiles); also, it cannot be held liable for marking such re-tweets as favorites. The guideline also states that the posted content does not represent the company and is not necessarily endorsed or approved (Wal-mart, 2013).

Guidelines for activities on Facebook

Wal-mart's social media guidelines continue to endorse the brand's slogan: “save money, live better” (Wal-mart, 2013). It has its official Facebook Fan page at www.facebook.com/walmart. The guidelines begin by requesting facebook fans and followers not to engage in illegal activities. Its second point highlights a very important fact: that people start using vulgar language and use profanity when they disagree with another's point of view. To avoid such unpleasant happenings, it requests its fans to stay polite and also states that such excessive behavior will not be tolerated on the page. The third point in the guideline emphasizes upon relevance, and says ...