A friend of mine, a content writer, recently got a new job. After pulling out of the interview process for other jobs, signing the job offer, electing benefits, getting equipment shipped to them... A social media contract landed in their inbox.
One clause said this content writer must "clear any posts about marketing or content marketing before posting. We don't want you sharing best practices that competitors could copy!"
This person is a thought leader on the topic of content, which was part of their desirability as a new hire: "Your ability to grow and entertain an audience is why we’re hiring you." Nonetheless, the hiring company wanted the last word on anything posted by this thought leader, especially in their area of thought leadership [insert massive eye roll].
I'll tell you how my friend handled this situation shortly, but first—while assuming you can own your employees' social media is problematic on many levels, is it legal?
Is it legal to supervise content employees' posts?
Here, we're talking about supervising in the sense of watching and then advising or reprimanding any employee, content writer or not, following their social media activity.
“Private employers can no longer interfere with concerted activity by employees, and that includes employees griping online about terms and conditions of employment,” employment attorney Lisa Bowman says.
If you do want to monitor your employees’ social media accounts, you must first get consent from the employee. It's not recommended to monitor any account of your employees, according to Bowman, but if you do it must be disclosed in a signed agreement before hiring.
2 actions that concern content writers about social media control
Dictating how the content writer describes their role at your company.
A problematic employer of mine asked me to change my role on LinkedIn to -.
That's right, they wanted me to replace the searchable function with a hyphen. They had asked all the employees to do the same, which screamed "red flag" to me. Removing my actual role from my profile would not only make it unlikely I'd be headhunted, it would reduce my chances of getting any job I apply to through that channel and maybe also discredit my CV within ATS recruiting tool that cross-checks with LinkedIn. Not to mention: it looked suspicious. Would you hire someone with the job title "hyphen"? I said no, and your content writers should too. While we should all represent the job accurately, it's up to the profile owner to decide which parts of the job they're most proud of.
Pressuring the content writer to post.
While, in part, you might have hired the content writer for their social media presence, unless it was part of the hiring contract that they post a certain amount of times per year mentioning your company in a positive light, you cannot demand—never mind guilt—employees into posting.
You can, however, provide drafted posts and designs in case they'd like to promote an upcoming event, competition, job opening, or product feature. You can create a company hashtag to make it easier for employees to support each other. You should also explain why you want your content team to share:
"Articulate the bigger picture, career implications, new opportunities, incentives, and the technology behind sharing," advises PostSpeaker.
The two red flags above would concern me personally, and I'd recommend communicating to your HR team to be on the lookout for hiring managers trying to surepticiously supervise their new content writer's posts.
How can you respectfully hire a content writer with a large audience?
If you are hiring content writers for their audience as well as their marketing prowess, you can consider them part writer, part influencer. By offering an influencer-style contract, you can decide on the terms together and negotiate fairly what would benefit both parties so that:
You can boost your reach and brand recognition
The content writer can continue to build their professional profile
That being said, I do not recommend lobbing an influencer-style contract at an employee who's effectively started working for you, as happened to my friend from the beginning of this article. And just for the record, I would absolutely name and shame this company but my friend is too much of a pro for that stuff. We'll just have to be anonymously bitter on their behalf.
To tell you the end of the story, that content writer withdrew from the onboarding process. The hiring company lost a valuable, experienced thought leader and had to start their hiring process again, not to mention letting down the team members who will have been excited about the new content hire.
Don't make the same mistakes. Trust your employees to be respectful and treat them so well they want to boast about you on social media—it's a way better retention measure.
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