Many businesses across the U.S. are trying to strike a balance between the benefits and problems associated with using social media to drive their corporate communications. This can be particularly tricky, especially in the context of intense negotiations, where both sides try to leverage their position in order to drive public perceptions. Examples of this occurred this week when Major League Baseball met in Indianapolis, Indiana. Geoff Baker, a reporter for The Seattle Times, talked about how "[m]odern technology like Twitter, and Web sites that use it to maximum advantage[…] are quickly reshaping the face of the winter meetings. Once the place where key deals were often struck at the hotel bar after midnight, top team executives and player agents are now just as likely to be hunkered over a BlackBerry in their private hotel suites, contemplating how best to exploit an information explosion to their advantage." Some of the information broadcast during the MLB meetings was utterly false, but trying to sort through what was true and what was false, proved harder than originally anticipated.
Of course, the sort of rumors that were surfacing in Indianapolis this week are not something only MLB, its executives, players, and agents, have to address on a regular basis. A carefully crafted, strategic information campaign, is critical to any enterprise trying to maximize its position (and more importantly shareholder value). However, if the wrong kind of information gets out, and the damage is severe enough to cause a material adverse affect on its fundamental internal controls (i.e. ranging from employment practices to joint ventures), then the organization could be subjecting itself to possible litigation. Data governance programs must address how social media is used within an organization, in order to mitigate this risk.
To read more about this, please click here: Twitter becomes a big player in baseball