How Companies Can Limit Social Media Liability Exposures Your company is on social media.Your employees are, too.Sometimes, this can go well.

Your company gets free promotion, and your employees engage with your company and others.Other times, it can go very badly.Social media is creating serious liability concerns, and companies should make sure they’re limiting their exposures.

Going Viral Isn’t Always Good Pew Research Center says that 72% of U.S.adults are on at least one social media platform, and the figures are even higher among younger generations.For many people, social media is, as the name implies, social.

They use it to chat with their friends and family, or to discuss common interests with people they only know online.Many people don’t have many followers, and this can create the illusion of privacy – but social media posts are often not private.Justine Sacco learned this the hard way.

According to the New York Times, she only had 170 followers in 2013, when she tweeted a politically incorrect joke before boarding a plane to Africa.By the time she got off the plane, her tweet had gone viral, and people were not amused.Amid the backlash that followed, she was terminated from her job as the senior director of corporate communications.

This is the nature of social media.Companies may plan their social posts in advance, but the average person often posts quickly, spontaneously.They may not put much thought into what they post online.

It’s not uncommon to find typos in posts.Sometimes, the mistakes are much bigger, sparking social media outrage.When this happens, the poster’s employer can become entangled in the situation.

How Your Employee’s Posts Can Hurt Your Company It often plays out in the same basic way.Someone does something to evoke social media outrage, and the incident goes viral.At this point, news reporters might start picking up the story.

There’s a good chance the person’s employer will be identified, at which point people may start contacting the company to demand that the individual be fired.This is what happened in the case of Ellis v.Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

According to Saiber LLC, the employee made a Facebook post advocating violence toward demonstrators.Some people complained to the bank, and the bank decided to fire the employee for violation of the company’s social media policy.The court ruled in favor of the bank.

What employees post, even if their personal time, can reflect badly on the company.In some cases, the post may involve the company more directly.How Businesses Can Protect Themselves Social media is here to stay, so businesses need to take steps to protect themselves.