Twitter is now a touch away on your mobile and a click away on you system .It has pervaded every possible walk of life and has been embraced by a huge number of people . This has resulted in people tweeting from a lot of places . A major chunk of people now-a-days are tweeting from their workplaces .It is not a bad idea to do that , as long as a few things are in your mind when you do that . Let us discuss this today
The workplace is where you make your living and it is good to remember a few things when you tweet from there
- Never Diss your Boss on the timeline , if you do that , and even if your boss is not on twitter , the search engines will index your tweets and serve it up the next time someone searches for diss words or even worse , if you named him/her , a name search will do the trick . And once discovered , all hell will break loose . There is also a possibility that a colleague who wants to pip you is on twitter and is stalking you . Where that will go next is anybody’s guess
- Watch the tone of your tweets . If you are always coming across as a whiner or a crybaby on twitter and your workplace sees that , you can count on your next appraisal getting all awry about your attitude issues . You also want to keep in mind that radical stances about topics related to work can also get you into a big soup . The last thing you want is your tweets screwing up an already screwed appraisal
- Watch the frequency of your tweets . This is another big point . If you are tweeting too much during work hours , then the normal conclusion is that you are not working and your productivity is not good . Both of these can have negative impact on your employment , unless you are hired to tweet for a company and it is part of your job to . There is widespread paranoia that tweeps are people with a lot of free time on their hands and that won’t help your job
- Never take names in tweets . If you have to say something about a colleague or a team or even a product , please keep names out of the tweet , that is something that can be used for defamation claims and stuff like that . Sarcasm is fine , but direct attacks are another thing . Most organizations are also very strict about non Disclosure clauses in their employment contracts . They are very specific that you do not divulge any work related details on social forums where it can be a Infosec issue for them . So keep your mind alert and awake to that fact . Violation of an NDA does not stop with termination of services , you are liable to be sued if you violate it
- Do not tweet locations and numbers . Try and keep the exact location of your workplace and the relevant numbers like employee strength , contact info and even the neighboring locations away from your tweets . You can call me paranoid , but there is no saying what information can land up in the hands of a miscreant and what damage can ensue after that
- Stay away from controversy . When you tweet from work , it is a good idea to steer clear of controversial workplace . environment related debates that might be misconstrued as posturing against an employer . That will do a lot of negative things to your perceive image at th work place . It might lead to your being called a negative opinion leader .
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Good points, especially as it pertains to The Man. I couldn’t help wonder what kind of job would allow you to Tweet for large chunks of time. I understand if you’re sending updates/promotions for your company…?
@linda : Yep , No job would allow that unless you are running your own company I guess !