Part three in the series looking more deeply at subjects covered in the “Threats and Opportunities of Social Media” panel at the Sportbusiness New Media conference held in Manchester on the 21st of April.

Topic Three – Losing free speech? When does a personal social media channel become the property of an organisation?

There are some big issues here that relate to the promotion of the individual versus the promotion of the team or the sponsors. Those issues exist whether you are putting your face on a packet of breakfast cereal or creating an athlete personal homepage.

I have a very simple view of social media when it comes to this kind of topic. It’s just a technology. Even though iphones and other devices have accelerometers, they don’t have a moral compass.

Social media does not fundamentally change the rules when it comes to people making public comment. The policy should be dictated by the culture of the organisation.

I’ve signed several employment contracts in the past that include clauses to the effect that if I want to talk to the media I need board approval. Some of these contracts were for large global brands and some were for small start-ups. I’ve also worked in organisations where I could say what I liked to whomever I liked, with the understanding that if I brought myself or the company into disrepute there would be consequences. Social media doesn’t have to over complicate things. If a player or coach or any other employee is on social media, they are making a public comment.

As soon as a sportsman or woman takes money from a club, team or sponsor then they become an employee, spokesperson and ambassador for that brand. Microsoft’s social media policy when it comes to employees making comment is reportedly very simple – Don’t be stupid.

Here’s the simple answer – If you are a professional team and you are paying your players a lot of money, then get them media trained. Get that media training to include social media. It’s pretty easy to make people understand that sending a tweet is the same as sending a text message to the whole world.

If you don’t want to wake up tomorrow and read it in the newspaper – don’t send it. Don’t blame the technology for lapses in personal responsibility.

So that’s social media as the delivery mechanism for the message, but what are the effects of social media on the managing of a story that has already broken.

Again, how a player or team or governing body deals with a piece of bad publicity has almost nothing to do with social media. If a story is going to break, it will break thanks to good old fashioned investigative journalism or a leak of some other method. If the story is big enough, it will end up on the front page of the ‘News of the World’ or some other non-social media outlet.

All social media does in this case is speed the news to a more geographically diverse audience.

That being said, social media is a conversation and participating in that conversation early can have a positive impact on the brand. Remember that the conversation is going to happen on social media with or without you and by ignoring it, you runt he risk of your case being totally misrepresented. By the time you read about it or see it on the news, it will be too late.

There are fantastic opportunities for professional professional sporting brands to interact with a wide audience. Whether you are an athlete or a governing body, social media is your mouthpiece to the world. Be thankful that people even want to listen to you, and be mindful that what you say will become part of the global public record.

David Fuller is a consultant on the use of emerging technology for marketing, digital strategy and online marketing.

Read Part 4 – The Future?