Commonwealth Bank and the social media policy debacle

If you are involved in social media, you've probably heard about the recent blow up on Commonwealth Bank of Australia's social media policy. A copy was obtained by a news organization and published last week.

As noted in the article, most of the policy is pretty benign. Where they got in hot water was the reference to "Inappropriate or disparaging content and information stored or posted by others..." and then specifically gave the example of a friend posting an inappropriate comment about the bank on a FaceBook page. In that event, it is incumbent on the employee to notify others in the bank or face the possibility of disciplinary action.

Our organization has a social media policy. Every organization should have one. However, it is a huge leap from managing employees and their social media presence to the actions of their "friends". I use the quotes intentionally because many "friends" in social media would not be considered friends in the true sense of the word. In this case, the organization has set unrealistic expectations and, quite frankly, an extremely difficult policy to monitor.

Doonesbury, Gen Y'ers and Banking

I've really been enjoying the recent Doonesbury comic strip this week. For those of you who don't follow it, here's the one for today.

The basic premise is two twenty-somethings meet for lunch and spend the entire time on their mobile devices. Anyone who has kids or young adults knows that this isn't that far fetched.

So what does that have to do with banking? These are the current/future banking customer's of today. How can you hope to engage them in something as mundane as banking if you aren't meeting them in the social media space? Let's face it: if they aren't talking to each other face to face, how will you ever get them to talk to you?