BC Business
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This weekend I noticed that a picture had been posted on Facebook of a young NDP candidate from Vancouver, Ray Lam, running in the upcoming provincial election. Not for long.
The picture showed him clutching a woman’s breast, presumably at some party. By Monday morning, the Vancouver False Creek candidate, Ray Lam, had pulled out of the race. In the last federal election we saw some of this – candidates’ past peccadilloes coming back to haunt them — but they usually fought for a week or two before giving in. But now, with blinding speed, candidates and companies are being searched on social networks and anything damaging is posted immediately. So, I’m wondering: don’t people get it yet? Runners in the Vancouver sun run are twittering every mile; fans are posting ongoing commentary at concerts and seminars; celebrities make outrageous statements and are on YouTube in minutes; within a couple of weeks a dumpy woman from Scotland becomes a global singing star because she wowed the judges of a British talent contest. And people expect to run for office when pictures of them doing stupid things are on social networks? Or companies pull some boneheaded, nasty move, and expect no one will hear about it? A few years back, I used to counsel companies to manage their “google profile” – or ensure that anyone who googled them would see the messages they wanted them to see. But eventually, this wasn’t enough. Soon, we had dummy sites slamming someone or some company for some perceived wrong. To counter it, we had “google bombing” – posting of many Search Engine Optimized articles to move those critical posts down in the rankings. Now, even that’s not working. With Facebook, LinkedIn, and hundreds of other social networking sites, there are multiple opportunities for you or your company to look stupid. And at lightning speed. So, in an era where communications make life an open book, the only solution might be to manage your behaviour, not the medium.