No one can deny that social media has become an amazing way to promote small and start-up businesses. Facebook and Twitter accounts are free for the taking and the majority of American are spending significant amounts of time on social media everyday. Before you ask someone to take on the task of tweeting for or about a business, business owners should consider putting a contract in place.
A recent federal case demonstrates how valuable tweets and twitter followers can be. In PhoneDog v. Kravitz, Kraviz, a tech reporter who was formerly employed by the news site PhoneDog, left his job with PhoneDog and took his 17,500 twitter followers with him by refusing to release the password to his account. A federal judge refused to dismiss PhoneDog’s suit and the case will likely be in court for another year. To read the decision, click here.
Small business owners should keep this case in mind when asking someone else to tweet for them. Business owners can protect themselves and ensure that tweets and other social media avenues concerning their businesses belong to the business by putting a specific contract in place with anyone who is tweeting or posting statuses about the business. Setting out the terms of tweets in writing prior to asking others to take on this task will protect businesses from potential disputes in the future.