Did you see the FINRA news release last week announcing guidance for securities firms and brokers regarding the use of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs to communicate with their investors?

Securities firms and brokers are now required to develop their own customized policies and procedures to ensure all personnel are complying with regulatory requirements when using social networking sites and that their online recommendations are suitable and not misleading to investors. Firms and brokers must have a general policy prohibiting any associated person from engaging in business communications in a social media site that is not subject to the firm’s supervision.

Firms and brokers must also record their employee’s business-related postings and they may use software to automatically log these web messages.

Organizations across all sectors must realize that people (customers, vendors, employees, etc.) are talking about them online whether they like it or not, and organizations must be prepared on how they will respond should an individual post negative, inaccurate and damaging comments online.

All organizations should have a social media policy and all organizations should explain to employees their privacy (or lack of) rights with respect to the social media policy. And don’t forget ongoing reminders that existing policies on harassment, discrimination, ethics and compliance extend to all forms of communications.

Has your organization implemented a social media policy?

Do your employees understand their individual roles and organizational responsibilities when it comes to social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn?

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Awareity is a privately held organization founded in 2002. Awareity's innovative e-Management solutions empower organizations to 'connect the dots' and offer a unique focus on implementing lessons learned across several critical areas of business – compliance, information assurance, public safety, emergency management, enterprise risk management and reputation management.

Awareity’s solutions are helping organizations across multiple industries - education, financial, government, healthcare and other critical industries – to achieve better results by ensuring lessons learned become lessons implemented and the right information is shared with the right people in the right place at the right time with accountability and auditability at the individual-level. Awareity's solutions simplify complex challenges, reduce current and ongoing costs and improve efficiencies as obligations continue to mount and budgets and resources are limited.

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