Social Media for Compliance Professionals

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Sometimes just reaching one person at a time isn’t enough. Social networking allows you to interact with the community at large. To help fill that gap, SCCE has several resources available. Each social media resource can be used in a different way, but all have the common goal of keeping you informed about the compliance profession and keeping you connected with other compliance professionals.

SCCE has its own free social network called SCCEnet, which benefits from the expertise of more than 12,000 compliance professionals. In addition, SCCE has accounts for you on all the major social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, and LinkedIn.

What can SCCEnet do for me?

SCCEnet has more than 60 discussion groups and more than 700 discussions are started each month. There are groups based on your role within your company, risk areas for your particular industry, and for different regions across the U.S. and the world. The most active discussion groups are the Chief Compliance Ethics Officer Network and the Privacy Officer’s Roundtable. But, regardless of which group you use, if you post a question, every response will be directly e-mailed to you, or you can visit the group in the future to view any responses.

In addition, SCCEnet features a series of guest commentators who discuss the critical issues that face the compliance profession. SCCEnet users can log in, read what the guest commentators have to say, share their thoughts, or get their questions answered. Users have shown a significant level of engagement with our commentators and the rich variety of insight they offer on the given topic.

What can Facebook do for me?

Facebook has over 1 billion active members, and many of those members are business professionals and your colleagues in compliance. More than 72% of all American adults are on Facebook–meaning 3 out of 4 of your friends (who are presumably grown-ups) are on Facebook. This is before you add the 1+ million local businesses with active pages.

Simply put, Facebook is where it’s at. If you are looking to test the waters of social media, start here. As an added bonus, legions of people will wish you a happy birthday on Facebook, and that will make you feel really popular.

The SCCE Facebook page provides relevant compliance news, SCCE event information, and interesting discussions. If you “Like” our SCCE page (9,500 of your peers already have), our posts will show up in your news feed.

What can Twitter do for me?

Simply put, Twitter is great for news. Twitter messages are only 140 characters, so they are short and sweet and perfect for providing compliance news headlines and a link or picture. If news is breaking, Twitter has it first. With more than 500 (that’s not a typo) million  tweets every single day, Twitter will, quite literally, keep you posted. While Twitter still has a reputation for being for the younger crowd, it has clearly become a necessary tool in the social media belt.

Twitter is also unique in that you can consume all of the information you want, without having to create an account or login. Use it as a search tool to find up-to-the-minute information on whatever it is you’re looking for.

If you do chose to login, you can curate the content you want to see by following only the people or organizations that interest you. These “feeds” will then be what you see when you login to Twitter – aka your “home feed.”

The SCCE feed on Twitter helps compliance professionals by providing news and links in a simple and efficient format.  We’re proud to say that we’ve got more than 11,000 followers on  Twitter, more than any other compliance-related feed.

What can LinkedIn do for me?

LinkedIn has many beneficial features for compliance professionals, and with more than 277 million members, it’s an excellent site to network with your colleagues. LinkedIn doesn’t allow photo sharing and they keep advertising to a minimum, so they are able to maintain a professional and business-oriented environment.

A major benefit of LinkedIn are the discussions occurring in LinkedIn groups. Companies across the globe have created LinkedIn groups to share news and encourage discussions of current topics between group members. With more than 200 conversations starting every minute, and 8,000 new groups created weekly, you’re sure to find at least one group on LinkedIn that could be of value.

After completing the account setup, I’d suggest updating your profile to include your current contact information and job (it’s hard to network if people don’t know what you do or how to reach you). LinkedIn makes building a profile really easy by allowing you to upload your resume directly into the platform.

After you have completed your profile make sure you upload a professional picture of yourself. Much like all social media, other users want to see who you are and feel like they’re interacting with another person, rather than a blank-two-tone-grey-looks-a-little-bit-like-a-mugshot graphic. Also, you need a professional picture to be taken seriously on LinkedIn – not having one is the equivalent of wearing a bag over your head at a networking happy hour; sure, you’re there, but you’re pretty much declaring to the world that you aren’t really that interested.

After adding the finishing touches to your profile, and uploading your picture, I would recommend joining some LinkedIn groups. You can join up to 50 groups, and you can manage the settings of each group individually. The easiest way to find LinkedIn groups is to use the search function. Simply search for what you’re interested in, and find groups related to those things. Joining a group is simple, and once you’re a member of a group, you’ll be able to post a discussion, ask a question, or comment on what’s going on in the group.

Be sure to find SCCE’s group on LinkedIn – with more than 17,000 group members and 80+ discussions every week, it is an excellent place to network, stay connected, and maybe even learn something.

Privacy on Social Networks

Because social networks live on the Internet, there are always privacy concerns. To allay the fears of their users, most sites post their privacy policies to make users feel more secure. However, many people don’t realize that users (that means you) have a great deal of control regarding privacy settings on social networks.

When you create a profile on Facebook or LinkedIn, your privacy will be governed by that site’s default privacy settings. The potential problem is that default privacy settings may allow a great deal of information to be displayed to anyone  who views a profile.

That being said, I recommend that anyone who sets up an account on Facebook go to the privacy settings and verify what information is being shared, how much of it you want to share with your friends, and how much information is shared with the rest of the world. Similarly, I recommend that anyone who sets up a LinkedIn account view their settings and determine what information should be displayed on their profile page, and whether they want their profile to be public to everyone on the Internet or limited only to their connections.

Managing your privacy is important, so take a few minutes to make sure your settings reflect the amount of information you intend on sharing.