Boss trying to control my social media AIBU?

[Neomldn]

Started a new job and was immediately told that I must like, share, comment on and re-post all of the companies frequent posts on social media (mostly LinkedIn and Twitter), as well regularly messaging any of my contacts that might be interested in the companies services or events.

I don’t work in Marketing/Business Development or similar, most of the services don’t relate to my field and the requirement to do these things was never mentioned at interview. This is a small company and prior to this I’ve always worked for large firms, so perhaps that’s the difference?

Up until now, I’ve duly “liked” all of the posts, but I’ve refrained from sharing them or messaging my contacts, as I feel this is way too intrusive. I have a great connection base that I’ve built up over time through working in my specialism for years and I don’t feel comfortable to bombard them/their feeds and my personal profiles with company related posts. I’ve now received an email from the company MD (my boss), challenging my lack of support and requesting a meeting to discuss further. AIBU in thinking that this is completely inappropriate?

I'd log out of my SM accounts, start additional pages with a slightly different name with privacy settings that block all but friends and probably look for another job!

It's a huge overstep.

That is why I never say where I work or accept "friend" requests from colleagues. Never have and never will.

Massively cheeky by your new employer and likely to result in you losing your real friends on social media.

I tend to hide/snooze/mute/block/unfriend people who are constantly promoting a business.

I had this with a previous company. Every week they asked everyone to like, share and comment on their social media - especially on LI.
Then they asked me to change my photos to company ones.
I just ignored all their requests.

With that said, it will be noticed if you don't do it and the company may also have a culture of only promoting those employees who promote the company.

I'd have said no in the first place, but I'm a grumpy old woman. I like the blocking and telling them it's deactiviated/stalker thing. Slight white lie but you could justify by considering them checking your SM as stalkerish behaviour!

My employer doesn’t even know if I have social
media accounts let alone expect me to use them to promote the business.

As a compromise I’d be willing to set up an alt account that my employer knows about and like and repost things to my 5 followers. Only in business time of course.

Does your employer have a Social Media Policy? Might be worth checking to see if it does/what it says if it does.
Personally, I have no problem liking & sharing on LinkedIn as that is a business SM site; I'm less comfortable with other SM channels like Twitter, FB etc.
Professional lives are definitely bleeding into personal - one of my previous bosses got hauled over the coals for criticising TfL on his Twitter account, TfL contacted his bosses & complained! They then introduced a Social Media Policy to say we had to add in a 'all comments are my own' line so the business wouldn't be brought into disrepute & told to be careful what we said/liked/shared in future

I work in marketing and there is no expectations to do like or share anything on personal accounts. That is what LinkedIn is for but not personal accounts.

I did during COVID as we were providing support for small businesses that was important but no-one asked us to.

Either set up fake accounts or lock down your own accounts and tell them you're not on social media or have stopped using the accounts due to hacking.

That is incredibly cheeky of them. How dare they monitor your social media? I’d lock all accounts right down tight. If you were to post something personal they didn’t like, I’d bet they would be all over you.

I do tend to share my companies posts (small company and a product lots of my friends like) so I can see it would be sort of expected with say a young fashion brand.

But not if say it made widgets.

But it's not required at all.

Nah fuck that. I do work in Marketing and Business development and I might share a post from time to time but very sparingly and only then because some of my friends are our clients and therefore may be interested (we sell holidays).

If I was selling something less appealing to the general public I would never.

I would never expect any of my team to share anything, or use their own personal accounts to administrate our business pages if they didn't want to either (we have a fake one that everyone can access for that, if preferred).

OP if I were you I'd either tell them it's not happening or set up dummy accounts to like and retweet from that don't contain any personal info.

I think I'd just stop interacting in any way on sm and claim not to have seen them. Or lock down my security and claim it's a dormant account.

If you are not in a union, join one and go to the meeting with the union rep because it will act as a warning to them not to mess you about and their requests are more than unreasonable.

They are using their employees personal SM accounts as free advertising so they are a bunch of greedy so and so's

@Neomldn "Hmm this is interesting. We’ve been told explicitly that the reason we’re being asked to share and interact with the posts through our personal accounts is so that they can reach our own networks and beyond, so I can’t see they’d be happy with me making up a new account for this purpose which would have no/few connections. I will certainly raise that as an option though!"

Don't raise it, just do it.

Why would you raise it? It's your social media account, not theirs. You pick and choose what you post about. Create a new account with a name close to your own personal account one or something else entirely different and share what they want you to share there.

Ask them what data processing agreement they're putting in place with you given that they're expecting you to act as business on your personal social media accounts. And how much they're going to pay you for your time doing it.

This is exactly what I thought and one way to tarnish any professional reputation you have or put a strain on personal relationships.

This is very bizarre and totally crosses a line imo, especially seeing as you don’t work in marketing, and I’m assuming not in social media either.

Lock down your SM. Create new accounts and use them for something else eg following random celebs, meme accounts or something so it looks like you have a network.

Then feel free to share away.

I don't see what the issue is - it's your customers that keep you employed so the more you share the more opportunity for business.

Tell him you have work/life boundaries and that from now on you won't be involved with any company information via social media in your own time unless he's willing to pay overtime at double rate.