Your Employees Are Creators Now. Are They Ready?
When brand deals go sideways, who actually pays for it?
If you own or lead a business, here's a question worth sitting with: who's the face of your brand? Who posts the new products, the behind-the-scenes videos, the everyday moments?
For a lot of small and mid-sized businesses, the answer is the employees. Often it starts with a team member who offers to help, and an owner who says, "Go for it. Go get us some followers."
That can be a really good thing. The employees I talk to want to help. They're proud of where they work, and they want the business to succeed. But every one of those posts carries your business name, the one you've poured so much into. And most of the people making them have never been told what to do when a post goes sideways.
Your employees are creators now. The question is whether they're ready.
The well-meaning post that's a compliance problem
Picture this. Your newest hire loves the product you just launched, so she posts about it on her personal account. Great photo, real enthusiasm. She doesn't mention that she works for you.
She meant well. But under the FTC's endorsement rules, working for a company counts as a "material connection," and material connections have to be disclosed. So that sweet, well-meaning post isn't just an optics question. It's a compliance exposure, and the exposure is the business's, not hers.
Will the FTC come knocking on a small business's door over one post? Maybe not. But the FTC has sent warning letters to influencers and companies over undisclosed endorsements. And the more likely problem is closer to home: social platforms build their rules around these laws, and an account can be restricted or shut down. There's no good argument for taking that risk when it's so easy to avoid.
A real call: the comment that landed on the wrong business
A few months ago, I got a call from the owner of a jewelry store. Her store manager was a longtime employee the family loved. He ran the store's social media and often shared the store's content on his own TikTok.
One night, scrolling at home, he left a comment on another creator's video. It was, no question about it, racist. That creator had about a million followers. He screenshotted the comment and called on his audience to go after what he assumed was the commenter's business.
Only it wasn't his business. It was hers. She was in tears on the phone with me, and she didn't even have a TikTok login.
It got harder from there. In the heat of the moment, she fired him and had another employee post about the firing. I understand the impulse. But announcing it publicly turned one story into two. Now there was a racist comment and a public firing for people to talk about.
That's one scenario. There are plenty of others:
A customer ends up in a video without agreeing to it.
The team jumps on a trend nobody really thought through, or posts an inside joke that reads very differently to a stranger.
The social media star who's the face of your page has to be let go, and now you need a new face for your brand.
It's a long list. And a fun-loving team needs ground rules most of all. Just ask Good Good Golf, which lost a major partnership with Callaway over a video it meant to be funny.
This isn't about silencing your team
I want to be clear about something. Your employees are a great asset, and a lot of the time they're better at social media than you'll ever be.
This is about giving the people who choose to talk about your brand the training to do it well. Employees have real legal protections to talk about their working conditions, and any policy you write has to respect that. The goal is a plan in place before you hand over the most important thing your business owns: its reputation.
Why insurance won't fix this
A lot of owners hear all this and think, "That's what insurance is for." Some of you even carry crisis communications coverage.
Here's the problem. Most coverage is built for things like a roof. Something breaks, you file a claim, help shows up, a check arrives. Roofs cave in all the time. A new roof is a new roof.
Reputation doesn't work that way. Reputations aren't like roofs. You can't rebuild a legacy with an insurance check. A one-star review that goes viral probably isn't a claim. And if things spiral far enough that coverage does kick in, you're already in deep trouble.
Insurance covers the loss. Readiness covers what gets said while the story is still unfolding, and that work has to happen before anything goes wrong.
Two moves to start this week: Anticipate and Fortify
The Reputation Readiness Path™ has five steps: Anticipate, Fortify, Monitor, Respond and Recover. This week, start with the first two.
Anticipate. List everyone on your team who posts with your name attached, even casually. Then think through their likely bad day: the undisclosed post, the customer in the background, the joke that doesn't land. Bring your team together, and do it regularly, to talk through what could go wrong and how you'd want it handled.
Fortify. Write it down and train it. Start with three things:
Disclosure done right. If you allow your team to post about the business on their personal profiles, the relationship has to be clear every time.
Clear ground rules. What's great to share, what stays inside, and who to ask when they're not sure.
A plan for thebad day. Who speaks, who stays quiet, and what happens in the first 24 hours.
Your team is out there building your name every day. Protect what you promote.
Your brand deserves real training
Think about it. Your employees get trained on your software, on health and sanitation standards, on safety. But when it comes to your brand and how it's promoted, the only training out there is from creators teaching people how to talk to a camera, edit and go viral.
That's why we built the Reputation-Ready Creator™ Certification. Our pilot group of creators, business owners, employee creators and influencers just completed it, and their feedback has been terrific.
Your team will learn best practices, disclosure and compliance, the most common missteps, and how to make sure their content makes money, not mayhem. Once they're certified, they get access to our team and a community where they can ask questions, learn about new opportunities and obstacles, and connect with other employee creators.
I hold this to a high standard. My background is in education, and I'm part of the faculty in Wayne State University's Executive and Professional Development program. And it's affordable enough to train your whole team.
👉 Enroll your team
Sit with this
If someone on your team posted something tomorrow that went sideways, would they know what to do? Would you?
What to do right now
Count the people on your team who post about your business.
Ask how many have ever been trained to do it well.
If the answer is zero, certify your team before the next post goes sideways.
"I believe every guru who tells you to grow your visibility owes you the other half of that conversation. What happens when it works? What happens when your visibility grows and you aren't prepared for the vulnerability it creates, or the opportunities it brings? But nobody is talking about that. So I am. Because no creator, founder, or leader should ever have to pour everything into building a brand, and then, when something goes wrong, just figure it out and defend it alone."
Listen to Episode 13 of Publicist in Your Pocket on Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.
