Who owns the pope’s Twitter account? And who owns your employees’ social-media accounts?

With the passing of Pope Francis, we’re reminded of this oldie but goodie: Who owns the Pope's Twitter account? Does it belong to the office or the man?

Who owns your employees’ social-media accounts is something you may need to address in your business. When your employees use social-media accounts to market your company’s products or services, what's going to happen to those accounts if they leave? Your employees may consider those accounts to be their property. But you might claim that the people following the accounts were following your company — or, if we’re talking about LinkedIn, the customer was connected to your sales rep, not Jim personally.

There have been lawsuits over this. If your employees can take social-media accounts and the connections that they provide when they leave your company, you could lose all those customer and potential-customer contacts and the goodwill associated with them. That could be a serious blow to your business, especially if the employee went to work for a competitor.

If your business uses social media in its marketing efforts, it needs to have policies and written agreements in place spelling out who owns those social-media accounts.