Three tips for creating corporate social media policies
July 7th, 2008 |
Chris Lynn of SHIFT Communications quoted me extensively in a piece on Media Bullseye on developing corporate social media policies. Here are three tips I offered:
- Develop a comprehensive policy that extends to all employees and all use of social media and social networks whenever there is potential for employees to be seen as company representatives.
- Engage with all appropriate departments within the company, such as legal, finance and marketing, when developing the policy, but do not allow their influence to result in an overly restrictive policy.
- Be emphatic about the need for social media users to behave ethically, legally, and in the best interests of the company, its customers, employees, shareholders, and business partners.
You can read the rest of the piece, Searching for Balance: Companies Struggle to Develop Social Media Policies, here.
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Worked for a company not too many years back (now out of business) that had a very difficult time with the concept of new media, and I was not able to persuade otherwise. Would have loved to have had all of these articles at that time. Back then, there was a fear over not having an effective way we could micro-manage it to ensure compliance, so rather than take it to ANY level, it was decided not to even have outside internet anywhere except a few top level management.
I’m glad to see there is a shift happening in today’s workplace.
Comment by Robyn — July 7, 2008 @ 10:48 pm
One challenge in all this is always that representatives of the departments in question often have no knowledge of how these tools work, what they’re for, and what their use means to users. It’s hard to draft a policy with people that far behind the veil.
Comment by Steven Lewis — July 16, 2008 @ 9:14 pm
Steven, I completely understand and agree. The best you can do is try to educate people, and show them, if possible, how it will benefit them personally or make their jobs easier. At one Fortune 500 company, so many educational presentations are required in order to get everyone to agree to a program or initiative that the process has been nicknamed “The Tie-Off Olympics.”
Comment by joel — July 16, 2008 @ 9:42 pm
Hi Joel….its so hilarious that I should land on your post via a discussion group on http://yourinnerceo.ning.com where you were in a tweeting conversation with Helge Keitel about command and control cultures, and find Steven Lewis’ comment here! I hired Steven earlier this year to help me with the internal culture change and social media adoption in our organisation. I am in the process of researching/ writing an article on how corporate leadership has to fundamentally change in style - way beyond the tool, but philosophically and practically! Your quote about the Fortune 500 company and Tie-off Olympics is great and I believe that is more the norm than the exception.
Would be interested to hear your views.
Comment by Annalie Killian — July 19, 2008 @ 8:09 am
[...] guidelines makes a social media program versatile and transferable. Plus, it will make the lives of compliance officers a bit less [...]
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