If Coca Cola's Social Media policy is only three pages, why does mine need to be any different? It's a fair question until you look at the finer details.
photo credit: quinn.anya
Here's Peter Kim for example, 'From our work over the past two years, I can tell you that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to social media policy. Based on our client advisory work, Ellen Reynolds and Kate Rush Sheehy are proposing a panel for South by Southwest 2011, called How Social Policies Affect Company Culture. If selected, Ellen and Kate will share their experiences with you that they've gained across multiple client engagements while assisting with policy creation and launch.
Non-Negotiable Points in Social Media Policy?
His intention is to cover four areas:
- Importance of having a defined social media policy
- Non-negotiable points that all social media policies must cover.
- How to create, approve and enforce your social media policy (three very detailed topics).
- Importance of accurately reflecting your unique company culture in your policy, and how to use your policy to encourage the right level of internal and external participation.
How To Encourage Participation in Your Social Media Policy
He then adds that they'll answer these questions from a client-side perspective:
- What information must my social media policy cover?
- Who should be involved in the creation and approval process?
- How can I make sure my social policy is a good fit for my company/company culture?
- How do I make sure that my policy is encouraging participation rather than hindering it?
- How often do I need to revisit my policy?
Mistakes to Avoid
Peter makes some good points here. For example, why would a small company need a large (i.e. greater word count) Social Media policy than a larger one? Well, they may already have a library of policies in place and the Social Media policy dovetails into other policies, such as Code of Conduct and Harassment policies.
Smaller firms may not have this level of detail in place and so, in some ways, may be starting from scratch.
It gets more complicated...
How can I make sure my social policy is a good fit for my company/company culture?
Coca Cola, for instance, as a consumer-facing organization, want to maximize Social Media and use these channels wherever possible.
It doesn't want to risk alienating its own employees for using Facebook, Twitter and MySpace (it's still there!).
Maybe your business profile is different.
And his last point has me thinking, 'how to encourage participation rather than hinder it?'
What do you think? What mistakes do we need to avoid?