A company's worst nightmare: An employee has tweeted about an internal corporate "incident". The tweets hit the blogosphere, then the news. In one fell swoop, years of corporate image management are down the drain.
Faced with this scenario, some organizations go to the extreme by internally banning social media sites (like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr) without planning for external ramifications. Others, like CodeBaby, communicate a consistent social media policy addressing the dos and don'ts of online etiquette. They do this while embracing and even encouraging social media to build relationships with consumers and industry associates. But like any powerful tool, it demands responsibility. To avoid a PR tragedy, savvy organizations must proactively manage their employees' social media behavior.
So how do they do it? In a recent example profiled by Adam Ostrow at Mashable, Telstra, Australia's telecoms giant, developed a firm-wide, online module to set proper expectations about social media engagement. Telstra trains its 40,000 employees using CodeBaby interactive characters in a Flash comic book format. Now part of their Learn.Achieve mandatory online education program, The 3 Rs training featuring CodeBaby interactive character 'Lily' and friends entertain and inform learners on the meaning of Representation, Responsibility and Respect of social media. If you're curious about how to approach this topic at your workplace or looking for some creative eLearning ideas, it's well worth taking a look at Telstra's approach to social media.
To see their full interactive social media training, go here. Below is an extract.
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