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Social media gudelines and policies: more resources

October 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Sorting through legal issues and creating social media guidelines continues to be a a big issue for most companies.  Here are links to resources I’ve found helpful on the issue.

Also, please note one legal issue that not enough people are paying attention to. Many companies’ HR policies prohibit  you from giving recommendations to people who have worked for them.  This policy applies to LinkedIn: most likely you should not be giving LinkedIn recommendations for anyone who has directly worked for you or is currently reporting to you. Here’s a good legal perspective on the LinkedIn issue.

If you know of other helpful policies, please share and I’ll post. Thanks. Lois

Online Database of Social Media Policies: links to 107 policies

Center for Social Media at American University

NewPR Wiki – Resources.BloggingPolicy

For Mayo Clinic Employees « Sharing Mayo Clinic

Enterprise Social Media Usage Policies and Guidelines | SocialComputingJournal.com

10 Must-Haves for Your Social Media Policy

Social Media Policies For Your Company: Internal Policies | davefleet.com

A Corporate Guide For Social Media – Forbes.com Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. -

Wal-Mart’s Twitter Terms of Use Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

- Wal-Mart’s Twitter External Discussion Policy

SAP Social Media Guidelines 2009

Lawyers blocking social media is not a policy

ESPN Responds to Criticism and Publishes Social Media Policy | WordPress Marketing

RightNow social web employee policy | RightNow

Social Media Policy and Employee Guidance « Candid CIO

Intel Social Media Guidelines

Social Media Policy Examples | 123 Social Media

Blogging and Social Media Policy Sample – See a Blogging and Social Media Policy Sample

WaPo’s Social Media Guidelines Paint Staff Into Virtual Corner; Full Text of Guidelines | paidContent

3 Great Social Media Policies to Steal From

Social Media Policies | Social Media Law Student

Beats and Tweets: Journalistic Guidelines for the Facebook Era – Inside NPR.org Blog : NPR

Filed Under: Research, Social media strategy Tagged With: , , ,

Social media policies & guidelines

May 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Here are some highlights on emerging best practices in social media guidelines and policies, based on research we’re completing with several major Fortune 500 corporations and social media monitoring technology providers. The full report will be released next week, but here are some common elements among companies’ social media guidelines.

Commonalities among corporate social media guidelines

  • Employees must follow existing company policies, e.g., code of conduct, privacy policies.
  • Employees are responsible for their own views.
  • If writing about the company, the employee must disclose his/her name and role at the company, and, again, reiterate the views are theirs, not the company’s.
  • When expressing views not related to the company, the employee does not need to mention employment relationship.
  • Guidelines on what information should never be discussed, e.g., financials.
  • The requirement that hourly workers should not participate in work-related social media efforts when off the clock.
  • The requirement that employees be truthful, respectful and professional.
  • A disclaimer that even within the guidelines there remains a degree of risk for the employee.
  • The need for tone and content of guidelines to be aligned with company’s values.

What varies

Policies vary on whether an employee should use a personal email address or company email address as their primary means of identification. Some think that since the views expressed are the employee’s, not the company’s, they should not be identified in any way with the company.

Others believe that employee participation in professionally-related social media conversations enhances the company’s reputation as people are able to “see” the knowledge, integrity, and helpfulness of employees, with their company email address.  Emerging best practice companies say that the stronger an organization’s corporate values, the more comfortable a company should be with allowing employees to use company email addresses.

Beyond content

The more plainly and clearly the guidelines are written, the greater the likelihood that employees will read and understand them. The more “legalese” they become, the greater the chance that they will be ignored or misunderstood. Best Buy and Sun Microsystems’ guidelines are good examples of writing simply and clearly while covering pertinent legal issues.

Some companies are incorporating social media guidelines into employees’ Conduct of Conduct or Employee Agreements, which employees are required to review and sign every year.

Lastly, companies stress that they are at greater risk at NOT having social media guidelines in place for their employees, as employees are participating in blogs, communities, Twitter, etc. with or without a company policy in place. Better to educate and help employees understand both the risk and how to succeed than leave it up to chance.

Filed Under: Communities, Conversational Marketing, Social media strategy Tagged With: , ,

10 ideas for creating community guidelines

November 30, 2008 By 4 Comments

Setting up clear, concrete guidelines for online communities is crucial. Doing so:

  • Helps  members understand community expectations and culture
  • Makes it easier for your team — and other community members– to  manage the community
  • Helps get legal buy-in as together you’re addressing many known risk areas

In his book Managing Online Forums, Patrick O’Keefe provides thoughtful, detailed recommendations on developing and enforcing guidelines based on running several thriving communities.  Here are just 10 of his many guidelines; check out his book for more, as well as real world examples and nitty gritty advice on  running a communities.

10 community guideline ideas

  1. Advertising and spamming: beware the many, many sneaky advertising  methods people try to use. Patrick provides several examples, which are also helpful to bloggers  trying to understand  whether some comments are legit or a backdoor spam strategy.
  2. Copyright: guidelines should help members understand what they can and can’t do within copyright and intellectual property laws.
  3. Personal, real-life information and privacy: don’t allow home addresses and phone numbers.
  4. Vulgar language and offensive material: Not allowed.
  5. Freedom of speech: Communities are intended to be places where people with like interests can share ideas, debate views and give and get help. But they;re not places where anyone can say anything. “You have no obligation to allow people to say whatever they want, whenever they want. It is your site and it is your responsibility to set the guidelines that all users must adhere to.”
  6. Respect: Inflammatory or disrespectful comments not allowed, including slanderous information. Related, “Do not allow your site to become a soapbox for someone you believe has some sort of agenda.”
  7. Deleting accounts and/or posts in the future: put guidelines in place that will respect someone’s request to have his/her posts removed, without removing valuable content from the community. (Patrick’s advice: change user name to something non-descriptive like username85673.
  8. Hotlinking: No posting and linking to images, videos, fies on servers that you don’t have permsission to link to as the person paying for the server  is paying for this. “The result is badnwidth theft.”
  9. Caution on advice: “Your policies should make it clear that any advice given on your site is for informational and educational purposes only, that it is not verified by you or anyone else for accuracy and as such, it can be inaccurate.” He notes this is especially important if the community conversations get into highly sensitive — and often regulated — issues like healthcare and financial advice.
  10. Who’s the boss? Make it clear who has the final say on enforcing guidelines, and be clear about who people should contact with a complaint and how the complaint should be lodged, e.g., via private email vs. on the community site.

Note: Chapter 6 of Patrick’s book,  “Banning Users and Dealing with Chaos,” addresses issues that every corporate legal eagle worries about when it comes to social media and that not enough marketers think through  before launching. Showing legal that you have anticipated these types of possibilities and have detailed plans in place for dealing with them will help you more quickly overcome legal’s concerns and get them working with you vs. finding reasons why NOT to have a community.

Filed Under: Books, Communities, Social media strategy Tagged With: , , , ,