Does Your Company Have A Social Media Policy?

So, one of my favorite tech columns is the NYT’s “Bits,” a daily blast focused on the innovations of the web (and namely social media).  This story caught my eye earlier this week: New York City’s Education Department has defined a code of conduct for teachers who wish to interact with students via social media. The rules specifically state that teachers “communicate with students through professional pages, devoted to classroom business like homework and study guides, but must get a supervisor’s approval before setting up such pages.” Students are required to get parental consent to interact on these pages prior to participating.

I have to admit that I haven’t followed the policies of other school districts in the country, but I’m imagining that if this isn’t a widespread trend, it soon will be.  What I like about it is that the district has acknowledged the necessity of social media and its overall usefulness in communicating with children, but also put in place some boundaries between the personal and the professional online behavior. In an educational environment, students are the children and teachers are the adults; teachers are people once they walk outside of the classroom and their behavior may not be something that impressionable, vulnerable children should be exposed to. At the same time, students should be able to leverage social media for things like notes, assignments, syllabi, and post real time questions to their educators. This is very useful, I’d imagine, for underprivileged kids (which NYC is, notably, full of), gaining after hours access to already overwhelmed teachers and educators.

The policy also explicitly states that teachers should not have the expectation of privacy where social media is concerned, and that they should adjust their privacy settings on all of their accounts to filter personal content away from their students. This makes sense, doesn’t it? Do we need to recount the infamous humiliations of public servants and celebrities because they didn’t think anyone was watching? Note to self: it’s 2012. Everyone is watching everywhere all the time.

The example the NYC schools set is one that we all need to embrace. Online behavior should be regulated just as interoffice behavior is. This is the key questions that every single organization now needs to ask itself: What is our social media policy, how have we communicated that to our employees, and what are the consequences that we will deploy of those policies are disregarded? Of course, the cautionary tale of the decade is what happened with Domino’s Pizza, where a prank video by two employees went viral and did about as much damage to the brand as the oil spill in the Gulf did to BP. Is there anything wrong with encouraging employees to post about your company? Of course not.  In fact, they should be rewarded for doing so, as appropriate, positive and consistent posts from employees can help raise the profile of any brand.

As with any employee, their social media conduct needs to have an appropriate amount of oversight and understood consequences. Can you prevent, for example, employees from texting each other outside of work? Of course not. Can you, however, punish employees who send text messages with sexual content to other employees?  Provided that it’s been clearly defined in your sexual harassment policy, of course you can. The same type of give and take can be applied to your internal social media policies. Here are some quick tips that you should consider if you haven’t already. (DISCLAIMER: this probably goes without saying, but the aforementioned list should not be construed as legal advice and before you put anything in place, have anyone sign anything or make company-wide mandates, please consult professionals like lawyers, okay? Thanks!)

1.  Assign your internal (or external) marketing pros to manage, moderate and maintain all of your corporate social media accounts

What if someone, despite the rules, posts something inappropriate?  Have a team in place to take them down immediately.

2.  Ensure that the management of the company’s social media profiles are assigned to a discreet individual or group of individuals and no one else.

Your sales team doesn’t need to have administrative capacity for your social media accounts. Neither does your CFO, COO, CEO or your IT department. That’s strictly the role of your communication and marketing team. Make sure it stays theirs exclusively.

3.  Instruct your employees to set up “work only” social media profiles using their professional email accounts and prohibit them from posting “personal” messages using those profiles.

In 2012, everyone should have personal Facebook accounts as well as professional. Ditto for Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, et al.

4.  When someone breaks a rule, ensure there is a protocol in place to handle the situation.

Yes, your marketing team should be in charge of all things related to messaging and branding. They are not, however, responsible for meting out appropriate consequences to your employees when rules get broken.

5.  Educate your staff as to what your social media goals and tactics are.

Make sure that your marketing people communicate company wide your actual company objectives for social media. If everyone is on the same page as to what you want to get out of your SM campaigns, everyone can then participate in their success.