In an earlier post I wrote about whether or not your company should have a social media policy to avoid staff inadvertantly damaging your brand by either directly engaging with bloggers in other than an approved way, (Ryanair Slams ‘Lunatic,’ ‘Idiot’ Blogger), or by posting rather dubious comments about customers to social networking sites, (Virgin Sacks 13 Staff for Calling Customers “Chavs” on Facebook). Obviously the latter example represents extremely poor judgement from Virgin’s (former) members of staff, particularly those who then also posted their pictures along with the comments!
Nonetheless a clear and explicit Social Media policy may help guide staff through the veritable social media minefield. It is clear that simply ignoring the issue does not mean it may not arise. Indeed, in the current environment it is especially important for financial services brands to highlight to staff that the days of bragging about your conspicuous consumption habits online is probably not wise after your investment bank has just received a multi-billion dollar bailout from the tax payer…
Of course as social media and the rise of citizen journalists continue apace it is important that your staff keep up to date with the fast changing digital media environment, particularly those in marketing roles. Social Media is likely to grow in importance going forward as media fragments and people turn to the internet and their online networks for advice and guidance – particularly to those people they consider ‘experts’ in the area – often called ‘Mavens’ (a term used by Malcolm Gladwell in his excellent book The Tipping Point (Little Brown, 2000)). Indeed Walmart has tapped into this idea by building a community site for eleven moms to help foster the growth of people and forums dedicated to saving money, a core Walmart brand value.
Returning to the original point of this post, subsequent to my original article about whether or not your company should have a social media policy I was contacted by a number of people in various HR areas saying they agreed, but what should their social media policy actually say? After a quick look on the internet I actually came across the following site on the internet from the BBC. This outlines in detail the BBC Social Media policy. If you take a look around the site it also has lots of other useful information around things like blogging, accountability and impartiality.
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