Corporate Social Media Policies

I took a sample of the many shown here: http://twitpwr.com/2Ff/ and read through them; it is very interesting to see the differences in approach and content:

• Some do a really good job of explaining the possibilities and reasons why employees/members of the organization would want to participate; while at the same time presenting guidelines to “keep them and the company safe”
• Some are simply a liability control device; clearly delineate what the organization is responsible for (little) and what the individual needs to look out (lots).
  Some are simply control devices; the almost amount to “don’t do it on our dime” and “don’t speak about work, we have official channels for that”.
• Some are created thinking about a new communication device; and either ignore or prohibit the public aspect of it completely.

Below detailed comments on the four policies I reviewed, but here my comments/recommendations:

• All corporations/organizations should anchor their social media guidelines/policies in their business conduct guidelines; social media presents new forms of communication and relationship management but the business conduct guidelines should simply be extended and applied to this space.
• Guidelines should do a good job of encouraging; by helping people understand the benefits this can bring to the organization they work for as well as themselves as individuals.
  Clear “limits” should be drawn; I like how HP and IBM have done it.
• Mistakes should be assumed; expectations should be set and what will be the process to deal with those. (see HP below)
• Unavoidable: Liability and Risk must be controlled; clear guidelines regarding Copyright, IP and Confidentiality aspects should be put forward.

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas

Detailed comments below:
IBM: http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html
Snippet from the top:
“These guidelines aimed to provide helpful, practical advice—and also to protect both IBM bloggers and IBM itself”

• Grounds these on IBM’s “Business Conduct Guidelines” http://www.ibm.com/investor/corpgovernance/cgbcg.phtml
• Requests employees identify themselves; while making sure they protect their privacy.
• Recognizes the choice of their employees to participate as personal; and inherently transforming of the way IBM operates internally and externally.
• Explicitly prohibits covert or deceiving use “IBMers should not use these media for covert marketing or public relations.”
• Clearly draws the line: “You must not comment on confidential IBM financial information such as IBM's future business performance, business plans, or prospects anywhere in world..”
  
  

Harvard Law School: http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/terms-of-use/
Snippet from the top:

• “We don’t mean to turn you off from blogging by immediately inundating you with legalese, but we need to make clear our respective rights and responsibilities related to this service.”
• Very ‘Legal” Tone throughout (I guess it is obvious): “Rights in the Content You Submit”, “Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability”, “”, etc.
• Almost no mention of the opportunity, no encouragement for individuals to participate.

Department of the Navy: http://www.doncio.navy.mil/PolicyView.aspx?ID=789
Snippet from the top:
“..enhance communication, collaboration, and information exchange; streamline processes; and foster productivity improvements.

• Like IBM Grounds them in existing Guidelines: “Commands must adhere to existing information assurance (lA) and privacy policy, guidance, and best practices.”
• Strict “editorial” Control “content not approved for public release must be conducted on sites that are restricted to users with DoD Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) certificates and approved external PKI certificates”

Greteman Group: http://gretemangroup.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/social-media-policy/
Snippet from the top:
“we embrace these changes and are working to harness the technologies fueling these changes for our clients. We also embrace the powerful ability for individuals to leverage and enhance their personal brands through these tools”

• Business Hours / Business Use: “While you are on company time, please refrain from online activities that don’t bring value to Greteman Group”
• Editorial Control / Who is the Spokesperson for the Company? “Please note though that confidentiality agreements prevent disclosure of all client and Greteman Group business.”

HP: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/blogs/codeofconduct.html
Snippet from the top:
“HP blogs are written by a variety of employees at different levels and positions in the company, so you can expect many viewpoints”

• Like IBM above grounds the guidelines in the Standards of Business Conduct.
• Clearly draws the line “there are some topics we won't comment on such as information about financials, HP intellectual property, trade secrets, management changes, lawsuits, shareholder issues, layoffs, and contractual agreements with alliance partners, customers, and suppliers”
• Assumes mistakes will be made; and sets proper expectations: “We will correct inaccurate or misleading postings in a timely manner. We will not delete posts unless they violate our policies. Most changes will be made by adding to posts and we will mark any additions clearly.”

The ultimate co-creation opportunity: our world

Maybe I am taking it a little far, but I do think is within reason to believe that the United Stated is one of the most influential countries in the world; having, as citizens, the opportunity to co-create what this country will become through the Citizens Briefing Book site could mean that we as individuals have a chance to co-create our future world.

At a minimum it will become (has become already) a public discussion forum hosted by the Government; and it will clearly require prompt and smart moderation as well as readiness from the government team that put it forward to engage in the conversation as appropriate.

Take a quick look at the number of items under some of the categories: Economy (10,909), Education (4,452), Energy and Environment (5,170).

It is also interesting to see what ideas have risen to the top; there may be a need to figure out a better system that distinguishes passion generated by the idea versus assumed level of impact/importance.

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas
Filiberto.Selvas@Razorfish.com

The list of Brands Tweeting keeps growing

But is not about the number of brands only; is about how it is being used....

Twitter, like many other social tools, enables the aggregation / acceleration / amplification of already existing human behaviors; and can be used in many different ways by brands.

·Do you wan to engage? (i.e. have deals to announce?) Use it like Dell does. Or maybe you want to have a certain image and openness to engage with the consumer; check Zappos approach.

·Do you want to embrace & encourage? Use it like Southwest does.

·Do you want to get your message out there and your followers to help propagate? Check what Business Week is going.

·Do you want to support? Check what Comcast does

·Do you want to energize? Obama, enough said (shame it was not elegantly migrated into the next phase).

Standard social media rules apply: be authentic, transparent, carefully listen before jumping in with two feet and be ready to be humbled and learn from it.

Twitter, like any other Social Media approach, needs to be used as part of something bigger; no Social Media approach totally replaces traditional media; instead they complement and support each other nicely.


Filiberto Selvas

My Daily Bookmarks 01/16/2009 (a.m.)

• Live presentation + twitter xperiment

  Interesting obvservations by gary Koelling of an un intended (yet very interesting) social experiment with a live presentation and twitter.

  tags: Social, Media, Twitter

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Daily Bookmarks 01/13/2009 (p.m.)

• Latam twitter directory; CRM & W2.0 by @jesus_hoyos

  Latinamerican twitter directory; docused on CRM and Web 2.0

  tags: Social, Media

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Walmart's ElevenMoms

Walmart has had its share of issues trying to enter the Social Media space; but they are persistent and have come out with a new effort: ElevenMoms; coupe of things I like from what they write in the ElevenMoms Story page:

They write:
o “We've spent lots of time interacting with and seeking to understand how people use these tools and in what ways the Walmart brand can be relevant and provide value. It quickly became obvious to us that many communities exist that focus on saving money which is core to our brand promise. We felt we could best participate in the conversation by helping to foster the growth of people and forums in this space.”
o “We began slowly, making contacts in Twitter, leveraging Facebook profiles, viewing related You Tube videos, and trying to understand how we could participate. And not just by adding more messaging. We made friends. We heard from our critics. And we began to interact as both Walmart associates and as people.”
o “In all we invited eleven Mom Bloggers to participate and began to refer to the group as "elevenmoms." Several Moms strongly suggested that we add another Mom Blogger that they regarded highly so we did. Hence, we have 12 "elevenmoms", a great value as well!”

Alas:
o They listened
o They chose not to create a new space; and instead to engage with key influencers in the space, invite them to engage & empower them.
o They co-created (changed the program based on the influencers input)

Without passing judgment yet on this; they are at least writing the right things; it will be interesting to follow it.

What do you think?

Filiberto Selvas
Filiberto.Selvas@Razorfish.Com

My Daily Bookmarks 01/12/2009 (p.m.)

• Microsoft Research Songsmith

  tags: Social, Media, Ideas

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Daily Bookmarks 01/08/2009 (p.m.)

• J2Play - What is J2Play?

  Interesting vision; their business models compensates the developers.. but who compensates the Social Networks?

  tags: Social, Media, Games

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Daily Bookmarks 01/07/2009 (p.m.)

• Digital Neighborhood Comes to the Aid of Abused Woman » Adrants

  These are key points I want to highlight in this post: "It worked because was very personal. It worked because Armano has developed deep relationships with many people online"" It's that aspect of online social life which fueled this and which fuels social media. It's never really about the technology. It's about the people""Social media (or whatever you want to call it) has simply given us new ways to connect with people""With Armano's digital neighborhood, it was personal and when things are personal, they are meaningful."

  tags: Social, Media, Fund, Raising

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Daily Bookmarks 01/06/2009 (p.m.)

• The 6 Dangerous Fallacies of Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Consulting - Convince & Convert

  Very consistent with my own wishes and predictions for Social Media in 2009; this is a good blog post

  tags: Social, Media, Fallacies

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Daily Bookmarks 01/06/2009 (a.m.)

• Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med -- Abstract: Display of Health Risk Behaviors on MySpace by Adolescents: Prevalence and Associations, January 2009, Moreno et al. 163 (1): 27

  I wonder what would be the percentages if they ran this study against prime time tv? (in regard to the content of the programs)

  tags: Social, Media

• The Wovel: Literary Alternative To Browsing Blogs : NPR

  I wonder how this would work if you were to accelerate the timeline; what about daily votes? what would be the logistics required to execute on it from a content perspective? but what about the level of interest and engagement you could generate..

  tags: Social, Media, Content

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

My Daily Bookmarks 01/02/2009 (p.m.)

• Being Peter Kim: Social Media Predictions 2009

  Social Media Predictions for 2009 @ Peter Kim; a compilation.

  tags: Social, Media

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Social Media 2009 predictions --Draft--

I am compiling these predictions as part of a project assignment; I will continuously update this post through today. Any comments/thoughts are welcome and appreciated (and attribution, as always, will be given).

Please don't mind the format; I am more focused on posting the ideas; there is also no particular order in this post yet.

The need for ongoing social dialog will change Organizations structure and operation:

Organizations will come to terms with the fact that “shoot and forget” is not valid anymore; every time a message (offer, campaign product, service, etc.) is submitted to a consumer/customer/target audience they need to assume a public consumer response will follow, and a public response to that response will be necessary.. This implies social dialog will be established and there are very few organizations ready (in skills, structure, processes/methods) to engage in dialog with their consumers; these will open many opportunities to help these organizations get ready for this new reality. The ongoing social dialog reality will make organizations re-evaluate their internal structures or at least their internal communications and escalation procedures; regardless of the size of the organization the consumer perceives it as a coherent entity and expects to be able to engage with it about anything through any of the available communication channels; silo organizations will struggle to satisfy this need and their consumers will become frustrated and, whenever possible, move on to other providers for their needs.

The Consumer as a Product:

Organizations will turn to Social Media to better understand their consumers/customer/target audience needs (simply listening at large, in private spaces, in public spaces hosted by the company or others); listening and empathy will become key marketing skills (shouldn’t that have always be the case?). “The Consumer” as a product will become more and more important; what this means is that having the attention, ability to communicate with and quickly present products and services to an specific consumer audience will become as (if not more) important than the capacity to create the products to satisfy the needs for that audience.

Social Media Relationship as a key agency service:

Helping organizations to identify the individuals and organizations (Blogs, communities, groups, forums, etc.) that are key to the validation, adoption and propagation of their messages (offer, campaign product, service, etc.) as well as the right way to engage with them (language, value to offer, way to approach, how to establish and maintain a relationship, how to sunset a relationship) and execution on that engagement will become a key service agencies will offer their clients; larger organizations/companies will have their own internal department in charge of these activities.

Intimacy and update services will become critical:

Through 2008 many consumers amassed and amazing number of online relationships; some simply a reflection of their already existing set of relations and some completely new. Services and products that can help them keep updated, be visible (or not), and selectively communicate with selected (and likely overlapping) circles among these online relationships (regardless of the social network where they may exist) will become important.
Think about these circles:

• Who do you want to update with your latest status right now? (i.e. “I have published my thesis here” versus “I have smashed the Halo record!”)
• Who do you want to hear status / comments / messages from (or not) right now? (i.e. you are resting in the weekend versus you are attending a panel discussion)
• Who do you want to be visible to/reachable by from right now? (i.e. you are free on a Friday evening versus you are heading to an important meeting?)
• Etc.

Note: the circles denote artificial groupings; individuals among my online relationships will likely belong to more than one of these circles.

The Social Media Platform “Commodization” begins.

Social Network “Platforms” will begin their slow but certain migration toward the “commodity” status; and there will be more emphasis on the “Why”, “Whom” and “How” than in the “Where”. Organizations (and the agencies that help them) will become more focused on figuring out if they need to have a conversation with their consumers, on how that conversation should work and who should participate on that conversation.. and less emphasis on where (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc.) that conversation is happening.
Note: By no means predicting the demise of any of the SN mentioned above in 2009 (quite the contrary for some of them); but this is a shift in thinking that is coming: We will hear “What should be my Facebook strategy” less and less and more people will begin to focus more on who do they want to have a relationship with and with what objective, and then later on where will this happen.

Mobile Social Networking as primary versus secondary access.

The trend has clearly began (see Facebook’s mobile growth in 2008); but the combination of increased capabilities (iPhone, BlackBerry, etc.) and Platform Push (iPhone, Blackberry) it will consolidate in 2009. The key occurrence is that 2009 will see Social Networking applications and services created first and foremost for mobile devices become mainstream; these services and applications will take advantage of the unique and distinct capabilities of the mobile device and the availability/convergence of data about the individual (schedule, availability, contacts, location, direction, pace, status, time, etc.) to offer unique services and features. There will certainly be online/pc versions of the same applications and services that complement what can be done with mobile with the unique capabilities of the pc device (better for editing, composing, etc.) but these will be offer as complement of the mobile experience.

Convergence of texting, comments, micro blogging, status update platforms:

Platforms and services that allow the user (as creator or consumer) to de-focus from the difference between the texting, comments, micro blogging, status update, etc. activities and instead simply pay attention to the creation or consumption of those will come in place; these snippets of UGC will be easily associated with other objects (Blog posts, Movies, Newspaper Articles, etc.) and easy to consumer through subscriptions/association with the objects or topical areas (i.e. comments on sports about x team; or about individuals in x circle).

Facebook steps up, expands out and in.

Facebook will go above and beyond in 2009; transitioning from the social network platform to begin providing (beyond their current set of apps) more and better ways for brands/companies to engage and interact with its users; while at the same time keeping the control at the individual level (Facebook could, in fact, become the pragmatic instantiation of the VRM concepts). It will do this through aggressive expansion of Facebook connect (virtually bridging and bringing into Facebook the functionality & capabilities that today exist in other sites/services) as well as increasing its core set of services and capabilities (i.e. offering a serious social shopping module and rating & reviews as part of its core capabilities).

The battle for the Social Graph is openly declared

The Social Graph (i.e. the instantiation of Facebook is the Newsfeed) will be the next battle ground; Facebook, Microsoft and likely Google will compete in this space as the most patent opportunity to attract brand/organization money to social networks. Clearly Facebook has something of a head start with its fast growing user base and Facebook Connect; however Microsoft could pull out some interesting tricks if they care able to capitalize on their active hotmail user base (230 million) and Google could really bring forward interesting opportunities through data crunching and algorithms.

The economic crisis will push Social Network Platforms to open the data coffers.

As we all know the pressure to bring forward benchmark data to demonstrate Social media marketing approaches can deliver ROI, as well as the pressure to carefully measure Social Media efforts to prove (or disprove) ROI is increasing. In the past the major Social Networks (i.e. Facebook, Youtube) have not necessarily been the best providers of this data (or partners in capturing it) as the cheer activity numbers (and the economic abundance) seemed to work together to dismiss the need for it, not any more. In 2009 these Social Platform Companies will increase their efforts to open the data coffers and partner with others to capture and offer the data that proves and enables Social Media efforts ROI.

Mobile Livecasting fuels a new type of Social Interaction:

Though not limited to Social I believe this will have broad implications: The increased speed of the mobile networks, coupled with the diminishing cost of storage and the fact that even the most humble phones today have a decent camera will result on the advent of “livecasting” capabilities / products / services; users will have the possibility to document their every single step and share/publish as broad or exclusive as they desire with their social network.

Influencers will become easier to identify; the focus will shift to engagement & activation

With the increased availability of data called out above it will be easier to identify influencers across specific circles (and across different set of ‘influencer type’ criteria) (i.e. who do you seek advice from for computers? What about music? Who propagates messages faster? Further? Deeper?) Social Network tools will offer better capabilities and metrics to identify these influencers; the questions will become more about: how do you engage these influencers? How do you activate them? We will need to keep in mind these are (in general) individuals that will only do what they believe in, and thus they have to be convinced (or properly informed) about the benefits of a product/service before they influence others with it; and will be both about what you say and how you say it...

Social Media will mean more than friends

Though “Friends” (Fans, etc.) has been one of the forms of Social relationships most pursued in Social Media efforts in the past 2009 will see the branch out into other types of Social Relationships/Interactions; there are many cases where I many not want to establish a relationship with others that care about the same that I do, but I may want to know that they care about it, why and what other things they care about and why …(i.e. in the case of illness afflictions, tough personal situations, etc.) (not to be confused with anonymous participations). Social Bookmarking/Tagging potential will become better understood and different ways to navigate data will become available that will facilitate social influence beyond direct/close relationships (such as friendship)

(there may be more to come, but not today)

What do you think?


Filiberto Selvas