The Importance of Social Media Policies

One of the annoyances of writing a blog is how often you see content the very next day that adds to what you just posted. Usually I just hope people will see it. But this one is so timely and so important it deserves its own post.

This Marketing Charts post from yesterday was in my inbox today. It headlines two important issues:

1. Formal social network policies are important for employers
2. 75% of the employers recently surveyed by Manpower do not have a social network policy

The Manpower report quotes statistics that attribute lost productivity to employee use of social networks at work. True, some of it is undoubtedly totally frivolous. But employee participation in social nets can also be a brand building activity—think Zappos as only one example of many. I gave links to guidelines from ESPN and Cisco yesterday.

The Manpower report acknowledges that workplace use of social nets can add value in the following areas:
• Productivity
• Collaboration
• Knowledge Management
• Innovation
• Employee Alignment and Engagement
• Recruitment
• Reputation Management.

This seems to be especially true if the firm has a substantial number of relatively young employees who are comfortable with social nets (or wants to be attractive to younger workers). I would argue that all companies need, as suggested yesterday, a crisis management plan that includes social nets. Toyota is the cause célèbre at the moment. I heard strategy guru Jeffry Sonnenfeld critize Toyota’s total lack of engagement with the auto blogosphere on CNBC this morning. Newsweek agrees and has recommendations.

This isn’t really a new thought, is it? If companies have thoughtful strategies and policies to implement them, they often navigate choppy waters reasonably well. If they don’t, something always jumps up to bite them. It may be customer complaints, it may be a product quality problem, it may be an environmental crisis, and many more. But stuff happens, and being prepared with employees who have social media skills and policies to guide them is one step in the right direction.