I ask the question “How important is a company social media policy to your business?” because it had come up several times in the past few days… once with a lawyer trying to put together something for his HR focused clients and with a couple of other businesses.
Interestingly each one had very different ideas.. one had a legal perspective of protecting the “property” of the business… one loved it thought it was a fabulous way of getting his employees to do his marketing and another thought it would all blow over and he would never have to worry about it.
Now no one has a crystal ball that can predict the future.. but I personally don’t think the last one is likely any time soon, I loved the openness of the second one and found it very refreshing and think the first one is very likely but could be very hard to enforce.
I do, however, think that an adequate social media strategy and policy should be a must have for any business. it gives guidelines to employees of what is and is not expected of them and where they stand. It allows parameters to be put in place safeguarding everyone and setting out expectation.
I do think it could be very easy to just stomp and say no social media… but where does that leave people who have signed up on linked in? Would a policy saying you must delete all contacts created as a direct consequence of joining a particular company work? How on earth can this be policed? What would happen if the companies and contacts concerned then re-connected with them?
It is a very difficult one to fathom and i am sure that there will be some interesting discussions relating to this. What would the biggest problems be for your business? What do you think should be included in a policy and do you think you should have one at all?
I certainly think that companies need to protect themselves and their assets but quite what is right for one company may not necessarily be for another. I also think it is important for employees to be protected and have an indication of boundaries especially in the way the world is changing. Quite how this can be achieved for everyone is an interesting quandry at the moment.
However a zero tolerance social media policy or 
photo credit: BeauGilesblanket banning tweeting, facebook updates and any other social media is a silly thing to do… yes there are times and places for doing things and these boundaries are continually being pushed out as people update their thoughts in areas you would expect it to be out of bounds.. but if it isn’t detrimental, doesn’t interfere, cause offense or take away from someone doing their job properly I can see no reason to create a potential resentment… after all inadvertently they could be doing a business a whole heap of good… and cost you nothing.
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