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Social Media Summer School Day 4 - Set Rules //Vincent Haywood
Common sense, and some guidelines

From Doctors to coca Cola to the U.S Navy there are documents upon documents of social media policies.

There is a site that houses a database of various social media policies for companies and different industries. You can have a look here

Granted, each industry will have different policies to the other. For instance Doctor Green won’t be tweeting ‘@MrSmith test results are back, it doesn’t look good DM me to get the news’ or the U.S Navy ‘@USS_enterprise heads up submarine behind you’. Each to their own.

There comes a time where all of these industries, or individuals, have something in common within their Social Media Policies – Common Sense.

There is an unwritten rule online, when responding to something if you have to think about your post, don’t post it. The web remembers.

I used to work for an agency where I was responsible for a lot of independent lable’s online strategies for new releases. The beauty of this role was the access I had to new singles and albums months before the general public. I also run a music blog as a hobby. When I started getting these albums before planning campaigns I considered using these as ‘exclusives’ on my blog. Imagine, being able to review brand new albums before any of the music journos did. My traffic would go through the roof. Subscribers would think I was in the loop with the industry and had access no one else did.

I didn’t use it though. Imagine, for about a month I am the hottest music blog in the UK with my unprecedented access to new music. Traffic is great, word spreads. It then spreads to the label’s I look after, they talk to my bosses, I get called in, and I’m out of a job. My blog did great, the content starts to disappear due to my lack of exclusives, back to square one.

Common sense.

On top of the Policy you create for your company there are some straightforward guides or recommendations for everyone involved.

• Start the policy with a clear indication as to what the company wants to achieve via the social channels. Educate the uniformed.
• Include your Industry guidelines in your policy. As mentioned above, Nurses and doctors don’t need to talk about patients.
• Create disclaimers your employees can add to their sites, or create their own. 
• Get permission from clients or third parties for any related postings.  For example linking an NME review to music campaign you just launched. Not good. 
• Back all of this up by educating those involved with the tools involved. From posting to measurement. What is tweetdeck? What is Bit.ly?
• Don’t tweet about current projects. Pitches, upcoming campaigns. Makes sense.
• Put all of this in plain English. Remember not everyone is buying in to it in the beginning, don’t lose them with loads of jargon.

That’s just some guidelines, for users out side of the company blog, twitter, youtube or facebook group or any other sites.

There are quick fixes, be it finding and replacing existing policies or tools like this one.

The Policy tool will allow you a certain level of customization when building the basis for your policy, but don’t make it the be all. What about inside though? The Social Media face of your brand / Company. What about the running of your content?, your storefront shall we say.

Who speaks for you online? Have you got that grad on the 1^st floor posting the occasional tweet, or simply retweeting what mashable wrote 15 minutes ago? Remember twitter accounts like mashable are retweeted by everyone, so already your twitter account is unoriginal.  Why not comment on the postings and link to that, give your company’s opinion on the current topics rather than just promoting someone else. Promote your company. Plug your twitter into your company website, or blog. Voice opinion, promote your own stuff (when the timing is right of course), but check your facts. Every time.

Remember, last time it was checked twitters content only 5% of it was original.

Create a team or use an individual that knows a lot about the subject you have opinion on or promote. Don’t have the receptionist tweet that latest comscore data, or someone that likes to tweet trendy stuff cause its cool. It’s not.  Users can tell if you’re real or fake, or trying too hard for that matter.

When you’re in social media channels, remember that your subscribers will probably consist of current clients, possible future clients, future / past / present employees. 

Be rewarding, no one will want to follow you if it’s a continual sales pitch. Give something back, make it interesting. Sit back and think about why someone would add you to their feed, subscriptions or email.

Ensure there is an approval process, but make it quick. You have to be almost instant in responses and current topic replies. Some financial institutions battle here due to certain controls in place. (Lighten up I say)

Don’t use the companies broadcast tools for your own gain. Selling your Treadmill via the company twitter is not a good idea. (Depends on the conversion rate maybe?- ;-))

Some companies allow their users to add their names to postings, @vincenthaywood for instant when posting on the company twitter page, or an author name on a blog post. Take extreme care here. Some of these users might not be sticking to the rules you stated earlier on. John smith may write an amazing compelling blog on how print media is on the edge of death vs. online media yet his personal twitter account mentions how wasted he was last weekend and quotes Bon Jovi lyrics. (I couldn’t think of a worse example)

These are just some thought when starting to implement a Social Media Strategy, policy or set of guides. As you probably know, Social media plays an integral part in all companies. What ever your approach is within these channels your consumers can make or break you.

In short:

1.     Common sense

2.     The correct people involved

3.     Be real

4.     Common sense

Now to update my music blog, just got a copy of an unreleased Celion Dion. Rock on!

Vincent Haywood has worked in online marketing for 13 years taking on roles including design, development, strategy, social media strategy, planning, buying, account management and even building an entire digital department. Follow him on Tumblr.