Have you got a Social Media Policy set up in your organization? Outside of having a strategy with tangible goals regarding how you should engage in social media as an organization, you’d be well served to consider the implications of your employees’ personal engagement in social media.
Late last week, the Washing Post announced their social media policy for personal use. Over at paidContent, the memo is available in full. In my opinion, they’re stretching it, but on the other hand, they are reputable journalists.
”Personal pages online are no place for the discussion of internal newsroom issues such as sourcing, reporting of stories, decisions to publish or not to publish, personnel matters and untoward personal or professional matters involving our colleagues.”
This has me thinking of when Jan Helin, editor-in-chief of Swedish Aftonbladet, tweeted on whether or not to publish very sensitive pictures (he seems to have abandoned his twitter account since May, though).
At any rate – establish a Social Media Policy for your employees. If you want them to read and follow it, it should
- Be less verbose than WaPo’s
- Contain concrete real life examples of good behavior, from within your organization
- Contain examples of less desirable behavior, from outside of your organization
- Be realistic
