Building A Social Media Policy
By Bill Ives
Expert Author
Article Date: 2010-06-21
I recently received a review copy of the Forrester report, The CIO's Guide to Establishing a Social Media Policy. There were a number of things I like about this report. First, they offered guidelines rather than best practices. They covered the issues to address and the questions to ask. They offered examples instead of definitive answers, recognizing that the final answers are context dependent. This aligns with the post I recently did, Are There Best Practices for Enterprise 2.0 Adoption?, building on Luis Suarez and Oscar Berg, Luis, Oscar, and I said no.
While Forrester's Nigel Fenwick does explicitly take a position on this, his report does not use the words "best practices" or any similar term. In the Nigel's words. "it includes explanations of the topics that you should consider for inclusion in a social media policy, allowing you to tailor your own policy to the specific needs of your organization and industry."Secondly, the policy leads with a positive approach toward social media while acknowledge risk. Nigel writes that, "A well-communicated social media policy should provide a set of guidelines to help your organization leverage the power of social media both internally and externally while protecting the organization's IP and managing risk associated with employees engaging in online social communities." It notes that, "even in organizations with a social media policy, IT and the CIO are often seen as roadblocks to social media usage." In stead it urges CIOs to be evangelists in both using social media effectively and creating effective guidelines to support this effort. It also stresses that this needs to be a cross-functional effort. One of the drivers of the need to create guidelines is that claim that, " lack of policy, or a highly restrictive policy, can result in reduced employee advocacy in social media communities and can impair the organization's ability to compete effectively against organizations with a more open policy and empowered workforce." You need to effectively employ social media to stay competitive in today's market. At the same time, the report does not gloss over such risk as legal vulnerability and brand erosion through inappropriate actions. The report begins with some interesting research that supports the need for an effective policy. As part of the effort, Forrester conducted a survey of social media users. It found that 43% of respondents reported that their organization did not have a social media policy. Another 11% were not sure if a policy existed. Meanwhile, only 26% reported their organizations did not sanction social media access while at work. The numbers indicate that for many companies employees are accessing social media without a policy to guide their efforts. At the same time Forrester found that if a policy is in place, employees will read it. The report goes on to provide some useful guidelines and examples. It is available through the Forrrester site. Comments
About the Author:
Dr. Bill Ives is an independent consultant and writer who has worked with Fortune 100 companies in business uses of emerging technologies for over 20 years. For several years he led the Knowledge Management Practice for a large consulting firm.. Now he primarily helps companies with their business blogs. He is also the VP of Social Media and blogger for TVissimo, a new TV schedule search engine. Prior to consulting, Dr. Ives was a Research Associate at Harvard University exploring the effects of media on cognition. He obtained his Ph. D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto. Bill can be reached at his blog: Portals and KM. He also writes for the FastForward blog and the AppGap blog.
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