According to Canadian Business (which surveyed 16 executives from various companies) companies are lacking in the social media policy department. What if an employee is spending company time on social networks? Does the employee need to identify himself as an employee on his social networks if he is talking about the company? Are there any rules in general regarding social media usage at corporations?
According to the article:
“Effective policies do not include an overload of details, but succeed in giving the employee a clear idea of what the company is trying to avoid, such as any activity that could result in damage to the firm’s brand or reputation.”
I think this is the best way to approach social media from a policy standpoint. A corporation is not going to be able to limit the amount of tweets someone sends out a day, how many blog posts they write, or how many times they update their facebook status. Nor will a company be able to allocate a “social media” time allowance, such as 30 minutes a day. Essentially a corporation can do 2 things, ban the social networks all together, or (as mentioned above) explain to the employees the types of situations that the company is trying to avoid.
Social networks are only growing more and more popular so how does a corporation deal with this phenomenon? How can a company monitor or find out about every single blog or twitter account that the employees own? As of yet, I have not seen an effective way for companies to monitor or track social network usage, either you allow it or your don’t.
check out http://www.myprgenie.com. its an interactive, social media, pr delivery platform that automates the pr process. its a cross between corporate facebook, linkedin and match.com.
like twitter, myprgenie allows you to update everyone in your corporate network with your pics, videos and press releases. additionally you can invite over 500,000 global media contacts to join your network.