In our second article looking at the cultural challenges which social media poses to an organisation, we’re looking at guidelines, policies and empowerment: how to allow your employees to interact authentically in the online world.

What’s the problem?

There’s a fundamental tension between the way that communication between an organisation and its audience (customers, peers, even shareholders) has traditionally been managed, and the type of communication which succeeds in the social media environment.

Until recently, all communication was “official”: provided through relatively formal channels like newsletters, permanent website content or magazine editorials. These could be crafted over days or even weeks, conformed to a particular set of norms, and would usually be issued only by a small number of approved individuals in the marketing department. They would then often be signed off by one or more senior managers, allowing close control over everything which left the building in that organisation’s name.

Applying literally any element of that model to a social media presence though, is a recipe for – well, if not disaster, certainly not success.

What needs to change?

Firstly, you’re not always the originator of the “story”. Social media is partly about engaging in, and responding to, existing discussions, which may or may not relate directly to your product or service. You don’t get to decide what gets discussed, let alone what will be said about it.

Secondly, things move on too quickly for the “sign off” hierarchy to be viable.  Occasionally there might be time for a quick internal call to sense check some proposed content, but a day or two’s delay whilst waiting for someone to get around to reading and signing off an email is going to be the kiss of death to any conversation on social media.

And finally, and most importantly, content authored “by committee” just won’t resonate with individual  users. Social media is primarily about individual, one to one interactions, but with a public dimension.  For an organisation, that will always be a challenge to some extent; nobody wants to read a Facebook post authored by The Borg.

Whether you choose a social media community manager to represent you, or encourage a number of key staff to be active online in a professional capacity, they need to be able to make authentic connections. And that means expressing their own personality and opinions.

If this scares you, you probably need to have a good think about your recruitment policy – while not every job role requires amazing communication skills, if you don’t trust at least a handful of staff to act professionally whilst still being themselves (something that most people do in their office environment every day!) then you’re going to find social media very difficult to deal with.

We need a policy for that!

Which brings us to the topic of social media policies. We’re by no means anti-policy here, in fact we actively encourage our clients to have one. But its focus needs to be on supporting good interaction, not on suffocating it.

In our experience it’s relatively simple to define what you shouldn’t do on Twitter or Facebook – it pretty much boils down to good manners, the same professional standards you’d apply in the office, and avoiding a handful of sensitive topics. Most of the time, especially where there’s been a culture of always having “t”s crossed and “i”s dotted by managers, the challenge is in helping whoever is representing you online be confident in finding their own voice.

In general, the shorter and simpler the better – within reason.  Zappos shoes, a US brand which is hugely successful online, has a policy consisting of just seven words: “Be real, and use your best judgement“. Which is all well and good for a young company whose employees are generally confident in the online world, but those who are less confident may appreciate a little more detailed guidance.

However, most of the examples often cited as good corporate social media policies are no more than a page or so long, and avoid getting into the level of detail which is going to start making people second-guess themselves. Specifically, try and avoid areas such as insisting everything that goes out is written in a particular “house style” (using specific types of language) – if for some reason you really need all your content to be that consistent, you need to employ a single social media editor / manager who can take ideas from the rest of the organisation and copywrite them in the required way. It’s still not recommended though – far better to let your community manager host the party in their own language!

This article has some good examples, and also highlights a few additional issues to consider, such as ownership of a hybrid professional / personal account if that user leaves the organisation.

Keeping it in context

“Doing a policy” is often the first port of call because it’s a nice, tidy way of putting things in the “done” box. But it’s also important to ensure that everyone relevant understands the context – what the wider company objectives are for social media, and what they are ultimately contributing to. The more information they have, the easier it is for them to interact confidently and constructively – and the more confident the organisation can be in letting them do so.

This is the second post in our “social media and organisational culture” series – for the introductory post, click here.

This week, we’re going to look at the Fear Factor: those times when, either on an organisational or personal level, the response to any discussion of social media is “Whoaaa hang on there. It’s just far too risky”.

What are organisations scared of?

There are two schools of thought which cause organisations to run away from social media. The first is a complete refusal to engage; often this is because of reading vague but negative media reports, suggesting that posting on Facebook means your house will be burgled, or that Twitter was responsible for the London riots in 2011.

The second is more about concrete concerns: lack of control, loss of reputation, exposure to customers or employees with a (real or imagined) grudge against the organisation. Or to a lesser degree, “getting it wrong”; accidentally posting something inappropriate or negative.

Are you or your senior management running scared?

If those sound familiar, this post is here to help! Let’s look at each of those issues in turn.

Firstly, the “social media is evil” theory. The best cure for this is simply understanding a little about exactly how the main social media sites work, and what choices each individual user is making. For example, Facebook is intended to be used to keep in touch with people you know and trust – that’s why you have to actively accept a friend request before someone new can see what you post there.

If you’ve chosen to accept friend requests either from people you don’t know well, or that you do know but who have criminal tendencies, then it’s a bad idea to put a post up detailing your upcoming month-long absence from home. If that isn’t the case and you get burgled anyway because of something you said on Facebook, then you need to choose your friends more carefully!

Similarly, blaming Twitter for causing riots is essentially the same as blaming the Big Red Telephone to the White House desk for a nuclear war. Holding the transport medium responsible for the message simply doesn’t make sense, and neither does refusing to use it just because someone else uses it for ill. Most companies wouldn’t stop using the postal service just because they get junk mail….

Staying “safe”

That second group of worries are better founded in reality, but even so, avoiding social media is definitely not the cure.  Hiding under a blanket won’t make the Big Bad Wolf go away…and the same is true of the Big Bad Social Media wolf.

Yes, every organisation has less control over what’s being said about them, since social media arrived. Yes, reputational damage can happen more easily and faster. And of course it helps if staff have a good understanding of how social media impacts on your communications strategy, and what’s expected of them.

But unfortunately, your customers, suppliers or partners are not going to refrain from discussion you on social media just because you’ve chosen not to have a presence there. That’s the bottom line with most of these kinds of fears – those discussions may already be happening, but you won’t be aware of them or able to participate…which really doesn’t make the situation better! And you’re also missing out on the ability to identify and engage with people who do love your product or service and want to tell the world about it, as well as all the other benefits that joining the social media realm can bring.

Send in the clowns

Just an additional note on the “haters” fear; that someone with a vendetta and time on their hands will target an organisation’s social media presence. Firstly, this happens much more rarely than most people think. In many years of managing clients’ social media, we’ve had no instances of it happening, and only a handful of incidents where discussion got out of hand and we needed to gently step in. Of course if you’re in certain lines of business (life sciences, arms sales) you may be right to expect trouble, but for the average organisation it’s not an issue.

Secondly, people who are heavy internet users (as most social media users are) learn to identify obsessives and crazies pretty quickly. They’ve seen them before, many times. So just because Mrs Trellis posts ten times on your Facebook page that you stole her favourite biro, that doesn’t mean that anyone will take her seriously. And if you’ve done a good job of building and nurturing your Facebook community, you may well find that they will step in before you even need to.

You have permission to worry about…

….missing out on the opportunity; and doing a mediocre job because you don’t approach using social media rigorously enough. There may be a risk that you’ll be overtaken by a competitor, and there is certainly a risk that if you don’t manage the basics well, your social media presence could impact negatively on the perception that customers and peers have of your organisation. The good news is though, that these are things which are well within your control, either by allocating resource and knowledge internally, or by getting a little help to set you on the right track.