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The Huffington Post published a piece last week on Fortune 1000 Companies’ Social Media Savvy. The post cited a recent Burson-Marsteller study that showed that 79% of these companies are using at least one of the main social platforms — Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and blogs — to communicate with their customers. You can view the full report here.

It wasn’t the stats that caught my eye; at this point I already assume that most leading companies are using social media in some fashion as marketing and customer communication channels (our clients certainly are). It was the report’s advocated approach that organizations should take to social media that was interesting – essentially a set of 9 recommendations. Two of these recommendations – define a social media policy and develop internal structure — fit squarely into the information governance camp, and are areas where I think most organizations are still immature.

As the report explains, a social media policy is all about giving employees parameters and guidance for their participation on behalf of the company. An internal structure is needed to monitor the policy, and to ensure employees understand the policy and have somewhere to turn with questions.

Policies and structures are critical for effective governance – and not just for social media (for communication and interaction outside the company), but also for social collaboration within the company, through enterprise social computing and content management tools used behind the firewall. Whatever your usage of these tools (whether for employee communities, project collaboration, innovation, operations, or other business processes), it’s important to have a proper balance of employee participation flexibility with an appropriate framework for that participation.