Many of our clients are developing policies and usage guidelines around social media. Some, alas, resemble ransom notes because they’ve been copied and pasted from a hodgepodge of social media policies available on the Internet. But many are pretty good. By good, I mean that they are informative, positive, and useful. They provide some useful descriptive information about social media; they encourage appropriate use, make relevant distinctions among types of social media (e.g. between blogging and social networks), and clearly state permitted and prohibited actions.
But many of these policies miss a useful distinction. They distinguish between business and person usage, but not between business and personal blogs – both of which could be for business usage. Business usage is using social media to conduct your company’s business, which may include participating in the social media blogs that your firm sponsors. Personal usage is using social media for anything else.
But blogs for business usage can be either personal or business in style, and different appropriate usage guidelines apply to each.
- Personal blogs are personality-driven channels.
- Business blogs are content- or issue-driven channels.
Personal blogs are a vehicle for individuals to post business-related information in a personal context, along with some personal information about themselves. Internal personal blogs, for example, can help your firm by providing this familiar list of benefits (minus only Mom and apple pie):
- Providing searchable information about the skills and experience of your firm’s people
- Providing searchable information about the work issues that individuals face which can be shared and solved collectively
- Providing a mechanism for building communities for problem-solving
- Sharing best practices, ideas, and experience across the organization
- Encouraging innovation and engaging colleagues
Business blogs may be individual in personality (although not containing personal information), or may be run by a group of people as a group blog. These blogs focus on business content or issues, but are delivered by a named and recognizable individual or individuals. A business blog may be associated with existing published material of some kind, be part of a marketing or communications campaign, or complement an existing process (e.g. it might be part of an existing corporate web site, or be set up in response to the issuing of a newsletter or to gather feedback about an existing business process).
So blogging at your firm may be for business or personal usage, with legitimate blogs for business usage differing on whether they have a personal or business focus. Each of these two types will entail the need for different guidelines. But many differences in guidelines cut across the business-personal distinction. For example, getting approval to blog is primarily related to whether the blog is internal or external. Most policies we’ve seen require no approval for internal blogging. But external blogging generally requires prior manager approval, as well as demonstration of a clear business benefit.
I’ve sketched just a few issues here relevant to developing your social media policy. A best practice is to start small. But good areas to expand are user guidance for (general) “safe” use, specific user guidance for blogging (as I’ve outlined here), specific user guidance for social networks, and guidance for moderators.