Simply stated, what you request of your employees may look similar, in some respects, to a public facing social media policy, however, it will also be very specific to your organization.  For example, you may want to consider the following information for the employee bucket.

Employee Bucket:

• Employee Access to Social Media:  Are any social networks “off limits” to employees or will they have open access to all social sites? Is there a formal process when a department or employee needs to have full access to a social media site?
• Employee Conduct: How do you want employees to use and collaborate on social media? This is where you may see “The Rules of Engagement” and the three “Rs” which stand for Representation, Responsibility and Respect. Is an employee’s participation strictly for work and how should they represent their personal views?  Is an employee able to check their personal Facebook page or Twitter conversations during the course of the workday?
• Content Use: What kind of content can and should be shared?  Will you provide any guidelines regarding how content is published, whether internally or externally with the public?
• Legal information:  Do you inform employees regarding privacy, defamation, intellectual property, etc? How do you educate employees on these laws and regulations without going too deeply into the details of each?  Will you require employees to use disclaimers for personal use of social media?
• Social Media Profile Management:  Who is the gatekeeper per department or for smaller organizations, the gatekeeper for the entire company?  Should an employee leave your company, who will have the information regarding the profiles set up by that person, including which social networks, user names and passwords? Who will go in and change the user name passwords when an employee leaves the company?
• Additional Policy Information: Is your social media policy is tied to a Code of Ethics or an employee communications handbook? If so, you must include references to additional resources for employees to review.

The Public Bucket:

• Participation Guidelines: Will you offer information about social media and how will you encourage public participation?
• Blogging and Comment Policies:  What do you want your public stakeholders to know about how you moderate your blogs?  What should they understand regarding the manner in which comments appear or maybe don’t appear?
• Legal Language: Will you have a passage that says the information posted on blogs and social networks is the copyright property of your organization for further use?  How will you address any behavior that is considered inappropriate social media conduct?  Should you discuss privacy, confidentiality and security?

You will definitely see areas of similarity between the information that you want to share with employees and the public regarding social media.  And, in some cases, maybe one policy does fit all.  But, you may also want to consider the differences between the internal/employee social media policy and your public policy, which highlights the way you want customers and other stakeholders to engage with you.  There are many considerations, far beyond what’s above.  This is just a starting point so that you are able to dig in deeper.

How is your social media policy development going and are you developing one policy for all groups or using the bucket approach?

Recently, Joe participated on the PRSA T3PR New Era of Blogging panel in June and Valerie had the pleasure of moderating Joe’s roundtable discussion at the Bulldog Reporters Media Relations Summit this past Monday in NYC.  After seeing Joe in action and being fans/avid readers of PRNewser, we both felt he would be the perfect guest for #PRStudChat.  Joe will be answering questions related to blogger relations and also providing insight on how media is changing and affecting the PR industry.

A few of the questions during the session will include:

Q1:  How should PR pros shift their thinking to accommodate changes in the media?

Q2:  What is the difference between media relations & blogger relations?

Q3: What do new influencers expect from PR professionals?

Q4:  How do PR pros get your attention (good/bad examples)?

Q5:  Where do you go to verify/confirm tips and how can a PR pro help?

Q6: What will tomorrow’s media look like & what does that mean for PR?

We hope that you will join us on July 14^th to chat with Joe Ciarallo and to share insight on your experience with bloggers and new media.  As always, Valerie and I welcome your comments and encourage you to post any questions you have for Joe on our LinkedIn discussion group, prior to the 14^th.

If you want the PR scoop, then join us for the #PRStudChat session with Joe Ciarallo.  We’ll “see” you then.

A little bit about David … he is the Community Manager for Scribnia (where readers can review and discover online authors and bloggers) and he is also the co-founder of the #u30pro with Lauren Fernandez (@cubanalaf), a dynamic chat session on Twitter that takes place on Thursday nights at 7:00 p.m. EST.

Here’s my Q&A with David:

Q. Tell me a little bit about how Scribnia started?

A. Scribnia was started by Russell D’Souza and Jack Groetzinger in 2009 based on a simple idea: There were a ton of bloggers and other writers online, but there was no where for readers to share their opinions of their writing.  We wanted to provide a platform where readers could share the writers they love and hate with each other, discover new writers and learn of a writer’s biases and focuses from their readers.  We launched Scribnia while participating in the DreamIt program in Philadelphia in the summer of 09.  The company has since been sold, revamped and relaunched under the ownership of the new CEO, Marc Duquette.

Q. How do you think Scribnia will help PR professionals in their blogger relations programs?

A. You’ll find influential writers on Scribnia that you often wouldn’t find anywhere else because of how our content and rankings are generated…100% crowdsourced by readers.

Agencies like Porter Novelli and SHIFT Communications have already started to use Scribnia in their regular outreach programs.

Unlike other tools that PR professionals use, Scribnia allows you to find the bloggers that are specifically suitable for the audience you’re trying to reach.  For example, say your client is selling baby bottles, and you need to find mom-bloggers who focus on newborns, rather than adolescents.  You can use Scribnia to filter down to the writers that are writing for your specific audience…in this example, mothers with newborn babies.

(If it helps, here’s a quick video showing you how to use the Scribnia filters to find writers based on their specific focuses:

http://scribnia.com/blog/2010/04/28/video-how-to-find-influential-writers-niche-scribnia/)

Additionally, what you’ll find unique with Scribnia, is that since we rank writers 100% based on reader reviews, it’s not always the “A-List” bloggers you see first, like you do on sites like Alltop or Technorati.  There’s only one way to be found on Scribnia, and that’s by writing well and engaging with your readers… two things that are important for blogger outreach campaigns.

We are working on adding a number of new functions that will make the blogger outreach process much easier, and more efficient for PR pros as well as for bloggers…so stay tuned.

Q. How are you growing the Scribnia community?

A. As a blogging focused site, it’s very important for us to be present in blogging communities across the web.  We are constantly on Twitter (@Scribnia) responding to bloggers with questions, participating in lively chats like blogchat, journchat, and sharing posts from the amazing bloggers that we come across within the Scribnia community.  We also participate on blogging forums, ning networks, and anywhere else where we can meet and engage with bloggers on the web.  We’re also very fortunate to have power users that have been supporting us from the start.  Without them, we wouldn’t be here today.

A lot of our growth is also due to how the site works.  Any user can add a writer to the site…even without the writer’s knowledge.  Bloggers typically are interested in what their readers and others have to say about them, so when they see that people are talking about them and reviewing them on Scribnia, they’re inclined to come check us out.  That’s where I come in to engage with them, see what we can do to help, and hopefully earn their trust and support over time.

Q. What are some of the most helpful features or ways people are interacting on the site?

A. Most of the interaction that goes on is between bloggers and their readers. Often, readers will review a writer, and the writer will comment with a response to the review.  It’s a great way for readers to provide feedback on a writer’s work in a way that they just couldn’t do in blog comments or on an open platform like Twitter.  It’s a dedicated feedback platform.

We actually make it possible for that interaction to occur on blogger’s own sites using the “Scribnia Review Widget”.  This widget allows readers to read, and write reviews of the blogger, right on their blog without ever having to leave their site.

Another big function of our site is recommendations.  We take pride in being able to provide highly personalized recommendations to users.  We do this in two ways:

1) Your friends.  You can find all of your friends who are using Scribnia easily by connecting your Facebook, Twitter, and other accounts.  Once you’re connected on Scribnia, you can easily click “Recommend” on any writer’s page, and choose which friends you’d like to recommend the writer to.  So, if I find this really sweet cooking blog, and I know my friend is big into cooking, I can recommend the writer to them and it will appear on their recommendations page.

2) When a user reviews a number of writers (set at 5 right now), we can learn of their tastes in writers.  I won’t go into too much detail, but we use the focus/bias filters that I discussed earlier, to match you with writers that have focuses that you tend to rate highly.  So, for example, if you’re into marketing, and you tend to give a higher rating to writers who write about “low budget” approaches to marketing campaigns, we can recommend other writers who share that same focus.

Q. What’s next for Scribnia?

Well we plan to be bigger than Google by 2011 by upping our SEO efforts. (bwaha…ha…)

But seriously, we just hope to keep the site and community growing.  It’s been amazing so far, and we know the more great writers we get involved, the more valuable our site becomes for readers, writers, and businesses.

As far as features go, we’re constantly building and improving.  A number of new widgets will be available soon that bloggers will be able to customize for their site.

We’re also exploring and developing a few avenues to make that money.  To this point, we’ve really just focused on building up the community and content.

Another favorite part of my trip was the Q&A that came out of the conference.  I thought the questions during the CHE program were very good and they included (with my responses attached):

I’m just starting out in social media, how do I evaluate which bloggers to follow and who to build relationships with?

My immediate response to this question: listen closely to the conversation that relates to your organization and see which influencers are passionate about the topics or issues that are relevant to you or your company (or which bloggers are actually discussing your brand).  You can also check out blog search engines including Technorati and IceRocket to find the bloggers with the most authority and highest rankings.

Our organization has a lot of content including videos, but we have a small team to handle the social media communications.  How do we move forward and how much should we share?

If you have a lot of great content, but a small team managing the effort it’s really important to evaluate how you will handle social media communications so that you don’t spread your resources too thin.  It’s always best to start out slowly with blogging and set your own pace and build up to more social networking as you find that you are handling the flow of communications well.  This way, you are not starting something that you will abandon because it’s very difficult to keep up with the conversations.  It’s always better to go slow, see results and then add more resources as you go along.  Often, executives want to see results first and then will invest more in your communications program.

We are using Radian 6, Klout and TweetDeck to measure, what else should we use?

Radian 6 is very good to monitor the conversations across platforms. TweetDeck is great for communications with your Twitter community (and you can also update to other networks) and filtering to specific conversations. Klout works well when you want to see someone’s influence on Twitter.  Klout lets you know if the influencer is a connector, a persona, a casual or a climber.  It also tells you the stats on the influencer such as reach, demand, engagement and velocity. However, I mentioned that I would have to know where a person or brand was participating in the social landscape to make sure that the tools capture the mentions and conversations on each and every social platform where they engage.

Now for the question that gets the gold star!  This question was actually asked after the conference was over, during the book signing.  The question was:

Is it okay to use a recognition or incentive program to get employees or sales people involved in social media?

Great question! My immediate answer is yes. Employees respond very well to both recognition/rewards, as it helps to create productivity, motivates people to move toward a desired behavior and people feel as if they are celebrated when they are rewarded for achieving goals.

On the incentive side, yes, sales teams, in many companies participate in incentive programs, which also motivate and drive participation toward a particular goal.  I think that employees, when asked to do something new say, “What’s in it for me?”  It’s no different than the consumer, when you ask them to participate with you in a social community. They say, “Why should I participate and how are you helping me?”  That’s why companies work so hard to become meaningful resources rather than marketing messages.

A little more about incentives … I’ve been involved in programs that are fun, motivate and are built around creative themes. Some of the programs were simple with gift certificates for participation and other were very elaborate programs with websites that launch the initiative, and then continue to motivate people and drive their participation during the length of the campaign.  These programs have several components including: goals/tracking, complete program Information, updated news, trivia contests, and award redemption right on the website.

I know that many will question why they should use recognition or incentives when the desired behavior is within the scope of the employee’s job and “this is what they are supposed to do.” Yes, that could be the case.  But there has been tremendous success with both recognition (celebrating the employee for length of service or great performance) and incentive (giving some type of incentive or reward to reach a goal) to reveal that these programs work.  I’ve seen them in action and I think they work too. I believe they should have a place in the realm of internal social media participation, if needed.

What do you think about this question? I think it raises a few more.

I’ve been blogging at PR 2.0 Strategies since 2007.  However, it’s really been this past year or so that has made me feel that I’ve taken on this new and very interesting role – blogger.  As a PR person, I was trained not to send anything to anyone without researching first and learning about the person’s audience and area of expertise.  These were the golden rules of media relations.  And, not too far off, are the magic rules of blogger relations where people who want to connect with bloggers must learn how to listen first and then figure out the best type of information/content and manner in which to engage with the blogger.

There are people who definitely approach me the right way and then there are those who still send the blind “pitch.”  I don’t really feel annoyed or aggravated at these emails or DMs on Twitter.  It’s just such a waste of their time to even reach out because this type of correspondence is usually deleted.  I see a lot of emails with news releases in the body of the email, which tells me that I’m on some kind of a blogger/media list that was blasted out to a group of people in hopes that someone would take the time to report the news, or perhaps interview an executive of the company.  On rare occasion, I’ve actually reached back out to say, “Yes, I find your product or platform really interesting and would really like to speak with your CEO.”

I think the LinkedIn or referral approach works.  So, if you reach out to me and say that you know “so and so” and they are behind the connection, then I might be interested in hearing about your new service for PR professionals. That’s definitely a foot in the door and I’ll want to speak with you (at least you get a next step).  I also think that if you just take a little time to pay attention to what I’m doing on Twitter, Facebook or to check out my last three blog posts, you can tell a lot about me.  Then you can say that you saw I was writing about PR 2.0, monitoring, measurement, social media plans and policies, etc.  Checking out my content is the best way to learn what I’m interested in and better yet what I think interests my blog community.

Now if you really want to go the distance, you will check out the comments on my blog and even try to interact in my community (of course after observing how the community behaves) or by checking out the monthly #PRStudChat discussion and interacting with me there or even on #journchat, where you can usually find me every Monday night.  I think there are a number of ways to connect with me.  I actually think I make it pretty easy for people to talk to me.  I guess that’s just because I’m in PR and I love to meet new people and uncover interesting ways people are connecting and learning new strategies in public relations, marketing and social media.

Once you have the connection with me, you’re automatically a part of my community. I’m very appreciative of all of my community members. Chances are, if the information you share is relevant and valuable, I’ll use and/or share with my friends.  Many of you who know me, see that I enjoy helping people with their research, homework, interviews, Q&As, etc.  But, I think that new friends also have to remember (and this isn’t just for me, but for any blogger), as much as we love to write, report and provide information time is always of the essence.  I think that if you are working with bloggers, you must be respectful of their time and deliver quickly to reach their deadlines (similar to what you would do with a traditional journalist).  I also think it’s important not to overwhelm the blogger by saying, “I have a few questions for you to answer.”  I think I can speak for many that we love to help out; it’s just when you send 15 questions or more, it may be a bit too many for us to tackle all at once (unless it’s a two part Q&A).  My own rule, for when I want to interview a fellow blogger, is to send about five to seven questions and then give that person the option to answer my questions, swap out a question or two if they want to focus on another topic, or they can always add a question or two, if they feel really ambitious.

For me, if you take the time to learn about me and you are truly interested in providing information that my community will find meaningful, I will always be happy to hear from you.  It takes a minimal amount of time to learn about a blogger and the results could be a relationship/friendship that lasts a lifetime.

For all of my PR/social media blogger friends who I rely on, interview on occasion, who I interact with daily and who teach me so much…I can’t thank you enough for your knowledge, loyalty and friendship!  And, to all my PR friends who want to interact with me, I look forward to hearing from you…maybe even about this post.

How are you working with bloggers and/or how do you want PR people to approach you in your new role?

Comp.ly was launched as a turnkey disclosure solution for bloggers who want to provide full disclosure in their posts. You can review the full news release on Cmp.ly here.  Because there was no established disclosure structure that bloggers could rely upon, DigComm responded by creating a series of transparent disclosures that are identified at a quick glance, and can even be communicated within the 140 characters constraints of Twitter.   

The six standardized disclosures include:

CMP.ly/0 – No connection, unpaid, my own opinions

CMP.ly/1 – Based upon a review copy

CMP.ly/2 – Given a sample by vendor/agency/brand

CMP.ly/3 – Paid post – cash payment or other compensation

CMP.ly/4 – Employee/shareholder/business relationship

CMP.ly/5 – Custom Disclosure

When I spoke with the Tom Chernaik, Cmp.ly’s co-founder and the founder of DigComm, he explained that the guidelines for Cmp.ly will be clarified in the upcoming weeks, as they receive feedback from users. Cmp.ly will be free for bloggers who will use the solution for the transparent and honest disclosure that is required by the FTC in its revised guidelines. 

As for my disclosure, I have worked with Tom Chernaik (@tomdigcomm) in the past, so I guess that might characterize my disclosure as CMP.ly/4, which constitutes a business relationship.

With all of the new technologies and information that we are supposed to learn and embrace and with all of the rules of engagement that we have to follow in the social sphere, an easy solution to disclosure will be welcomed and appreciated by bloggers. Cmp.ly, from what I read, looks like a great option, and a means to keep bloggers, marketers and content providers transparent and fully compliant with the new FTC guidelines. 

I remember what Paul Roetzer, PR 20/20 (@paulroetzer) said at the Inbound Marketing Summit during our PR 2.0 panel. To paraphrase his comment, Paul said that there will be always be PR professionals and agencies that naturally do the right thing and show full disclosure.  On the other hand, there are those that will never abide by the rules.  With a solution like Cmp.ly, it appears that there’s no reason not to comply!

For more information on Cmp.ly you can visit the Cmp.ly website.