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?

Here are a few of the statistics that stood out:

eMarketer published a study by Digital Brand Expressions (May 2010) where:

• Approximately 71% of US companies use the marketing department as the area responsible for the creation and maintenance of the social media communications plan.
• Approximately 21% of US companies use their corporate communications department as the area responsible for the creation and maintenance of the social media communications plan.
• Approximately 78% of US companies are using social media sites, however, about 52% are working without a game plan.
• According to US companies, approximately 45% prepare and distribute protocols and policies for ongoing communications, in their social media plans (including how to respond to negative comments).
• According to US companies, approximately 39% distribute guidelines for all employees regarding their general use of social media, for both professional and personal use.
• According to US companies, approximately 29% prepare and distribute social media policies/guidelines for the use of social media by different departments within the organization.

One of the most important messages conveyed from these numbers is that social media planning includes policy development and distributing guidelines to an organization’s employees (in some cases by department). Did you develop your social media policy as a part of your communications planning in 2010? If so, is your marketing or communications department spearheading the development?

Q: You and I met when I was a magazine editor, but now I work for a “boutique” PR agency serving high-tech agencies. How much emphasis should our agency be placing on developing podcasting or webcasting products for our clients?

A: There are a few factors to consider before building social media tools/resources for your clients.  First you should take a look at your customers, their respective markets and their external footprints.  Are webcasting and podcasting effective tools to use and if you create this type of content for your customers’, will their target public(s) use and share these resources? When you develop a content strategy it’s important to consider the type of content that is preferred by the people you want to reach, and always align your content strategy to the company’s business objectives.  You should always ask: What are we trying to accomplish by developing these specific types of social media tools?

After considering the external factors, then you should conduct an internal audit of the organization to see what resources internally can be relied upon to create podcasts or webcasts.  Will the company be able use its own resources or will it have to use an external service provider and what are the costs to hire an outside service?  It’s also really important to consider the time commitment of the executives/experts involved in creating the webcasts and podcasts. Will the executives or experts participating in an audio or video streaming series be available for live streaming or to record the sessions, and how much time will they commit to the program.  The external and internal considerations are key to determining the type of content strategy and what will be the most effective social media tools to use moving forward.

Q: I am alone in my PR efforts. We recently purchased Vocus/PR Web services. I just released my first release. I created the RSS availability but have not set up a Twitter page yet however, my question is; Is there a tool to sync all of the business/personal social sites to display a released blog?

A: If I understand the question correctly, it sounds as if you are looking for a tool that will allow you to sync or update all of your community sites simultaneously.  So for example, if you write a blog post and you want to share it on all of your networks, including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc., then you can use a tool called Ping.fm.  Ping.fm is a resource that updates all of your communities, at the same time, saving you the time, energy and effort of posting separately in your networks.

Q: Our company has been using a few different types of social media for several months now but we have seen almost no ROI (limited sales from promo codes, limited site visits etc). How long should a company be experimenting before giving up?

A:  I don’t think that you should give up on social media outreach; you may have to adjust your listening/monitoring strategy.  Are you in the communities that have the people that you want to reach? Are you finding in-depth conversations on topics that relate directly to your brand?  After you listen, observe and identify the right community and understand the dynamics of the culture, then you can engage with the members.  When you begin your outreach, you may also want to position yourself as a helpful resource by engaging in conversations and then sharing information about promotions and other offers available.

It’s really important to make sure that you are in the right community at the onset and that the community members find value in the content that you are sharing. You may also want to identify certain new influencers/bloggers who would be interested in sharing your content because it has relevance to their community members.  I would go back to the Conversation Prism listening exercise that I mentioned during the Vocus webinar to see if you can find relevant conversations and people in specific networks through key word searches.  After you listen and observe, then you can move toward participation once again.

Also, make sure that you have the proper measurement in place to capture people who are interested in your offers either by directing them over to landing page to capture information or to a specific area of your website where it’s easy to take advantage of a promotion or similar offer.

If you have questions or answers to share on any of the topics posted above, it would be great to hear your feedback. Thanks!

Q: I teach PR at a college. I feel like I’m a horse-and-buggy expert teaching students how to drive cars! Some of the skills are the same, but others are so new, so changing, even as we speak! Of course, they need to know how to write a release, identify audiences, and set a strategy. What advice do you have for training the next generation of PR professionals?

A: This is such a great question because it hits right at the heart of the PR person’s new role.  I believe when training the next generation of PR professionals they will need to understand and embrace a new PR approach and how their roles and responsibilities will increase.

Through social media communications we have the ability to help our brands connect with so many different stakeholders in web communities, including customers.  The way that we tell our organization’s story is different and we can no longer use a traditional broadcast message; one-way communication and “the one story fits all” is not welcome in the social sphere. Now, we can show our brands how to target, humanize and customize their business stories for different communities and to reach new influencers. It’s also a big change from solely relying on mainstream media and the credible third party endorsement.  Although we will still rely on the media and build relationships with bloggers (our new influencers), it’s really important to also listen to consumers and to make direct connections with them.  By becoming a resource (whether it’s to answer your customers questions, provide them with tips or expertise, teach them how to properly use a product or to hear their gripes and work toward a solution) you build a stronger relationship.

As a result, PR people are looking at social media strategy through a different lens.  Yes, we are still conducting research, identifying our target publics, working on strategic communications and measuring results. However, we are also monitoring and tracking conversations and listening on behalf of the organization (becoming more of a customer service role). Suddenly, we are research librarian; listening closely and reporting back to our brands in order to fuse this information into our organizations.  Communications can’t work in a vacuum.   We need to share the knowledge with different departments to evaluate the information and to formulate the proper feedback and insight to the community (the brand’s participation or engagement).  As we listen and observe, we also become sociologists and cultural anthropologists. We’re studying the dynamics and interactions of community members, learning what matters to the people driving those communities and observing what is considered accepted behavior.

Our roles also increase when we create social media content, work in new technological environments, learn to integrate strategic communications with Web 2.0 and viral marketing and measure engagement and participation in new ways.  And, as we continue to focus on listening, we can become conversationalists, engaging in web communities and actually becoming the people we want to reach. As we learn more about participating and making connections that lead to strong and valuable relationships, we become better equipped to help our brands take the same approach.

The next generation of PR professionals has all of these new roles and responsibilities to look forward too, especially as PR takes a lead role in strategic social media communication.

Q: We have been under attack by a small group who have posted false and defamatory information on forums, blogs, etc. Should we respond directly via our website?

I always think you should take the time to get the correct information posted on your website or within a community to clear up any false or inaccurate information and you can also rely on the rest of your community to provide supportive communication on your behalf.

Sometimes, it’s a judgment call on how much effort you should invest into a group of people or an individual who is a deterrent detractor.  Every situation is unique and I would have to review the history to make a proper assessment.  However, not knowing your particular situation, as a general rule of thumb, if a customer or customers band together because they are unhappy and should their requests go unnoticed, they will often take it to the blogosphere. In this case, you should always reach out…perhaps outside of the social network, if you can contact them by telephone to move them back into your happy community once again.  If there is the opportunity to change someone’s opinion and return their opinion back to goodwill toward your organization, then it’s worth the time and resources.  However, in the case of the deterrent detractor, you should evaluate that person’s authority and credibility.  If this person is just providing entertainment value for those that listen for the sake of controversy, but not really influencing anyone, then they don’t require your time and attention (if you know they will never be a part of your camp again).

___________

I’ll be answering a few more questions in my next post and I hope that you will share your answers to these questions or any comments you may have.  And, if you participated in the Vocus Webinar: PR Planning Considerations for 2010 and you had a question that wasn’t answered, feel free to post it here on my blog for all of us to review and respond

The Webinar was carefully orchestrated by Vocus; first with a survey that went out to approximately 1,800 PR professionals regarding their planning practices for 2010 and then a Webinar to discuss the findings.  My role as a presenter was to share the survey results along with some best practices in PR planning. I found out very quickly that my presentation materials were very much in line with the expectations, challenges and thoughts of professionals regarding the state of our industry.

Most of the results the survey did not surprise me and after reviewing the results, I walked away with a sense of urgency and challenge, yet strong confidence that PR professionals were ready to play a major role in social media strategy and outreach for their brands in 2010.

My presentation focused on how you have to work several new strategies into your planning process including different approaches to monitoring and tracking technology, distribution/channel strategy (which social media platforms to reach important stakeholders), communications and content creation strategy, measurement strategy and an engagement strategy to evoke emotion/sentiment.  Here is the diagram I used to explained the planning process:

Some of the interesting survey findings that supported my discussion were the following:

• Approximately 50% of the survey participants stated that planning for PR programs and strategies in 2010 would be more difficult (I believe that this may be due to a limited amount of company resources, employee or organizational culture not wanting to participate in social media and a lack of management buy in to social media programs.)
• Approximately 42% surveyed stated that budgets would remain the same in 2010 (exhibiting a cautious optimism for the year ahead although 24% said that budgets would increase slightly).
• About 63% stated that their organizations would focus more on innovating effective processes.
• Approximately 51% of the survey participants believed that there would be more investment in new technology (however, if 42% believed that budgets would remain the same, then resources would have to shift from another area of the company in order to invest in technology).
• About 80% of the participants said their organizations would focus more on social media in 2010.
• Approximately 53% said that their organizations currently use social media monitoring.
• About 65% said that their organizations are currently using news monitoring.
• More than 50% described their Strategic Communications roles as a significant to a primary role within their organization.
• Over 50% described their Marketing Communications roles as a significant to primary role within their organizations.
• More than 50% described their Content Management roles as a significant to a primary role within their organizations.
• Brands still place a good deal of emphasis on traditional media, with 67% of the survey participants stating that their organization’s focus on traditional media relations will remain the same.
• Approximately 62% of the participants stated that their use of the press release would remain the same (It would be interesting to find out what’s the percentage of PR Professionals who will focus on Social Media Releases).

The Vocus Webinar on PR Planning Considerations provided very useful statistical information that PR people can use to better understand their planning challenges in 2010.  Do any of these statistics surprise you?  What do you think will be some of your biggest planning challenges in 2010?