Social Media Policies

Establishing policies to govern social media is a significant challenge in many organizations on many levels. Nowhere is this more complex than at large, diverse organizations. We have seen this kind of issue often over the years. Yet it is even more complex today. Within minutes of any discussion of social media, complicated debates arise over areas such as security, use of customer information and references, privacy, regulatory issues and the sheer determination of who in the organization manages social conversations for which part of the organization. Those debates are usually accompanied by a fundamental ROI question: how does the company create a meaningful set of metrics to make stakeholders accountable for performance of social media and social application investments.

Sometimes the best starting point is looking at what other organizations have developed. Chris Boudreaux is a consultant who is writing a book on this topic. He has developed a database of examples from more than 80 organizations, ranging from local government to media and large corporations in several different companies. It is one of the more comprehensive lists we've seen. You can order a preview of the book, access his database with links to the actual policies or contribute your own or your client policies at:

http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.