Having a social media policy makes a lot of sense. A social media policy encourages social media usage as well as encourages conduct that is beneficial for the organization. What are the prime reasons for having a policy?

Productivity

Would you have a telephone policy in place if more than half of your employees would talk during business hours on their business phones to their friends overseas? Duh.

And in this telephone policy, would you consider getting rid of the telephone altogether? Mmm, probably not.

Roughly 3/4 of employees that have an account on a personal social network access it on working hours. The same holds for twitter. Al that time spent is not being spent for the benefit of the organization paying for the time. It’s really that simple. There are tons of excuses employees come up with for making their personal time really valuable for the company. Don’t fall for it. Power naps are also really good for productivity. Get a grip.

On the other hand, “People who do surf the Internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office – are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” according to Dr Brent Coker, from the Melbourne Department of Management and Marketing. Whatever you decide or believe, it makes sense to limit it.

Customer centric business objectives

Using social media and networks make a lot of sense. Your customers are spending more time on social networks than anywhere else. Even when they’re supposed to be working. They talk about your brand, organisation, services, etc. Actually, you should integrate the use of social networks and media in a lot of your business functions – just as any other communication tool. A policy should clarify in what way these tools can be used and stimulate it so that they serve the company and its objectives best.

PR nightmare

It’ scary: all those employees functioning as corporate spokespersons. That must go wrong sometime. AND IT DOES. No very different from that email with an attachment that should not be there. Or the boss-bashing on a party. Nothing new here, but only the scale and visibility has increased. And it’s not just the employees that are ‘ignorant’ – it’s also the pr-communication folks. Really funny what they come up with. Take Nestle on facebook: “… we welcome your comments, but please don’t post using an altered version of any of our logos as your profile pic – they will be deleted.“. That triggered a lot of feedback. Even the topic ‘Favorit Nestle product’ triggers posts about genetic modification, use of palm oil destroying the habitat of orang utans etc. Lot of fun stuff too: “like anything with Palm Oil in it. I don’t care about monkeys either..if they tasted good I would eat them too!”. Even a post of a loyal Nestle user complaining about his favorite product not being available anymore does not get a response. Nestle has succeeded in building a branded platform for people not liking (hating) nestle. Thank g*d, the logo’s are safe!

… and heaven

On the other side, social media have viral power built in. If I ‘Like’ something, all of my friends see what I like and may start liking it.  A retweet is informing my followers. If I digg something, I inform the world. The virility of social media is built in. You need to understand how it works in order to use it. Not just the functionality, but also the characteristics. For example, research shows that tweets that share information (e.g. contain hyperlinks to informative posts, videos, images) are creating a dense retweet network as apposed to the sparse retweet network that tweets create containing a call for action, crowdsource or attempt to make a collective group identity. Besides understanding functionality and characteristics, you need to be creative in order to use it successfully. What you do needs to be really funny, cool, worthwhile, beautiful, etc, on-brand and leading to the desired experience and behavior. Not easy being creative! The old 15/85 ratio of creative versus media is not valid – in social it’s (almost) 100/0: reaching your audience is virtually free, all the money goes to the creative. That’s good news for your clients – there’s too much advertising out there that was created after the budget was spent on media.

So, what do I like?

Brand & values. What are the brand and core values and what do they mean with respect to social media? Every interaction is a brand experience – and a communication policy should make clear what the brand and values mean in the specific case. For example: “Transparancy in every social media engagement. The Company does not condone manipulating the social media flow by creating “fake” destinations and posts designed to mislead followers and control a conversation” (taken from the Online Social Media Principles of the Coca Cola Company).

Clarity about what is exceptable and what not. About the use of personal social networks during working hours. About privacy, sensitive and proprietary information etc. About the fact that some roles in a company have a higher visibility that impact social network activity outside the working place.

Constructive tips in the policy for everyone and build competencies. Teach your B2B sales how to get going with linkedin. Or your marketing people how to monitor conversations effectively and act on it. Your product development people to involve the ‘heavy users’.

Check out these resources:

for inspiration: http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php?f=0

for quickly getting one if your boss read this post and wants a policy a now: http://socialmedia.policytool.net/

the top-10 things you should cover: http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=875 or http://mashable.com/2009/06/02/social-media-policy-musts/

communication guidelines: http://www.brasstackthinking.com/2009/01/elements-of-web-20-communication-guidelines/

The first siteless post was titled: “Dumb & dumber“. It’s about the opportunity of interacting with your customers in places where they are: social networks. Now it’s time to take a closer look at the opportunity. The opportunity is twofold: you can and you’re – most of the time – alone.

Let’s elaborate on the first: you can.

Interacting with a customer in a place where this customer already is, is pretty special. A lot of the time, you need to make an effort in getting the customer to you. Internet’s real estate is filled with banners, text ads and the likes. The purpose of all this is to attract the customer to leave where he is and to come to you. Interacting with a customer in his own home is the promise of interactive TV: ‘the red button’. Although it’s around for some time, people have difficulty pressing this button. Watching TV is primarily a ‘lean back’ activity – interactive TV is a contradiction in terms. Print does not allow for interaction – other than turning a page or trashing it. Content on other platforms – such as the Kindle and the iPad – do allow for interaction. The iPad is a very interactive device, and magazines like the Wired on iPad are exploring new ways to interact with their readers and giving advertisers a platform to do the same. Very interesting.

And now there are social networks.

A social network is not just a place where a person can post all kinds of information on a profile page and share this with friends. It’s also a place where applications reside. In a way, it’s similar to the iPhone: the iPhone is not just a device where you can make calls and send text messages. It’s also an application platform where – presently – 200.000 apps run. So, applications run on social networks. Depending on the network, these applications are called apps, gadgets or widgets. These apps interface with the social network infrastructure using profile information. OpenSocial is an open standard for doing this, Facebook has a proprietary interface.

Being able to run an application in a place where your customer actually is that uses profile information of this customer opens up unparalleled interactive possibilities. It’s better than a iPhone app. It’s (much) better than interactive TV. It’s in a different league from advertising format s.a. banners, tvc’s and the likes. And, what’s even better: it’s free!

Now the second: you’re alone.

Companies are not quick in acting on changing circumstances. It goes beyond the scope of this blog to describe cases where companies fail in acting on changing consumer behavior, changing technology, changing economic realities etc. You get my drift. With a change where the growth of virtual social networks and social media is rapid and massive, the response of companies is slow and inadequate. Slow because that’s what most companies are good at. Inadequate because social media are viewed upon as just another media to put in the media mix. People buying media make a budget split between TV, radio, print and internet. Internet is divided in search engine marketing, affiliate marketing and bannering. And now, social media is added to the mix. Actually, it makes sense to do it, but if that’s all — well, that’s inadequate. The problem with viewing social media as ‘just another media type’ is that it is way too limited. The old advertising dogma ‘shout, shout harder, shout more often and they will listen’ is getting stale. And the beauty is: you don’t need to. Very few companies are actually using social networks intelligently. Just let your competition spend advertising budget in posting banners on Facebook and making really cool landing pages. Let them swim in a red ocean, while you swim in a blue ocean.  Presently, there are about 15.000 applications on facebook. Popular apps include Tripadvisor, Causes, Spotify and  Hallmark Social Calendar.

So, you can and you’re – almost – alone. That’s good news. Now, get going. Get your swimming trunks, find your blue ocean and take a swim!

Should you have a CSO? Meaning a Chief Social Officer? Honestly, I don’t care. What I do care about is the underlying question: Should organizations beef up their ‘social’ competencies and make a social media strategy?

Let’s start off with the first: the social competencies.

Social media and social networks is BIG. Really big. If you have any doubts, check out this post. And it’s not just about the numbers. It’s primarily about what people do: they talk, lough, cry, date, trash, organize parties. In short: they do what do normally do, only now it’s more connected, more involved.

Another big trend is that people rather listen to their friends than the old ‘trusted’ brands. The importance of customer reviews in buying decisions is well documented. Your friends replace brands. Social media en networks is really word of mouth on steroids. One classic example from 2004 (!) is Kryptonite. This company went almost belly-up after a blogpost and a subsequent storm of posts and videos. Great story! Now, it’s 6 years later.

So, customers are ‘social’. They listen more to each other that to you. Should you care? YES. You should and build up your competencies accordingly. These competencies involve a deep understanding of the various social infrastructures, the interplay and – most important – what specifically your customers are doing there.

Next, should you develop a social media strategy?

Well, that’s a bit less obvious. Let’s first discuss – shortly, no worries – what I mean by ‘social media strategy’. A strategy is a plan of action to achieve a major business objective. A social media strategy is a strategy where social media and your customer’s behavior on those media are the inspiration in formulating the plan of action. So, a social media strategy is not limited to actions where social media play the dominant role. So, ‘social’ is the inspiration for the plan, not the plan itself! This s very different from what i.e. Peter Kim is doing on mashable.

Back to the question: should you develop a social media strategy?

It depends, but probably you should. Let me elaborate. You probably shouldn’t if what you’re doing has got nothing to do with people in general. Like when you run an oil platform in the gulf like BP. (oops – after the green rebranding of BP to Beyond Petroleum, it’s a new rebranding: Beyond Pollution). It’s almost like ten years ago, organizations were saying: ‘mmm, the internet. Interesting. For geeks.’. Another reason why social media deserves an inspirational role in your strategy is that it’s a blue ocean. Very little companies are active on social media while the opportunities are big.

To get going on social media strategy, a few tips:

tip #1: Get lots of examples. And maybe more. Not just your competitors, but also outside your industry. Focus not just on brand or image related examples, but also on service, sales and product development. It’s all about inspiration.

tip #2: Get qualitative information of your customers. Interview a good number customers and potential customers in front of a video cam. Ask them about their life. About their friends. How they play, party, chat etc. How they get inspired. How they buy. Etc. Etc. It is really amazing what an inspiration customers can be.

tip #3: Get a clear view of your assets. What can you bring on the table? Often, it is more than you think.

tip #4: Get info trends. Tech, social, fiscal, economic, fashion, music etc. All trends relevant for your business.

tip #5: Understand that strategy development is non-lineair and needs to deal with uncertainty. You need to find a way in a big forrest without roads, where your compass is a multitude  of unsure trends. As a starter, you might want to read up on strategy under uncertainty. This leads to the final tip.

tip #6: Get help. A strategy pro can provide you with a method, the tools and an information base that helps to creating your strategy. So call/mail me at any time .