Why Corporate Social Media Policies Are a Must

By Mark Evans in Social Media 3 Comments Tags: , , ,

Note: I wrote this post a few days ago for the Sysomos blog, and it got such a good reception, I wanted to share it here.

In a recent blog post, I talked about the different ways that companies can scale their social media efforts. One of them is “outsourcing” your social media activities to employees, rather than having a social media team responsible for everything.

In theory, this approach makes sense because a lot more social media territory can be covered without having to hire more people to do it. It can also be a great way to harness the passion and enthusiasm of employees, particularly those excited about the Web and social media tools such as blogs, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

In practice, however, bringing employees into the social media fold can be a challenge. Perhaps the biggest hurdle is establishing a corporate social media policy that provides clear guidelines to employees about best practices and acceptable behavior.

For employees to be effective social media evangelists, educators and ambassadors, it’s important to have policies that articulate the rules of engagement. These policies can be extensive and in-depth, or they can be succinct and straightforward. IBM’s social computing guidelines, which were established in 2005, consist of only 12 rules.

One of the most important considerations when creating social media policies is trust – employers trusting their employees will do the right things, and employees respecting that trust by behaving well and doing the right thing.

If fair and equitable social media policies are established, they can go a long way in addressing the second major challenge in “outsourcing” social media – convincing employees that getting involved is something they want to do. Unless employees buy in, scaling social media activities can be a difficult goal.

Despite the growing interest in social media, most companies have yet to establish social media policies. But giving the important role that social media is going to play in the future, it’s a matter of when, not if.

Update: Seth Godin has an interesting blog post about why social media is so difficult for many companies.

Social Media is Killing Everyone’s Privacy

By Mark Evans in Social Media 6 Comments Tags: , ,

privateSix years ago, basketball star Kobe Bryant was arrested for sexual assault involved a young woman in a Colorado hotel room. The charges were dropped after his accuser, Katelyn Faber, declined to testify at a trial. To make amends to his wife, Bryant bought her a $4-million ring. While there was certainly a lot of media attention, the situation lacked one key element: social media.

Without blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Flickr pounding away, the Bryant camp was, for the most part, able to manage the situation – as much as one can manage anything involving a high-profile, millionaire athlete who had a “transgression” with someone other than his wife.

For Tiger Woods, however, social media (and his global celebrity) has been like a digital tsunami, slamming into his life again and again. While the traditional media coverage of Woods’ “transgressions” has been overwhelming, the social media hordes have been fueling the flames and the conversation with opinions and discussions, as well as breaking news.

With social media on the scene, it’s impossible to escape intense scrutiny when you do something wrong. And the spotlight remains on the scene of the crime for a long time as blogs, et al continue to feed on the victim’s misfortune.

Another fascinating angle to social media and how much we know about what people are doing is the amount of information that’s self-disclosed – what we’re doing, eating, thinking, buying, etc. Perhaps the most troubling are tools that broadcast your location (e.g. I’m at the Starbucks on 4th St. in New York).

It strikes me as very Orwellian (aka 1984-ish) and suggests yet another chapter of our private lives that we’re willing to sacrifice. As well, it’s a great way to broadcast to anyone interested in robbing your house, there are windows of opportunity on the public record.

Are you concerned about how much information you disclosed online? If not, why not?

The Unwashed Social Media Masses

By Mark Evans in Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , ,

Earlier this week, I did a panel about social media at the Canadian Solar Industries Association’s annual conference. Before the panel started, the attendees were asked about their Web presence. Most of them had Web sites but, surprisingly, very few of them were active on blogs, Twitter or Facebook.

It was surprising only because when you’re drinking from the fire hose of social media, it’s a head-scratcher to discover there are people not as active, enthusiastic or engaged. Then, you realize that the majority of people aren’t involved in or interested in social media, and that many of them may never get involved in social media. This is something that the digirati often fail to recognize as they happily tweet, blog and update, and talk to other enthusiasts about their tweets, blogs and updates.

This is one of the reasons that I have been spending more time recently writing and talking about the fundamentals of social media. There’s still a lot of hand-holding and educating to be done as individuals and companies move from not being on social media to thinking about social media to doing social media. It means that social media enthusiasts, consultants and strategists may have to take a step back to help pull the masses along. There’s a whole mess of people looking to get involved; all they need is some encouragement and education.

Review: Dyson Animal Needs More Bite

By Mark Evans in Main Page 1 Comment Tags: , ,

Dyson AnimalAbout a year ago, we were in the market for a new vacuum cleaner after blowing through yet another one of those cheap vacuums bought at Wal-Mart. As a gadget geek, I really wanted a Dyson but got talked about it by the salesman who convinced me that a European-made a Miele was a much better option – even though it certainly not as sexy as a Dyson.

So I was excited when offered the chance recently to check out the Dyson DC31 Animal – well, as excited anyone should really get about a vacuum cleaner. The Animal is cordless, and looks and feels more like a Star Wars weapon than a handheld vacuum cleaner. True to the Dyson pedigree, it has lot of power, which makes it ideal for quick jobs around the house, garage and the car.

The Animal’s only drawback is while it has a lot of bite (power), it really needs more bark (battery life). In my thorough test, the battery only lasted 15 to 20 minutes, which seemed disappointing. Then again, the Animal is not a vacuum cleaner but more of a tidying tool, which means it’s used for shorter periods of time.

At about C$275, the Animal is a lot more expensive than most handheld vacuum cleaners but if you’re looking for a long-term investment, it’s probably worth it, although I wonder whether it’s worth holding off until a unit comes out with more bark.

Social Media: More Walk, Less Talk

By Mark Evans in Social Media, Uncategorized 4 Comments Tags: , , , ,

Stephen Baker has a fascinating story in BusinessWeek that looks at the growing scrutiny that social media consultants/strategists are starting to encounter as social media moves from being something shiny and new into a part of integrated marketing plans.

What Baker puts into the spotlight is the fact there’s an awful lot of enthusiastic talk going on about the joys and benefits of social media. This includes mantras such as “It’s all about the conversation”, “You need to engage” and “You must be transparent”.

But the reality is when it comes to social media, there’s an awful lot of talk but really not a lot of walk. There’s no lack of people more than spread the world by giving workshops, speeches and presentations, or provide strategic recommendations on how social media can deliver all kinds of wonderful things. And there’s millions of people happily using Twitter, Facebook and blogs.

This activity, however, vastly overshadows what businesses are doing with social media. It’s still early days, and many companies are still trying to figure out how they can use social media. If you look at the case studies being tossed around to support the growth of social media, the same case studies come up again and again. Let’s talk about Naked Pizza or Dell or Starbuck..or Naked Pizza….

One of the biggest problem with social media is it’s often being sold as the solution. Let’s sprinkle in some Twitter updates with a great Facebook Page and a YouTube channel, and it will just be a matter of time before good things start to happen – however “good things” is defined.

In reality, social media is just another weapon within a marketing, communications and sales arsenal. It’s a new-fangled delivery mechanism that needs to be integrated into an overarching corporate strategy. Sure, social media can do new and different things but it’s can’t be used in isolation.

When talking with clients, one of the first things I ask about is their marketing strategy and the target audiences they want to reach. I want them to tell me what tools are working, why they want to use social media and what they hope to get from it. In many cases, the initial work involves creating or massaging their messaging and branding before even discussing a strategic plan for social media.

To be fair, I’m pretty bullish about social media and the impact it can have on how companies do business. At the same time, it’s also important to take a deep breath and recognize that social media isn’t an elixir that will magically create wonderful results.

All the hype surrounding social media and tools such as Twitter and Facebook overshadow the fact that effective marketing and communications will continue to include a variety of tools. To counter all the happy talk from social media consultants about what could be, the biggest thing needed right now is perspective.

Note: To be clear, while I’m obviously active within the social within landscape, social media consulting accounts for a relatively small part of my consulting practice. Most of my business involves straightforward marketing and communications issues such as creating better and more effective corporate messaging that can be delivered over a variety of media platforms.

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