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The Variance of Corporate Social Media Policies

Categories: Ethics, Social MediaPosted on April 4th, 2008

Our research indicates that 2/3rds of US online Youth (ages 12-17) use social networks at least monthly, and 20% of teens use them daily. (Q4, 2007) There’s no indication that I’ve seen that the adoption will decrease as they enter the workforce.

David Churbuck (whose name I finally got right) is a web strategist at Lenonvo computers, and writes a compelling piece Does Your Company Have a Blogging Policy? This is a question I hear to often from the Fortune 5000 who are toe dipping, or just down right scared of employee blogs.

I often defer the conversation a step higher, to discuss how they’ve (hopefully) hired smart people that they trust, and that they are willing and to empower and trust them to make the right decisions both online, and offline. In many cases, some of these companies have over-arching ethics policies that span behavior not just on blogs and social networks, but also at corporate functions, or even when wearing he company shirt at a bar.

Sadly, more than one company has expressed to me they didn’t trust their employees, as either they were an “unruly” group (many of their employees in the field may not have much formal education) or were uncomfortable with how much of their personal lives they shared due to their age (Gen Y shares quite a bit in MySpace and Facebook).

At a more traditional and larger brand, this company wanted to attract more Generation Y and X employees, as over 40% of their workforce (Boomers) are starting to retire in the next 5 years. The fat pensions they’ve been building for the employees has made it quite affordable to retire early –taking their knowledge and networks with them. So to them, they had to be friendly to social media when it came to attracting this younger crowd, and they softened up on their corporate social media policy. Recent research by Deloitte confirms that Gen Y seeks to give back to their community, often in the form of social networking.

So how are companies stringing together these policies? Most commonly, the ethics policy is already in place, and corporations can lean and amend that one. A few have adopted a specific blogging policy, often with the help of the actual bloggers, while a majority may be too decentralized –or not have anyone focusing on it — to create such a policy.

Share with others, if your company has a public blogging or social media policy, please leave a link to it below, and tell us how your company came into agreement for this policy.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 5:42 am and is filed under Ethics, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

42 Responses to “The Variance of Corporate Social Media Policies”

  1. We have had a policy for ages since 2005 (when we just started) and we continue to follow it since then also with our lates start-up http://ComMetrics.com



    2. Posted by WebUrs on April 4th, 2008 at 5:53 am

  2. Absolutely - It sprung up because of my personal blog which got me the role in helping to craft it.



    3. Posted by Paul Dunay on April 4th, 2008 at 5:58 am

  3. Well my company is just 2 people, but we definately support blogging and are blogging. When we hire more people, we will definately have a blogging & social media policy. We need to put more of an effort though :)

    -Jeff
    http://edmodo.com



    4. Posted by Jeff O'Hara on April 4th, 2008 at 5:59 am

  4. Currently not as its just started up.



    5. Posted by Ina on April 4th, 2008 at 6:04 am

  5. Hi Jeremiah, just caught up with your tweet that pointed to this blog post. Good stuff! Yes, IBM has been having a set of blogging guidelines since 2005 and we are currently in the process of updating (Will blog on that subject myself pretty soon!), but for a look into the current ones you can just head over here: http://is.gd/48H, and you will find them there.

    The policy and guidelines was initially put together by a bunch of us, core bloggers, who gathered together in a wiki space to draft it, put it together, share it with the powers that be, get it approved and ready to spread it around. And the revision of those guidelines this time around has followed the exact same process, although initial discussions have taken place through blogging, then the wiki and it’s currently being reviewed. Hope that helps…



    6. Posted by Luis Suarez on April 4th, 2008 at 6:06 am

  6. We will be implementing one soon (about a month) as a result of some of the social media activities I started within the company and raising awareness that we need one. For example, we are a very large and distributed Fortune 500 company. And while our associates may have the best intention at heart, we have uncovered some instances where they have not been using the medium appropriately (ie spamming or even sharing private information).

    I would love to say that I had a hand in drafting, but our legal department took over. I was able to provide education about blogging and best practices from other companies. At least I was able to have a hand in approval. As you mentioned, it is tied to our code of ethics policies.



    7. Posted by Paula on April 4th, 2008 at 6:29 am

  7. I was pleased to find no blogging policy in place at my new employer, which to my mind means that I am left to my own discretion. For the first time yesterday I posted on work I had been doing for them. I sent a quick message to my boss, plus the vp and marketing guy, and told them, with a link what I’d done and why. They loved it…

    If you can’t trust your employees, you need to get new employees.



    8. Posted by Mark Cahill on April 4th, 2008 at 6:30 am

  8. Whooops, someone alerted me through Twitter that the link I shared above didn’t work. It’s true, there is one comma too many… Here is the link to the right source: http://is.gd/48H.

    Sorry about that :)



    9. Posted by Luis Suarez on April 4th, 2008 at 6:44 am

  9. Rats! Jeremiah, it looks like it keeps adding foreign characters! Not a dot! Grrr! Either way … go to http://ibm.com/blogs and you can see the Guidelines link on the top left. Hope this time it will work ;)

    (You can delete the previous comment, if you want)



    10. Posted by Luis Suarez on April 4th, 2008 at 6:46 am

  10. I work at a large telecom company, and we just finished the final draft of our social media policy yesterday. We used some existing guidelines (Sun, IBM) as a model, and even included a section that included Forrester’s guidelines for corporate blogging.



    11. Posted by Jeff Beckham on April 4th, 2008 at 6:57 am

  11. In a word: Yes. (And I’ve written a bunch of them for others as well.)



    12. Posted by Phil Gomes on April 4th, 2008 at 7:10 am

  12. I work for a Fincial data & news company where being non bias is a bonus. News = facts, but blogging is your own opinion & therfore biased. My company encourages blogging but says it’s “not the opion of the company”.



    13. Posted by Tom Ablewhite on April 4th, 2008 at 7:36 am

  13. Test comment. Previous stuck in moderation?



    14. Posted by Frymaster on April 4th, 2008 at 7:51 am

  14. Fry I dont see any other comments in moderation.



    15. Posted by jeremiah_owyang on April 4th, 2008 at 7:55 am

  15. CommunityLend corporate blogging policy:
    Rule #1- its not a corporate blog - it is written by people:

    We want to:
    - be genuine and build trust
    - listen carefully, understand and respond
    - be chivalrous: gracious and honourable towards all



    16. Posted by Colin on April 4th, 2008 at 7:57 am

  16. I run the Circuit City company blog http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/genericContent.do?oid=197457 and Twitter account. Being a retailer and publicly-traded company, there are a few soft guidelines that I try to adhere to. Mostly thing like not posting pieces that might damage vendor relations, not insulting customers, etc. Mostly common sense things.

    The challenge I’m facing now is that we’ve reached the point where I’m going to have to start recruiting more bloggers in order to grow the program. I’m 32 and I’ve worked in corp. America since I was 22, so I know what’s off limits and what’s not. But that may not hold true for a 22 year old new hire. What I’m working myself up to is actually developing a set of rough guidelines, and instituting some sort of initial review process for new bloggers, maybe for a month or so, just to make sure they get off on the right foot. There are also certain kinds of posts that need to go through our PR department first. They’re few and far between, thankfully.



    17. Posted by Matthew West on April 4th, 2008 at 8:04 am

  17. Just a follow-up to my previous post, while we have these on-site guidelines, I’ve never seen any kind of official policy, but that may be because the topic has never come up with Legal and ExComm.



    18. Posted by Matthew West on April 4th, 2008 at 8:07 am

  18. J - This thing will not take the link I’m tryin-a post. Will tweet it.



    19. Posted by Frymaster on April 4th, 2008 at 8:16 am

  19. One of the reasons that I have chosen to blog semi-anonymously is because my employer, a Fortune 500 company, repeatedly reminds its employees that only certain spokespersons are authorized to speak on behalf of the company. To reduce the likelihood that my pronouncements may be seen as representing my employer, I choose not to blog under my real name, and very rarely blog about my employer’s activities. (The fact that my real name, Tony Orlando, could be confused with someone else is another reason why I have made this choice. j/k)

    Public companies do have some concerns regarding possible SEC violations, and the increasingly litigious nature of our society does indicate that there is a real threat to corporations from the wrong statement, made at the wrong time. And when you employ tens of thousands of people, it’s easier to discourage blogging and play it safe than to encourage it under certain guidelines.

    It’s not an easy problem to solve.



    20. Posted by Ontario Emperor on April 4th, 2008 at 8:22 am

  20. http://tinyurl.com/8agwf
    Maybe this tiny url will work. Links to an article that surveys corp blogging policies circa 2005, but still good stuff. Defines Core, Common and Unusual policies.



    21. Posted by Frymaster on April 4th, 2008 at 8:24 am

  21. Frymaster rules supreme over technology! Yes, I!



    22. Posted by Frymaster on April 4th, 2008 at 8:24 am

  22. His emperorship above may know about the Whole Foods Rahodeb situation. That CEO blog has been “temporarily” suspended since last July!



    23. Posted by Frymaster on April 4th, 2008 at 8:26 am

  23. Yeah, we have, it’s our own responsibility.



    24. Posted by Jaap Steinvoorte on April 4th, 2008 at 8:31 am

  24. And yes, of course I’ve seen what my colleague has written about social media (blogging policies) some time ago

    http://forrester.typepad.com/charleneli/2004/11/blogging_policy.html



    25. Posted by jeremiah_owyang on April 4th, 2008 at 8:51 am

  25. this is walking on ClueTrain Manifesto territory somewhat, isn’t it? I guess rather than a “policy” per se, which implies a measure of top-down-control, I’d prefer to frame it as friendly guidelines. I’m not sure how well bloggers would respond to “don’t say anything about us because you’re not our official spokesperson”, but I think would respond well to “ensure it’s clear you’re not speaking officially on behalf of the company, and also, consider that it may be read by your ceo”.
    oops - went a bit off topic from “does your company have …” (A: not yet, but will) to “what kind of …” sorry.



    26. Posted by nancy zimmerman on April 4th, 2008 at 9:24 am

  26. cluetrain-stylee bloggers don’t have bosses to whom to answer



    27. Posted by Frymaster on April 4th, 2008 at 10:07 am

  27. I don’t think “policy” should be considered a bad word, especially if the company is public. Personally I like the “Sun Policy on Public Discourse” which is publicly posted here: http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/blogs/policy.html

    Companies have lots of stakeholders — employees and customers, but also investors. Transparency is an important objective for companies — but the SEC (see reg FD - for fair disclosure) wants to make sure that transparency is also equally distributed. This is a fair and reasonable objective but it does put a burden on companies to make sure that the way in which confidential information is disclosed is managed. Policy is a useful word when dealing with this kind of issue.

    Many other examples come to mind — competitive issues, privacy issues, other legal points like intellectual property protection… policies are useful in highlighting where these issues begin and end.



    28. Posted by Ted Shelton on April 4th, 2008 at 10:18 am

  28. @Mark Cahill. Amen, brother.



    29. Posted by Curt on April 4th, 2008 at 11:07 am

  29. The last company I worked for had a blanket policy regarding information related to the organization and though it came from the dark ages they applied it to blogging and other social media. Simply put - everything had to be approved by the marketing/PR department before it could be released. If you didn’t run it by them you could be disciplined, even fired - regardless of what you said. They stopped a bona fide blogging/podcasting effort dead in its tracks based on advice from the legal department. Here it is almost two years later and they still don’t blog or podcast.

    I didn’t leave them because of this alone but because of the executive mindset supporting these types of restrictive policies - and there were lots of them. Maybe the executive knew what they were doing - if your employees are feeling abused, you sure don’t want them talking about it on the web.



    30. Posted by Dean Owen on April 4th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

  30. Not aware of any explicit blogging policy (and I started and contribute to an internal, company-only blog). Blogging falls under general corporate information policy.

    Admittedly, I think it is because the company is generally unaware of the power of employees to express themselves in this manner.



    31. Posted by Taylor on April 4th, 2008 at 6:25 pm

  31. Hi. I work for Cisco in corporate communications and we’ve had our blogging policy in place for several years, and recently updated it to address the issue of anonymous blogging, of which we don’t allow. Our view is openness and transparency at all times and our guiding principle is to be respectful and professional. Here is our updated policy:

    http://blogs.cisco.com/news/2008/03/ciscos_internet_postings_polic_1.html



    32. Posted by Jeanette Gibson on April 7th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

  32. Thanks Jeanette, very helpful



    33. Posted by jeremiah_owyang on April 7th, 2008 at 3:33 pm

  33. [...] Interesting: http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/04/04/the-variance-of-corporate-social-media-policies/ [...]



    34. Posted by Corporate Social Media Policies at Blackstone Media Blog on April 7th, 2008 at 6:06 pm

  34. [...] also ran across one of Jeremiah Owyang’s posts about Social Media Policies from a couple of months ago where he suggests leveraging and building on the existing ethics [...]



    35. Posted by Social Media Policy: Does your company need one? at Fast Wonder Blog on July 13th, 2008 at 6:41 pm

  35. [...] first point (Made by Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research): “2/3rds of US online Youth (ages 12-17) use social networks at least monthly, and 20% of teens [...]



    36. Posted by Corporate Social Media Policy on November 3rd, 2008 at 9:56 am

  36. [...] corporate social media policy would help. Companies like Intel and the New York Times have them. PRstore is working on one, a [...]



    37. Posted by Should You Have One Social Media Identity, or Two? » Media Emerging on January 22nd, 2009 at 10:21 am

  37. [...] Jeremiah Owyang Variance of Corp Social Media Policies - Forrester researching polling the community of social media practices. Jeremiah is a leading resource for all things social media. [...]



    38. Posted by Social Media Policies and Procedures: Examples and Guidelines — Daniel Hoang Daniel Hoang on February 21st, 2009 at 10:40 pm

  38. [...] Britt Bravo (Have Fun Do Good): Nonprofit Blogging Burning Questions and Answers Jeremiah Owyang: The Variance of Corporate Social Media Policies New Media Knowledge: Rough Guide to: Social Media and the Law Kyle Oppenhuizen (USA Today): Schools [...]



    39. Posted by Wild Apricot Blog : Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Nonprofit on April 16th, 2009 at 7:28 am

  39. [...] are willing to empower and trust them to make the right decisions both online, and offline,” says Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester. “In many cases, these companies have over-arching ethics policies that span behavior not just on [...]



    40. Posted by Corporate Social Media Policy | Online PR technology trends | Sally Falkow | The Leading Edge on April 27th, 2009 at 3:28 pm

  40. [...] it’s probably time to put one in place to govern expectations at all levels of the organization. Jeremiah Owyang, leading social media blogger and Forrester Research senior analyst, has some great information [...]



    41. Posted by Is your company really ready to start leveraging social media? | Comet Branding Blog - Progressive Milwaukee-based Branding, PR and Social Media Agency on May 19th, 2009 at 7:43 am

  41. [...] are willing to empower and trust them to make the right decisions both online, and offline,” says Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester. “In many cases, these companies have over-arching ethics policies that span behavior not just on [...]



    42. Posted by Corporate Social Media Policy | Proactive Report on June 7th, 2009 at 6:36 am

  42. [...] http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/04/04/the-variance-of-corporate-social-media-policies/ (compares various corporate social media policies) [...]



    43. Posted by Full Circle Associates » Social Media Planning and Evaluation for NGOs on June 7th, 2009 at 5:06 pm

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