Think Customers: The 1to1 Blog

We launched our Social Media Guidelines and Recommendations at SAS in June 2009. Here are some of the things we learned:

Get everybody together in the same room
Depending on the size of your company, there could be dozens of people with a stake in how you communicate. Make sure you include them all in the process. We created a Marketing 2.0 Council with representation from across the company. Not only did we smoke out key objections at the start, but when we were finished, our policies already had the buy-in of the people whose support we most needed.

Get legal and HR involved from the start, and don't make them adversaries
In most companies the legal and human resources departments are the ones who see firsthand every day the ugly side of the workplace. They will likely be the most cautious about social media, with justification. Get them involved in the creation of your policies. It will not only make the policies stronger and more practical, but you'll avoid a potentially deal-breaking confrontation down the road.

Invite the skeptics as well as the evangelists
You probably have people in your company who are champing at the bit to get you out on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the sites you haven't heard of yet. You probably also have people who aren't convinced this is more than a fad. Get both groups involved in the process. The evangelists will help the skeptics understand the business value they get from social media, and the skeptics will help the evangelists understand the pitfalls of rushing in unprepared.

Involve the practitioners, not just the rulemakers
You can't create useful social media policies if you don't use and understand the tools and the ways people communicate in social media. Rules made in a vacuum, without the knowledge of how people will apply them, will be ignored.

Decide how you'll deal with conflicting opinions and make decisions
Not everyone is going to agree on everything. This may just be a good meeting facilitation technique, but know in advance what you're going to do if you get a hung jury. Who gets the deciding vote? The CMO? The CIO? The CEO?

Include the do's as well as the don'ts
If all you do is tell people what they can't do, you'll send the message that social media is a risky activity that you'd frankly rather employees stayed away from. If, on the other hand, you want to encourage employees to spread your message and communicate with your customers and prospects, show them examples of effective ways to do that. Include best practices and specifics in your guidelines. Show them what a good tweet looks like, or an effective way to respond to a blog comment.

Make sure your policy reflects your company's personality
Every company has a different attitude toward communication and different levels of openness. If you're in a company that has traditionally been very close-mouthed and controlling, you might not want to suggest a radical departure as Step One. By the same token, if your company already has an open and informal style of interaction with customers and employees, make sure that's reflected in your policies. Also, of course, if you're in a highly-regulated industry or a publicly-traded company, you're going to have a different set of concerns.

Communicate your policy constantly in every avenue available to you
If your company has more than one employee, you already know that communicating anything company-wide can be a challenge. SAS has 11,000 employees at offices around the world, in different time zones and speaking different languages. One article on the company Intranet or one email "cascaded" down from the CMO can't possibly reach everyone. Use all the communication tools at your disposal to let people know about your policies. And make it an ongoing effort: Communicate your own best practices and social media success stories as you create them.

Lead by example
Nobody is an expert when it comes to social media. We're all making this up as we go along, and hopefully basing our activities on sound communications and marketing fundamentals. Even so, some employees will need to see how this all works in practice before they feel comfortable participating. Make sure you have visible members of your communications and marketing teams actively involved and showing the way. And highlight the positive efforts you see by others.

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About the Author: David B. Thomas is social media manager for SAS. He blogs at Conversations and Connections.