Who controls your social media policy?

The CIO Jury offers an interesting post: Should the CIO be in charge?

As the use of social media - including Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook - grows, organisations are becoming increasingly aware of the potential risks posed by the use of such sites.

With companies' reputations and corporate secrets potentially put at risk by thoughtless tweets or other postings by employees, businesses are putting in place policies setting out recommendations for how staff use social media...

Therein lies the rub, as they say. Top-down, command and control, structures are being upended by...bottoms-up, collaborations and conversations, made possible in real-time with resources (technological and people) outside the control of the corporation. Neither one rubs the other the right way.

For many organizations becoming increasingly aware of the potential risks there are three surprises:

Surprise 1:

Employees, partners, stakeholders, vendors, shareholders, executives (yes...executives can be thoughtless, too) are talking about ‘their’ company, and have been talking about their company, in their own words, unscripted, spontaneous.

Surprise 2:

Their conversations are not always the glowing conversations heard in the corporate hallways. Sometimes they are.

Surprise 3:

You cannot run. You cannot even hide.

For many companies, then the only option is to forbid the use of all social media or in polite company...create policies setting out recommendations for how staff should use social media.

Shoot the messsenger. Fire the employee if they fail to comply with ...recommended use of social media.

The media is the message. And if we control, er recommend how the media is to be use, then we control the message. Problem solved.

Not really.

1. You’re too late. Forbidding or recommending the proper use of social media is like shutting the barn after the cows are out...the chickens, roosters, pigs, combines, trucks, tools, winter feed, hay...everything. (I live in a rural community; I use rural analogies.)

Stakeholders have been talking about their experiences with their work since 3 people were on this earth and two of them worked together.

The majority* are using social media with no need for your permission. That includes gossip in the workplace, talk at home with friends-family-colleagues, email (personal or work), telephone, letters, chat, IM...

What you should really be worrying about are those in your organization:

• not talking about how they spend the majority of their waking hours.

• not using social media.

2. Their conversations are a mirror for you and a megaphone to the world. What's shared, what's rubbing companies the wrong way, is:

3. You create the message they share. You give them the story, every day in every way, they share with their friends and the world. Sure, they bear responsibility for what they say. But you insist on total control of what they do, how they do and when they do.

Turn this upside down:

Create a story together worth sharing. Trashing a workday on twitter, facebook, youtube...boring. It’s passe’. Been there, seen that.

Why not instead create a story together worth sharing? Why not engage and inspire all stakeholders to create an inspiring story from their collaboration? A. you get a better ROI for your investment; B. that story has legs. that story is different. That story is a purple cow.

Give content to share. The authors David Meerman Scott and Seth Godin are huge advocates for giving away their content. As a result, their book sales are huge.

Correct. David and Seth are excellent authors who include their readers n their story and as a result have a huge audience of fans who volunteer with their tweets and blog posts to promote the works of David and Seth. No policy required.

Correct. You are not a book producer. However, you do create stories. Create ones worth sharing, include some content to add with their stories and...who knows? Maybe you won't need a policy and you have a huge audience of fans, aka, customers.

Encourage them to talk to strangers. We’re adults now. As children we’re taught to not talk to strangers. But in a global marketplace, strangers are where the ideas and resources are to grow their brand. Encourage them to talk to strangers.

When you create a story together worth sharing you also created a brand worth owning. Ownership encourages proper decisions, inspires great conversation, brings more discretionary effort, generates a better ROI. At the very least you won't need wardens to keep the employees in line.