Social Media Best Practices: Corporate Charter, Governance, and Polices and Procedures

Social media is being quickly adopted by many large corporate companies, and some are diving in head first into the pool without properly analyzing their social media strategies and requirements, staff abilities, or the legalities of social media. The corporate landscape is littered with false starts, miss-steps, and missed opportunities, as some companies just open the floodgates and let each business unit independently develop multiple social media channels, and messaging standards ranging from professional to flat out juvenile. Unfortunately it’s not the professional messages that get all the attention, it’s the faux pas that become infamous, including spelling and grammar mistakes, flaming messages, poor branding, or indifference to customer issues.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, as there are cost effective ways to implement back social media governance rules, and there are some great on-line resources and examples, which can help you get started.

Like any traditional communication methodology, there are rules and governance put in place to prevent a wide range of messaging mistakes from ever seeing the light of day, and negatively affecting a companies brand. One of the key rules for any company getting into social media, or repairing the damage from a false start, is to pull back and centralize the governance of social media. Typically the governance of social media messaging, or PR and Marketing, is put into the hands of professional marketing and communication experts.

I have written social media charters, governance, and policies and procedures for two large Canadian companies, TVCogeco and MCAP Service Corp, and have worked closely with their executive teams to build a tangible social media charter. I have also written scaled back polices and procedures for smaller companies, and in my experience these policies and procedures are an important part of communication (PR), legal, and HR methodologies to reach out to the stake-holders. Policies and procedures are absolutely critical for regulated industries, and this management process should be centrally governed to start, and only when the organization is comfortable with their grasp of social media can they move to a more decentralized model, such as Hub and Spoke (see the diagram below).



But policies and procedures are just part of the overall social media corporate charter and governance that should be analyzed and put in place before a small, medium or large organization starts using social media channels for the PR and Marketing, sales, or customer feedback. A standard social media corporate charter would include detailed mandates for the following areas:
1) Corporate social media goals, strategies, and tactics (short, mid and long term), divided into primary and secondary
2) Social Media PR and Marketing strategies and tactics to leverage the corporate mandate
3) SWOT and identifying the target demographic
4) Executive and management support mandates
5) Staff and business unit involvement and feedback
6) SEO/SEM/SMM integrated methodologies
7) Measurements of Success and ROI (Cost reductions on PR and Marketing)
8) Social media analytics from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google
9) Social media models: Conversion, engagement, feedback, viral messaging, retention, collaboration, and sharing
10) Traffic and Distribution through syndication, links, email, key influencers, partners, and SEO/SEM
11) Social media advertising
12) Resources, daily maintenance and operations
13) Social media resources, education and training
14) Best practices, quick guides, and widgets, tools and services for managing social media
15) Continuous social media review and experimentation: Mobile integration, Foursquare, geo-location, real-time analytics, QR codes

Social media policies and procedures goes well beyond messaging governance, and should cover the following areas:
1) Define social media: Explain to your staff what constitutes social media
2) Define acceptable social media channels
3) Content ownership
4) Developing social media content, including workflow processes (helps avoid spelling, grammar and broken link issues)
5) Escalation process processes (disaster)
6) Roles and responsibilities
7) Privacy rights
8) Management of social media
9) Three R’s of Social Media Engagement
10) Social Media Engagement for Business Purposes
11) Rules for Employee Participation in Social Media
12) Disclaimers and Disclosures
13) Social Media Topics and Content (Acceptable and Taboo)
14) Deleting content
15) Suspending or Deleting a Users Account
16) Legal and HR audit processes
17) Monitor the Social Media Conversation

If you would like more information on analyzing, developing, deploying and maintaining your corporate social media strategies, and integrated Social Media PR and marketing campaigns, please contact Steve Cohen at (905) 330-3570, stevecohen@electriceffect.com, or visit the Electric Effect web site at http://www.electriceffect.com