Corporate social media policy development has become increasingly important as organizations realize that social networking is more powerful in the hands of many than the hands of a few. 

In many cases, employees not serving in official spokesperson roles may, in fact, have more weight influencing corporate reputation than more conventional channels like public relations and marketing.

Rather than ask, "Should companies use social media?" organizations are asking "What is the most responsible, effective way for us to use social media and should we house a set of social media corporate guidelines so that everyone understands what the boundaries are for social media usage as employees?"

In this episode, we discuss many aspects of corporate social media policy, social networking policy, social media guidelines and best practices for social media policy development initiatives inside organizations.  

Our guest is Chris Boudreaux created a website that is no longer online to provide tools and resources to leaders and managers who want to get the most from their social media and social application investments.

Chris is a consultant who works with business and technology professionals to improve their marketing, sales and customer service capabilities through social media governance. 

He is a former product development and business transformation specialists, and a former United States Navy officer.  

This is a joint interview by Paul Gillin and me. We are collaborating on a book about B2B applications of social media communications titled "Social Marketing to the Business Customer.".

SHOW NOTES  

01:58 -- The business case for empowering employees to make smart decisions through social media policy.

03:34 -- How specific social media policies need to be.

05:06 -- Strategic approach to social media policy development.  

07:13 -- Just because a company is blocking access to social media sites from its network does not necessarily mean that that company is going to take longer to develop a social media policy.

If you are developing a social media policy for an organization, your first order of business is to understand why the company is blocking access, because it may be they are doing so because social media tools do not allow them to comply with laws or regulations.  

In the insurance industry, for example, many companies are simply on the lock down because the penalties for making mistakes are severe.

08:40 -- Organizations can and do turn on and off access to social media sites quickly, so don't assume that because a company may be blocking access to social media sites that they are in some way  going to take a longer to educate and bring up to speed over the course of a social media policy development initiative.

09:27 -- Organizational complexity, rather than an organization's size, has a bigger impact on how long it takes to develop a social media policy for organization.

The more business units there are, the variety of subcultures that exists, have the potential to exacerbate the development of a social media policy.

10:45 -- The concept of having more than one social media policy, the first being a broad policy that covers all employees in the latter being a more specific policy for employees focused on social media communications.

13:22 -- Just as no one department within the organization owns and polices all corporate policies, all managers responsible for a group within the organization that is using social media fo...