According to a recent survey by Deloitte Financial Services, 84% of business leaders say that companies should have a social media policy in place, yet only 35% of those surveyed actually do.

Whether you’re a small start-up venture, a nonprofit agency or a large established company, if you’re using social media as part of your marketing efforts, you really should have a policy guiding its use.

First and foremost, determine who should “own” the development and deployment of your company’s social media tools.
In a sole proprietorship, the owner of the company would be the owner of the social media platform. In a larger company, a team approach, with representatives from marketing, technology and even legal services, might be the best solution.

Create a social media policy.
It need not be complicated. Your social media should provide guidance on the following:

• What is the main objective of using social media in your business, and who are your main audiences? What kind of information do you wish to convey via your social media platform?
• Who in your company has the authority to access and modify your social media tools? Who must approve new content that is posted? (Note: This is particularly important if you are a small business working with a vendor or a consultant on your social media tools. Can the vendor post information on your behalf? Or, must a company representative do it instead?)
• How often will you post news and updates to your blog, web site, Facebook, Twitter and the like?
• If you have employees, what are they allowed to post about your company? Are they to adhere to a confidentiality agreement? Must they seek company approval before posting information to the company’s social media tools? If they post to their personal social media tools, must they include a disclaimer?
• Who in the company will monitor the company’s social media tools? How will inappropriate content be dealt with?

Communicate the policy.
Let your employees, your subcontractors and even, as appropriate, your trusted vendors know about your social media policy. Consider including your social media policy as part of your new employee orientation, and include it in your company policy handbook.  

Review the policy regularly.
Don’t just announce the social media policy once and assume you are done. To incorporate your social media policy into your company’s culture, be sure to communicate frequently. Some firms circulate their social media policy quarterly, as a “friendly reminder.” Also keep in mind that social media itself is rapidly changing as new innovations are brought to market. Your social media policy should be kept current to reflect the changing landscape.

If you would like help developing a social media policy for your business, or if you have questions about social media policies in general, please contact Jennifer or Brian at Social Media 1-2-3.

I was at the Pentagon this morning, whiling away 90 minutes or so while waiting for my husband to cross the finish line the annual Army 10-Miler race. There is something about being surrounded by so many military personnel—from active duty soldiers screening spectators at the entry points to wounded war veterans running in the race with prosthetic limbs to ROTC volunteers manning the booths and tents—that makes me remember how well things can operate, and how good the results can be, with a little discipline.

Even the Army ROTC's balloon soldier was disciplined today.

There are many aspects of our lives that would certainly benefit from a renewed focus discipline—eating well and exercising are the obvious ones—but, yes, this even applies to managing social media efforts. Just like there is little to be gained from exercising only once a quarter, or eating vegetables only on Mondays, a scattershot approach to managing your social media initiatives will only get you so far.

How do you know if you might benefit from a little more discipline? Consider the following:

• Do you have good intentions but just can’t seem to update your social media sites with any regularity? Or have many good ideas but just don’t know where to start?
• Do you run out of time in your business day or your work week before you can even think about spending time on your social media efforts?
• Does social media feel more like a chore than a joy?
• Do you have the will, but not the way? In other words, do you have great ideas and intentions but find it too hard to get organized to actually put your ideas into motion?

If you answered “yes” to any of the above questions, you would probably benefit from harnessing some discipline for your social media efforts by following these few simple tips:

• Be realistic. Determine the amount of time you are willing to spend on social media each week (writing content, responding to messages, making updates, performing technology maintenance) and then develop a strategy from there.  When it doubt, start small. It’s better to have one social media tool that is reliable and robust than many tools that are skimpy and ineffective.
• Have a “retreat” with yourself and commit your ideas to paper. It’s hard to be creative when the phone is ringing and you’re dealing with one fire drill after another. It sounds counterintuitive, but discipline yourself to find the time to be creative and to think big and boldly. To help you capture your ideas and dreams, set aside a couple hours on a designated day, go somewhere that ignites your creative spirit (such as a funky coffee house or the local library) and just brainstorm. (Note: Remember that in brainstorming, no idea is a bad idea. You can decide later what ideas to pursue and which ones to set aside.)
• Keep a calendar. Once you have decided what ideas you want to bring to your social media efforts, then commit these ideas to your calendar. Will you update your business’s blog daily? Once a week? Plot the deadlines into your calendar so you won’t forget. If you use Outlook, set the “Reminder” feature a few days in advance so you will receive a friendly reminder that the deadline is coming.
• Call in the pros. If the reality of your schedule is that you just can’t keep up with your social media plans, or if doing so is taking time away from the revenue-generating activities that are critical to your business, don’t hesitate to outsource to a reliable company. Be sure your vendor has done this kind of work before, and ask to see samples of their work so you know what you are getting.
• Re-evaluate. Periodically, schedule time to re-evaluate the success of your social media tools, your progress, and your system. Are your social media tools doing what you need them to do for you? Make any tweaks you deem necessary, and consider it a “continuous improvement” environment.

  — Jennifer Krempin Bridgman (c) 2009

For more information about bringing discipline to your social media efforts, or to discuss a project, contact Social Media 1-2-3 at Jennifer@socialmedia123.org or brian@socialmedia123.org, or visit us at www.socialmedia123.org.

The only place where clutter is "art" is at MoMA. Don't try this at home!

While taking a stroll in our neighborhood earlier today, I was surprised to see a chest of drawers and a butcher-block island on wheels stacked up outside a townhouse on our block.

A handwritten note was taped to the unit’s front door: “Furniture sale. More furniture inside!”

My husband shook his head and said, “We certainly don’t need any more furniture!” and we chuckled and continued on our way.

In our culture, we just can’t seem to avoid clutter. (Just stop by Goodwill on any given Saturday and observe the heaps of bags and gadgets and gear being unloaded by well-meaning donors.) It’s enough to make a person overwhelmed—and maybe even a little crazy.

Unfortunately, clutter isn’t just for physical objects—It’s taking over our intellectual space as well. There’s probably little we can do to stop the proliferation of junk, especially all over our cyber airwaves, but there are a few steps you can take today to ensure that your social media tools are consistently providing value, and not perpetuating junk, to your readers:

Before you publish an article or an update, ask yourself: “Will someone actually care about this?” and then take it a step further and challenge yourself to identify, specifically, “who?”
Keep it short and simple, and ask someone else to read it before you post it to make sure it is actually achieving the goals you want.

Make it easy for your readers to understand what you want them to do.
Are you providing information that you want them to react to? Is it purely informational? Are you simply sharing an entertaining story to add a little levity? Be clear about what action you want your reader to do next.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Take a lesson from rookie linebacker Robert Henson of the Washington Redskins, who has played exactly zero minutes in the NFL—ever—and yet felt compelled to issue a string of “tweets” raging at fans for criticizing the team’s horrible season, calling them “dim wits” and waxing on that “The question is who are you to say you know what’s best for the team and you work 9 to 5 at Mcdonalds.” (Let’s be honest: The typos in his barrage of messages also didn’t help his cause.)

It’s tempting to hop on Facebook, Twitter or other tools to fire off a missive in the heat of the moment, but don’t. Just plain old don’t. It makes you look stupid and, frankly, there is enough of that out there as it is.

Be judicious about how much information you’re pumping out.
Social media offers great tools that run 24/7 – but that doesn’t mean that more is necessarily better. Most readers prefer quality over quantity. When you issue information, be judicious and always make it count.

And, if you doubt for even a second that the content you’re pushing out might be “junk,” take a cue from my neighbor with the yard sale— and purge, purge, purge!

For more information about curing clutter in your business’s social media efforts, or to discuss a project, contact us at Jennifer@socialmedia123.org or brian@socialmedia123.org, or visit us at www.socialmedia123.org.