Net policy or social media policy? I hear both of these terms being thrown about as if they were interchangeable. There is a difference. There should be a difference. The main distinction is the focus on what employees can do in the web world, rather than what they can’t. An internet policy typically outlines employee internet use during work hours—and consequently the monitoring of that use. A social media policy governs the individual interactions of your employees in the social sphere—as it relates to your brand—and can be much harder to monitor once an employee has clocked out and is operating in their own time.
There is a certain amount of trust, respect and responsibility that must accompany your employees when they venture out into the social web as a walking, talking, breathing, blogging extension of your brand. Implementing a social policy—more like guidelines really—that impart the tremendous amount of social responsibility is imperative so that nobody ends up dooced.
I’ve been following Google’s launch of Google+ Pages for brands with some anxiety. I envisioned Social Marketers everywhere flocking to Google+ and spamming my circles with brand promotions.
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