1. PR Practice #1: The PR Policymaker

Social media has uncovered the need for professionals to be more closely tied to policymaking, but in a capacity that’s different from that in the past. Companies realized not only did their customers want to talk about them in their social media communities, but their employees were also talking. As you may have guessed, the conversations weren’t always positive. Whether these organizations opened up the social channels willingly for active involvement or mistakenly shut them down to “protect” the brand, stakeholders were going to communicate...a lot! Regardless of an organization’s position on social media, employees like customers found ways to share information through new channels. For employees, it was either tied directly to their daily work activities and personal life, or a mixture of both.

In October 2011, 65% of U.S. companies had a social media policy in place, governing the employee use of social networking sites.¹ Suddenly, the role of the professional involved in developing the social media policymaker is front and center. The PR Policymaker is the professional who spearheads and guides the social media policy development process. A once less-known and vacant spot needs to be filled quickly. This was a wake-up call to many company executives. In some cases, it was the “Uh oh,” moment, and in other cases for the forward thinking, it was the “Ah ha” moment. Public relations professionals were right there, in either case, to lend assistance. For the latter, PR alerted company executives that there had to be some social governance for employee communication in the social landscape, and guidelines were also necessary to teach the public how to participate with the brand on various social properties.

Teaching people how to participate through social channels in not meant to stifle communication. On the contrary, PR professionals know policies are created to guide and protect all parties participating. The role of the PR Policymaker helps the company, its employees, and the public to join in conversations the right way and to engage with purpose, in a safe environment that’s created for learning and sharing. Kodak discusses this approach by stating in its policy “Maintaining a good reputation—yours and Kodak’s” and “Protecting your[s], and Kodak’s, privacy and resources,” referring to everyone who is active on the Kodak social media properties.²

The PR Policymaker practice must begin when you first develop your social media plan. Figure 1.1 shows the Social Media Strategy Wheel with the Audit/Discovery/Research portion of the process where policies need to be identified and fleshed out to create an environment that respects and protects all parties involved.

Figure 1.1. Social Media Strategy Wheel: PR Practice #1

What Are the Responsibilities of the PR Policymaker?

Stepping up to help champion the social media policy development process is a critical role in the organization; one well suited for the PR professional. From past experience, working with different companies and professionals, the PR Policymaker is responsible for four areas that help his team to build and communicate an effective policy, including the following:

• Getting ready for policy development

• Assembling a core social media team to assist in policymaking

• Doing the research and the policy writing process

• Communicating and measuring policy compliance

Getting Ready for Policy Development

When you prepare for the development process, a social media audit, or profile review, is the policy starting point. The audit is critical to the success of how you move forward. Although an “audit” typically refers to an outside third party who objectively reviews the social media profile information, in many cases you may not have the resources to call in a third party. Therefore, you must research and uncover the weak or potential areas of concern, with respect to communications on your brand’s social profiles (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and so on).

The social media audit is usually conducted to identify any challenges or problem areas within a brand’s current program, as well as to pinpoint genuine opportunities that have been working with respect to participation and engagement in the social media landscape. Similar to a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) exercise, the results enable you to work on your weaknesses and capitalize on your strengths. Then, you can move the best of your program forward, as part of your communications strategy.

During the audit, you identify and evaluate all the existing social media properties for the following:

• Type and size of community, where size may be used as a benchmark for growth over time.

• Brand guideline and usage of proper logo, colors, accepted imagery, and so on for social profiles.

• Engagement with stakeholders, rated on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being highly engaged in two-way, meaningful interactions. There is a difference between a brand that informs with news and articles and has a stream of information versus a brand that has discussions and high levels of engagement, answering questions and obtaining feedback about products and services.

• Strategy or purpose of the social profile, whether your social site is used for awareness, customer service, research, and crowdsourcing, and to drive people to the company’s website.

• Frequency of the conversations, which can be hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or the less frequent, sporadic sharing of information.

• Types of content shared, including links to news articles, blog posts, videos, photos, events, widgets, applications, and so on.

• Tracking and measurement used to evaluate the properties, which may include free tools and paid platforms, with charts and graphs for reporting analytics.

By analyzing all the information you retrieve in the audit, you can quickly see clear differences in your properties for brand guidelines, content usage, coordination of content, measurement not tying back to your objectives or goals, and whether your audience interacts with your brand, or each property is just another marketing channel with one way communication (which should not be the purpose of a social media channel). At the same time, you may also discover certain properties are outpacing others based on excellent sharing habits and the ability to offer information that touches on a community’s passion or critical issues. All the information in the audit will be the areas you address in your policy—for example, how your employees should use content and what is acceptable use, how to set up a strategic social media channel, proper account management, and following the standard brand guidelines, to name a few.

After you complete your social media audit, you may also want to use this intelligence as an opportunity to compare your findings against those of your competitors. It’s important to uncover and capture the same data and information on your direct competition to see their strengths and weaknesses in social media. You would use the identical approach to analyze whether their properties and brand voice are consistent, how frequently they post, and whether they engage on a higher level, more so than your company. You can tell immediately which competitors actually have a strategic approach to social media or if their thinking is tactical, piecemeal, and an unorganized, disjointed effort.

The PR Policymaker also capitalizes on the situation by using all the information from the audit to evaluate and fix what’s currently wrong with a social media program. It’s also an excellent way to recognize the positive aspects that may already be in place. You must update your social media plan every six months or yearly, and it’s vital to conduct your audit at the same time, so you can plan forward. You’re probably asking, “How am I supposed to audit 50 different Twitter handles, 30 Facebook pages, and 20 YouTube channels every time we develop a new plan?” For larger brands, it’s a cross-section of profiles reviewed by the policymakers, or you can break down the audit exercise and delegate to individuals in specific departments (under your direction). Prior to policy development, you may quickly find that many of these profiles are inactive and have gone “dark,” which means they have no activity at all. In the future, if you include a procedure for setting up profiles with a strategic purpose in your policy, it can prevent many of the inactive profiles from surfacing.

Assembling a Social Media Core Team to Assist in Policymaking

PR Policymakers don’t wait to be assigned the role. You must take initiative to introduce management formally to the team approach and a process that must be put into place for the organization. You need to work with senior management to determine what social media champions will be a part of the Social Media Core Team—a team of dedicated professionals who work together to create vision and strategy, as well as help with policy development. PR cannot build a social media policy in a vacuum.

When you build the Core Team, likely candidates include PR, Marketing, Web, and IT personnel; although there are times when Legal, HR, Sales, and other groups are asked to join the team at the onset. When you assemble your Core Team, you can set up dedicated times to meet and discuss policy development.

One of the first action items for the Core Team is to review the results of the social media profile audit and then to develop questions directly resulting from the audit. Highlighting the right questions can uncover important objectives, goals, liabilities, marketing needs, core areas of focus, and so on. Following are some important questions to ask before you dive into social media policy development:

• What are the objectives of a social media policy, keeping in mind different departments will have different objectives?

• What potential issues, risks, or liabilities did you uncover in your audit, and as a result, what areas need to be addressed in your policy?

• What are the main areas of focus that can help guide your employees and their participation?

• Do employees understand social media, or should there be education included in the policy?

• Who will be responsible to set up social media properties and the management of those brand profiles? Will this be done by department(s) or the central area, and does this information need to be documented in the policy?

• What are the concerns or issues from the various departments that need to be included? That is, is HR concerned about profile account information, or is Legal concerned about privacy issues and intellectual property issues?

• Should the policy include statements on an employee’s personal versus professional use of social media?

• What is the best way to share information with employees when you first introduce the policy, as well as when you need to share updates in the future?

• Who will maintain the policy and continually update it moving forward?

These questions and the policies you develop go far beyond the “Rules of Engagement,” which are the common ways companies instruct their employees to participate. Many companies devise Rules of Engagement to get their employees communicating via social channels quickly and with good common sense guidance. However, because of numerous employee lawsuits, your policies must go well beyond the fundamentals and be much less ambiguous than earlier policy work. The New York Times article in November 2010 documented one of the first legal battles in which an employee posted negatively about a supervisor and then was “unfairly” let go by the company. The National Labor Relations Board claimed that the employee’s rights were violated and that the company’s Facebook rule was “overly broad” and improperly limited employees’ rights to discuss working conditions among themselves. It is cases such as this one that make companies more aware of the importance of a well-written and unambiguous policy to better protect the rights of employees, as well as employers.³

Doing the Research and Policy Writing Process

Writing the social media policy for your organization may seem like a daunting task. The number-one question is where do you start? Many companies begin communicating in the social media landscape and then need to step back to build their policies. There are many different approaches, however. The following is an easy way to tackle the development of your social media guidelines:

• Select five or six strong social media policies that have been created by other organizations. Compare different types of policies, but be sure you find policies representative of your industry, nonprofit or government sector. One of the best sources for reviewing policies and social media governance is the website, www.socialmediagovernance.com, with more than 150 policies for review.

• Use the results of your social media profile audit to guide you in the policy writing. All the weaknesses you identified tell you which areas of focus need to be addressed in your policy; that is, branding guidelines, policy set up and account management process, Rules of Engagement, strategic purpose, legal concerns, and so on. These areas can help you develop a matrix approach comparing what you think you need versus what other similar companies develop and include in their policies.

• Create a matrix or Guidelines for Engagement that includes the five or six companies (listed in columns across your matrix) you select, and then list the various sections these organizations use in their social media policies. (Use the last column on the left side of your matrix to list these potential areas.) Select relevant parts from each, especially the guidelines that you feel pertain to activities within your organization, as well as other issues or concerns that look useful. Add this information to the weak areas uncovered in your audit, and list them all on the left side of the matrix.

• Now you can move through the matrix, from column to column (or company to company), marking “Yes” or “No” to determine whether a company has all the areas of focus that you have identified as important. Find similarities between what different organizations, in your industry, use in their guidelines.

• If you find a particular section or guideline is used by at least four of the six companies, that guideline should be highlighted as one that may appear in your policy. These highlighted sections are a “must include” in your policy. Then, you can go back to the other parts that are not highlighted to see which should be included because of their relevance to your organization’s social communication.

• From experience in doing this exercise, many of the popular social media policy sections include the following:

– An introduction to social media and details on the types of social media tools.

– The social media policy ties to a company’s Code of Ethics or Code of Conduct and other company policies.

– Potential legal concerns for the organization, including:

Consumer Protection Unfair Trading Regulation

Advertising Standards Authority

Intellectual Property (copyright and trademark)

Disclosure/Confidentiality

Defamation

Invasion of Privacy

– IT issues and mitigating network risks.

– Statement for employees or members of the organization on their participation (Representation, Responsibility, and Respect).⁴

– Rules for engagement with explanations—that is, be judicious, be transparent, stick to what you know, and so on.

– Responsibilities for the account management of social profiles.

– Emerging social media issues, including the following:

User-generated content

Branding guidelines and standards

Personal versus professional use of social media

The measurement of social media

Use the matrix comparison to build your own social media policy. This method can provide you with the infrastructure for your guidelines. Ultimately, your social media policy should be included in your overall communications policy for the organization.

Don’t wait for a legal issue or a social media crisis to occur before you begin your social media policy development. Get your policy framed out and continue with this same process as you become more involved in social media communications. Now that you’ve identified specific areas to develop in the social media policy, you can divide the development (writing) process with other members of the team. Remember, as the PR person, you don’t want to be writing the IT and social computing policy, or the policy that addresses legal concerns, intellectual property rights, and privacy laws.

As you write your policy, make sure you identify additional company policies that need to be incorporated into the social media policy. In many cases, the organization does not realize there are other company policies that need to be connected to a social media policy. These policies include IT policies for downloaded content and mitigating network risk; HR policies that govern privacy protection; and policies out of the marketing department about brand guidelines. Take a look at your existing organizational policies including your company handbook, and notice they can also help guide your employees with social media communications.

To promote a smooth and efficient writing process, keep the entire team up to date and working toward the goal of a final social media policy. Because you share information on a regular basis, the team should use a collaborative platform to make the process easier and to cut down on email. From Google Docs and Basecamp to sophisticated enterprise platforms such as SharePoint 2010 and IBM’s Enterprise 2.0, you learn more about internal collaboration and sharing in Chapter 2, “New Practice #2: The Internal Collaboration Generator.”

Communicating and Measuring Policy Compliance

By following the previous steps, you’re on your way to having a social media policy for your organization; however, you’re only halfway there. The other half of the equation is to think about how you’re going to roll out the policy for both the employees and the public, communicate the value, and then measure participation. For instance, Munroe Regional Medical Center in Ocala, Florida, developed an employee policy and a separate public policy instructing the Hospital’s constituents in web communities how to interact with them on Facebook and Twitter as well as several of their other social media sites.

According to Mike Robertson, VP of Strategic Planning and Marketing at Munroe Regional Medical Center, getting his Public Information Officer (PIO) to spearhead the process was the most efficient way to develop and introduce the new policy. “In understanding that a patient’s information is protected by Federal Law and e-mail addresses / social media engagements are public record under our own Florida Law, I was adamant that we would not participate in social media until we had both crafted a solid social media policy and developed a comprehensive communication and education process for sharing this policy. This responsibility was to fall on the shoulders of my PIO, whose experience in social media (with training from our consultant), public records, and communication made him the most qualified person for the job.”

Of course, the other critical part of the social media policy exercise was getting the hospital’s associates to read, understand, and then embrace the guidelines that were created. They realized quickly that writing the policy was only step 1. Step 2 included delivering and supporting the policy the right way, and step 3 focused on how to motivate and create action/compliance.

Following are a few ways to introduce and inspire employees to embrace the policies you put in place to guide them:

• Create the longer, more detailed policy, but also develop a two- or three-page summary that is a quick and easy way for them to understand the contents of the longer document.

• Build a presentation template so the policy is in an interactive format rather than a long Word document. For example, it could be a PowerPoint presentation or, better yet, a Flip Book for them to review.

• Design a quiz or quick way to evaluate if employees have read the guidelines and if they understand the contents. This quiz should be taken within a certain period of time so that the policy is read and understood before they engage in social communities (or continue with their previous social networking interactions).

• Create a survey to ask employees about their knowledge of social media (from Facebook and Twitter to Flickr and YouTube). Try to assess the areas of social media in which they may need tutorials and more instruction and training.

• Develop training classes (webinars or in-person training) to get your employees better acquainted with social media and make them feel more comfortable about their participation.

• Create a social newsletter and distribute it internally so all employees know what social outreach programs are currently in place, planned for the future, and also how employees can become more involved in social media.

• Launch an internal social platform that not only promotes your social media participation externally, but also allows employees to test social media, collaborate with peers, meet other members of the company, and allow them to be privy to ideas and innovation that they normally would not access, without an internal social media platform.

• Reward social media participation as a part of employee recognition or a rewards program. Employees will realize social media is accepted by the brand (there’s buy-in from leadership) and is a part of the culture of the company.

These are just a few ways you can work with your organization to introduce social media to other employees and have them not only reading the policy, but also wanting to engage and participate in new ways to benefit the company. Remember, writing the policy is only the first part. You need your employee evangelists to be willing participants and to be that unified voice or army of champions who support and add value to the brand’s social presence.

The last part of the PR Policymaker process is measuring the behavior and usage of the policy by asking for feedback through employee questionnaires, informal interviews, and polls, and by monitoring and evaluating employee internal participation and collaboration. If you allow your employees to collaborate and innovate internally, it may be through blogs and internal social computing that provide you with feedback. You can “listen” to employee conversations to determine how employees feel about social media, new polices, processes, and ways that they can be involved. Further, they’ll let you know their thoughts on the company’s efforts to make social media available, and in what ways policy compliance can be improved. Given the right forum, employees will tell you exactly what they want and need, and how they can be better champions to help the company achieve social media goals. Of course, all insightful feedback from employees should be included in updated versions of the policy.

There is no set process or book of rules on how your company develops its policy or who will guide the process. However, it usually takes a PR champion to get the initiative started, one who is a strategic communicator. As a strategic communicator, the practice of the PR Policymaker does not stop with the first round of development. In many organizations, Marketing and PR are responsible for maintaining and updating the policy every six months to a year and then working with different departments on implementation. A good social media policy reflects where and how the organization communicates and the constant social media growth in different communities. As a PR policymaker, you will keep a strategic focus, at all times, to create social guidance that protects and informs employees about their roles and unique participation.

An Interview with a Marketing, Advertising, and New Media Attorney

Kyle-Beth Hilfer (www.kbhilferlaw.com) has more than 20 years’ experience as an attorney specializing in advertising, marketing, promotions, intellectual property, and new media law. Ms. Hilfer routinely advises on all aspects of advertising, marketing, and direct mail campaigns. In the social and new media areas, she helps clients leverage social media platforms while protecting their brands and intellectual property. In particular, Ms. Hilfer counsels on such issues as managing employees in social media, running promotions, including sweepstakes, on social media platforms, user-generated content, e-commerce agreements, blogs, affiliate marketing, mobile marketing, testimonials and endorsements in cyberspace, and email marketing.

As an expert on social media law, advertising law, and intellectual property law issues, the media quotes Ms. Hilfer often. She answered a few questions regarding companies and their development of social media policies, offering advice to PR professionals who are involved in the process.

Q: Is there specific legal language that can help protect both employers and employees with respect to their right to free speech via social media?

A: It’s difficult to answer this question specifically. However, I can tell you this: Corporate social media policies should emphasize to employees, both orally and in writing, that employees are still free to exercise their Section 7 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protected rights. In addition, a well-written policy enunciates its purpose and intent.

Q: Do all companies follow the guidelines of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) or are these guidelines only for union employees?

A: It is a misconception the NLRB investigates only companies that work with unionized employees or to employee attempts to unionize. In fact, the NLRB enforces the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) against a much broader set of unfair labor practices. Section 7 of the NLRA invests employees with the right to engage in concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection. The NLRB has examined many social media cases to evaluate whether employees are acting for their “mutual aid or protection,” regardless of a union or lack of union environment. Accordingly, the Board has examined whether 1) employers improperly terminated or disciplined employees because of social media posts that were really a “water cooler” discussion of workplace conditions or 2) employers maintain overbroad policies that unduly restrict its employees’ use of social media.

Q: What types of comments on Facebook and Twitter are protected by an employee’s First Amendment rights? At what point can an employer reprimand an employee for their comments?

A: The First Amendment obviously protects free speech, but the brands have control over commercial free speech on behalf of the company. If employees are speaking on behalf of a company, they should abide by company standards. The difficult question is when they are speaking on behalf of the company. Certainly, on a brand’s social media pages, the employee is functioning as a spokesperson. The inquiry is murkier and requires a fact specific analysis on personal pages.

The competing interest with free speech is employers’ right to hire and fire. They also have the right to discipline for activity that violates corporate policies. In deciding whether to reprimand or fire, employers should remember that many of the “social media specialists” have a different generational interpretation of privacy from older employees. Companies need to train their employees about their expectations. At the same time, as case law emerges in this area, we will see if young law clerks have sway over the judges for whom they research and write opinions. As court cases create meaningful precedents, brands should watch for subtle shifts in societal norms to see if they permeate the decisions. As a second issue, employers must consider the PR fallout from firing. Companies must balance their legal rights with the impact of enforcement on their reputations. There are many examples of social media firings that the public has decried openly.

Q: When is the best time for a company to involve a lawyer or legal counsel in social media policy development?

A: Early! Engage specialized legal counsel from the start in developing social media policies and strategies. By specialized, I mean an attorney with depth of experience in social media and advertising law. If a company uses internal general counsel, it may be necessary to retain outside counsel with this expertise.

Legal should sit at the table with the rest of the team: HR, PR, Marketing, and IT. The team should collectively plan a brand’s social media policies for its people and its intellectual property. Legal needs to be involved to help ensure these policies afford sufficient protection and are consistent with preexisting guidelines for social interaction, email, confidential information, and intellectual property protection.

In addition, legal counsel will determine if the policies match a brand’s corporate culture and help promote any marketing strategies the brand wants to implement. For example, does it want to invite user-generated content onto the social media pages? If so, how will it vet the content before posting? How will it monitor responses to the content? How swiftly should it respond to content or remove it? As a company rolls out into the social media space, it may initiate a prize promotion or a branded loyalty program. Perhaps it will use geo-location technology to enable behavioral marketing. It is imperative that legal be involved early in these discussions to assist in strategy planning with legal paradigms in mind. Counsel should support a company’s business goals and help create meaningful programs with minimal legal risk.

Q: What overall advice do you have for PR professionals who are developing social media policies for their organizations?

A: With the advent of social media, PR has become less about speaking on behalf of the company and managing crises and more about influencing what others are saying about the company. As such, PR professionals not only have to identify who speaks on behalf of the company, but also devise goals for the spokesperson’s speech. Remember that PR professionals are no longer talking just to the media, although this remains a crucial part of their job. They are also speaking to consumers and customers. Different social media platforms may require different kind of content to influence the social conversation. Unique situations may arise that require special handling. PR professionals always need to be clear about their organization’s marketing strategies, legal positions, and brand image. In short, working in social media requires PR professionals to be informed on all fronts and be willing to function as team players in presenting their organizations to the public and responding to public comments. PR managers should have close relationships with the legal team so crises are handled not only from a reputation perspective, but also keeping in mind legal positions and strategies. Effective PR in the age of social media requires a multidisciplinary approach, accompanied by consistent training of and communication with all members of the team.

Social Media Policy Checklist

Before you dive in to write your organization’s social media policy, make sure you do the following:

Get buy-in from your executives.

Assemble your Core Team for policy development and social media strategy.

Audit your social media properties to identify strengths and weaknesses.

Ask the right questions prior to writing the policy.

Address what objectives need to be set in place for different departments in the organization. (Social media doesn’t work in a vacuum.)

Be prepared to divide the writing responsibilities—don’t try to do it all alone.

Set up an internal sharing system to collaborate with your Social Media Core Team.

Set concrete deadlines for your policy so that the process doesn’t take years to complete.

Be prepared to communicate the policy and support it moving forward.

Inform the team that there will be future planning sessions moving forward to re-evaluate your policy, as social media changes over time.