Gavin Baker

Last night I attended the Winter Panel put on by Social Media Club – Knoxville which was focused on social media liability, ethics and policy.  The featured panelists were Erin Donovan of WBIR, legal and marketing consultant Jeremy Floyd and Chad Parizman of Scripps Networks who did a great job representing a few perspectives on social media, and entertaining the crowd with funny quips. The evening covered a broad range of topics from the local liability story of The Pizza Kitchen (link to News Sent) to understanding the line where policy ends and ethics begin. If you missed the event checkout the tweets about the evening #smcknox.

One thing that wasn’t covered in depth that I wanted to shed some light on is the difference between policy and guidelines. Often the term “social media policy” is used to cover a document that is both policy and guidelines but they are very different documents and serve very different roles.  Moving forward in this post I’ll use the terms policy and guidelines to represent different pieces of that social media policy document.

When we talk about policy, we’re really talking about a document that is going to largely drafted by legal and HR professionals. It’s essentially about what employee’s SHOULDN’T do.While a very important piece of the puzzle if you’re a in marketing role this part of the document will seem very dry.  This document will detail who can can be a spokesperson for the brand utilizing these channels, what other policies they must adhere to in this sphere and the repercussions for not following the policy.  This document will read like a legal contract because, well it is.  Ultimately the role of part of the document is to protect the company, also known as CYA.

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One of the things I love to do is read.  I recently finished “Groundswell” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff which is a great resource.  It’s a very balanced look at social technology and what can happen when companies choose to adopt them.  I’m late to the party on reading this book, but it launched to great acclaim in 2008 – and I now understand why.

They’ve managed to find what I’m considering the perfect blend of background, statistics, how to’s, case studies and sage advice in 286 pages.  This is not a book about marketing, this is a book that shares it’s view on how social technology is changing (and will change) companies big and small as we’ve known them.  Most helpful to me were the case studies, examples are concrete and share the actions and results; additionally they serve as inspiration of how those ideas could be applied at the organizations I’m involved in.

The book isn’t about specific tools, it’s about understanding the relationships, and knowing that social tools enable relationships to form faster and become mighty much quicker then they would have 10 years ago.  Even since the book was written technology has changed and will continue to change – so the key takeaway is focus on the relationships, how people connect with one another and it will impact how you do business.

Oh and it had 32 stickies for me – if you’re looking for a book that is a one stop stop on social technology then this is it.

32 Stickies