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Posts Tagged ‘social media’

Employees and Social Media: Enable, Don’t Block

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

I recently had the opportunity to review a large organization’s social media policy. I can’t reveal the name, but I can say that it’s a large, well-known financial planning/insurance firm.

In a word, it was horrible. Why?

Let’s start by noting that it was clearly written by someone who has never used social media. How can you write a policy for employees if you’ve never used what you’re writing a policy about?

The policy prevents employees from using any medium other than the telephone to communicate with prospects. I spoke with one of the company employees, and she was understandably frustrated. She is in her 20s and is trying to build her portfolio with people like her. She calls, leaves messages, and her prospects ask her to send an email or a text. But company policy prevents her from communicating with her prospects in the way they prefer. How is that good for customer relations?

But there’s more. That was just the communication part of the policy. Now let’s get to the social media.

The list of what they can’t do was way longer than the list of what they can. Basically, what they can do through social media is suggest that a prospect/customer take a conversation off-line and post links to company-approved content.

Nope, they aren’t allowed to engage in a conversation. They can’t post links to public articles (like from the Wall Street Journal). They can’t even post links to articles that have NOTHING to do with financial planning. For example, posting a link to this blog (which never discusses financial content) is not allowed.

Social media is about sharing and engagement, and these employees are expressly forbidden from doing either.

What’s an employee to do? Simple. Either not use social media or use it on the sly and hope no one finds out.

Neither are good options for either the company or the employee.

How can you, as an employer, avoid writing stupidly limiting policies? Easy, first understand the media. Create a Facebook page or Twitter account and see what it’s about and how they are used.

Then do a real risk assessment. What’s the real risk of employees having conversations about products and services through social media? What kind of content would be truly damaging if it were shared?

Build policies around preventing the worst case scenarios. Leave everything else and trust your employees to be smart.

And if they aren’t? Use your guidelines and see how they work. If they don’t work, change them. Employee policies are living documents. Be open to changing them when needed.

But leave your social media policy open enough so your employees can use them without hiding. They are good ambassadors for your company. Let them speak.

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Tags: communication, social media
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Social Media Time Management

Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

People frequently ask me, “How much time do you spend on social media?”

It’s a fair question, but I’m not the best person to ask. Social media is part of what I do for my business, so I spend more time on it than the average business owner.

That said, I spend two hours or more each day on social media. But before you have heart failure, remember that I’m a blogger. We spend more time than average because we have to write our posts, and we probably read more blogs than non-bloggers.

So how do I do it? And what can you learn from me to help you?

Simple. It’s all in the tools and time management.

I don’t keep up with social media in one or two long blocks of time. I spread it out over the day with short blocks of time that fit between meetings or larger tasks.

For example, in the morning, I check Twitter and catch up on blog posts. Mostly, I do that from my phone, sometimes before I’ve even gotten out of bed. Very luxurious, I tell you.

I do most of my Twitter and Facebook interaction from my phone because I can be anywhere. Waiting on a meeting, waiting on a phone call, as a short break to clear my mind. Sometimes, like today, while I’m eating lunch.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might think I’m on it all day. But I’m not. I use scheduling on Hootsuite for iPhone to space out my tweets. That means I can do a 20 minute session and have tweets and RTs going out for the next couple of hours.

Twitter recently added a new feature, which has been great. Whenever I receive a Twitter @Mention, I get a text to my phone. So I can reply to those as they happen instead of a couple of times a day.

See why I love my smart phone so much?

What about blogging? I write each post the day before. Then in the morning, I just need to do a quick edit and publish. Again, I use Hootsuite to schedule the tweets about my blog. 7:00 AM isn’t a big time for US Twitter people, so I’d rather have the tweet go out in the late morning. Scheduling makes that happen. It also means I’m never sitting in the morning, staring at a blank screen, thinking, “What to write about today?”

As for reading blogs, I use Google Reader mostly. All the blogs I’m subscribed to all in one place. If I have a few minutes, I go to my Google Reader page and see what’s new. I also use an iPhone app, Byline, to check blogs on my phone.

So it’s all about using good tools and finding those few minutes a day when you can dip in, read some stuff and then get back out and on with your next task or meeting.

Anyone else want to share how they time manage social media?

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Tags: iPhone, social media, task management, time management
Posted in Time and Task Management | 4 Comments »

Posts Tagged ‘social media’

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