Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

I am fascinated by social media guidelines. The whole process of getting the stakeholders around the table to discuss strategies for creating a document that usually makes employees cringe or rejoice is a challenge I welcome. The conversations that ensue are thrilling, and the fears that are uncovered can be real and raw.

The social media purists might say that the fears are unjustified, and in some cases they may be. But I can't tell my four-year-old that her fears of a monster coming out of her closet while she's asleep are unjustified when they are real to her.

What I can do is discuss her fears, try to understand the root of those fears and work to understand her pain point so that I can make it better by talking her through it. 

I spent some time reading through the BBC's new social networking policy today and their fears are evident. But there's nothing wrong with that. They've clearly identified those fears, thought through the process and put together a document that will guide employees on how they should conduct themselves across social networks.

I am sure there will be critical blogposts about this new policy. Remember the shredding ESPN recieved across the twitterverse and blogoshpere when it released it's socail media guidelines last year? They even issued a response to the criticism.

But back to the BBC....One thing I found very interesting is what they call their "Linking Strategy, whcih states that links should be editorially justifiable. I agree with that as a former news manager. They have their credibility to portect and what they're saying is if they're going to provide a link, it needs to make sense and add value to the content.

I also found another passage rather interesting. It characterizes on-air mentions of social networks. It seems that the BBC won't go on and on about their Twitter accounts or their Facebook pages without good reason, like CNN does.

(This is not to bash CNN but there is a constant scroll of twitter handles on the bottom of the screen, and Rick Sanchez lives by Twitter on his news program.)

So they've put a lot of thought into what level of importance social media willl play in their editorial content, and that should be applauded. I think that employers owe their employees guidance in this area.

Does your company have social media guidelines? And what do those guidelines say about the company?     

Active social media monitoring can keep you in the know about what consumers think of your brand. When done effectively, it allows you to spot fires in the making and work on putting them out before they reach three-alarm status. It also provides great opportunities to connect directly with customers, potential customers and brand enthusiasts in real-time which can breed a great deal of brand loyalty.

But yours isn't the only brand you should monitor.

The widespread use of social media coupled with a good listening strategy makes it very easy to keep an eye on your competitors, and you should be watching them like a hawk. Now, before you write off this tactic as "stalking," allow me to illustrate its effectiveness: Let's say you work for a TV station in a medium-sized market where the top three affiliates are very close in the ratings. If you follow the competitor's interactions with viewers and actively monitor their brand you might be able to glean all kinds of helpful information.

Consider this: That exclusive interview that Station X just landed is no longer exclusive when the interviewee announces to his or her twitter followers that they just did a 20 minute interview with said station and can't wait until it airs next week. If you're lucky, someone will likely inquire further about the topic and the interviewee will spill the beans all over the Twitterverse. They may also spread the word in their blog or via Facebook. After all, an interview with a news reporter is just too juicy and self-aggrandizing for most people to keep it out of their social media status updates.

But this isn't just a tactic for TV stations. Any company or organization can find out what's being said about their competition and use it to their advantage if they simply start listening. If Comcast sees a ton of gripes about Time Warner Cable in a market where they compete directly, they can literally go in for the kill if they can sell their services as superior or offer a better deal and maybe make a conversion in the process.

This is not small potatoes when every customer counts.

I posted a blog last summer about a bad experience I had at a hotel that did not want to honor the deal Orbitz gave me for booking my travel through their site. I heard from a competitor a few hours after my blog post was published encouraging me to use their site in the future. They were clearly monitoring mentions of Orbitz in the social media space. The good thing is Orbitz monitors its own brand and they contacted me first, apologized and gave me $50 off my next booking. But, if Orbitz had not responded, I certainly would have gone to that competitor. And if nothing else, they put themselves on my radar, and that's a good thing for that competitor. There are many ways to use social media for business and they go well beyond what you've grown accustomed to hearing. We'll explore many more in the near future.

So bookmark this blog if you haven't already. We've got a lot to talk about.