What's Driving Your Social Media Policies?

In a post on his blog, Mitch Hurst, communications consultant and Network board member, offers some thoughts about social media policies for foundations.  Hurst says that these policies sometimes become "guardrails" that "exist partly to keep you from driving your career off a cliff."  Hurst believes a better approach to creating a "decent organizational social media policy is finding the right balance between minimizing risk and maximizing opportunity."

For instance, he argues that instead of creating a set of restrictions, such as forbidding what words staff "can use in a tweet," Hurst says employees should be trusted to do these four things:

• Associate their social media page with their employer if a significant amount of the links or content they're posting is related to their professional obligations;
• Note prominently in their profiles that their views don't necessarily reflect the views of their employer;
• Not post stuff that's going to land them in the society section of the local newspaper; or the police blotter;
• Fan, friend, follow, etc. your organization's social media pages. The price for playing.

You can read the full post here.

--Bruce Trachtenberg