Katrina Klier's Blog

Companies are always on the lookout for simpler ways to explain social media guidelines to employees. Scenario guidelines connected to people’s role or jobs tend to be the most helpful.  Here is a simple model that can be leveraged for any size organization and add clarity to help employees participate well in social media as it connects to your PR strategy.

The model is four simple questions: Who can make news? Who can break news? Who can share news? Who can consume news?

Who can make news? Who can break news?

Technically anyone in your organization can make news. The news may be good or bad. People are human so you’ll end up with a mix of both. But it is important for employees to understand that while they may make news as part of their job, most of the time it is the official company channels that will break the news unless agreed to in advance.

Let’s look at common examples:

You lead an account team and you’ve worked your you-know-what off for months to close a huge deal. You brought in the big fish and are doing the happy quota dance – you’ve made news. But you should not take to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other places with this news. Deal announcements and positioning with quotes as appropriate are best handled by the PR team. So while you’ve made news, it is not yours to break in this case. 

On the other hand, you signed up to keynote a major conference on behalf of your company. The PR team has been involved from the beginning and you’re good to go. You do a fantastic job and are riding high as you walk off stage. You tweet from your phone how much you enjoyed the opportunity to speak and the crowd’s support – you made news in your presentation by being on stage, but in this case it is ok to “break” news that you delivered this presentation and thank people via your personal social media handle. Why? Because you involved PR in advance and this is a way to personally thank those who listened to you. You should not however, take to Twitter that you had an awful experience or criticize the crowd lest you set off a firestorm of comments.

Who can share news?

You want to empower all your employees to share positive news. So again, anyone may be able to share news, the trick is WHICH news. Providing guidelines for employees to share news that comes via official corporate channels is a great strategy. They need to know what and where these official channels are – be explicit in this and don’t assume they’ll just find the right ones. You can also arm them with pre-approved, PR sanctioned, socially shareable comments in advance of some news like product launches, events, corporate anniversaries, etc.

Employees do need to know that they should not share news that relates to the day to day activities of their job, things they overheard or were said in meetings and that confidential information is off limits period. Everyone in PR and executives in general cringed at the HMV Layoff Tweet-Fest and subsequent fall-out. It’s a reminder that in particularly tense moments like substantial layoffs or with really big, positive internal news announcements – like you’re company is being acquired and everyone will make a fortune as part of the deal – people will have an immediate emotional reaction and may, without thinking, turn to social media for a release. Before such moments, preface your conversation by saying that the following meeting, announcement, etc. is not appropriate for social media per your company guidelines (all the more reason you need to get these written and review them on a regular basis). And let them know that your official PR channels will handle the news announcements and they should refer inquiries to PR.

For big emotional news (layoffs are a very common one), recommend other releases for employees – have counselors at the ready to discuss; recommend they take the rest of the day off to be with their family; offer to call someone to pick them up; etc. When you rock someone’s world, you can’t expect them to behave as if nothing has happened so help them through it in a way that is positive for all involved. 

With as much preparation as possible, you will still have a problem at some point. This is not an “if” question. This is a “when” question. So always have the critical response digital team at the ready in advance of such announcements. Real time monitoring and response strategy will make or break your brand. 

Who can consume news?

This is anyone in the world with social media. Never before has the world’s real time information been so readily available to anyone, anywhere, all the time. This is important to keep in mind and also to remind your employees that this is true. Social media can be deceiving… you can be alone on your phone tweeting away without realizing that you’re suddenly trending. A PR disaster is one tweet, one share or one click away. So remind employees to consume news with a grain of salt and to remember that anyone and everyone can be listening – and they usually are.

Scenarios with real examples from your business are the best ways to help employees understand…

Who can make news?

Who can break news?

Who can share news?

Who can (and will) consume news?

Simple, straightforward, empowering… these are the cornerstones of good social media guidelines.

How often do you interact either in person or on the phone with everyone you know at the same time?

Think about it for a minute… If you are like most people, your answer is “not often” or “never”. But regardless of frequency, you think about who you are calling and what you will say before making a phone call. You plan a face-to-face meeting from topics to locations to attendees to what you will wear all ahead of time. You know exactly how you “show up” in the real world of face to face meetings and phone calls.

But what about the virtual world? Where and how do you show up? Do you know? Can you describe the Virtual You? People who may not yet know you in person will form full opinions about you – who you are, what you can do, if they want to have any connection with you – all from what they see about you online. To them the Virtual You is the Real You.

Give it a try. Google, Bing or Yahoo! your name. What comes up? This is what people will see and know about your first… before they ever meet you in person. Is this the virtual you that you want people to know? Maybe the answer is yes or no, but either way you owe it to yourself to guide this virtual you in the direction you want. You are the only person who has to live your life so give yourself the best opportunity and marketing plan possible. Make the Virtual You an accurate and good reflection of the Real You.

Now you are thinking “Great, so how exactly does one do this? How do I make the virtual me the best reflection of the in-person, real me possible?” The good news is with some simple steps you can make major progress whether you are a seasoned online guru or a novice.

Remember that your virtual world includes all the same facets of you as your real world. We all have professional, social and hobby or special interest parts of us.  Every day you directly interact with people in the real world as part of your professional life, social life and hobbies. Professional communities and company websites are all online. Social media is everywhere. Each of us has hobbies or other interests that appear in blogs, organization websites and so on. Your church, photography club, coupon clipping group, etc. will all have either an online presence of their own or a group of people who gravitate toward each other as like-minded people online.

Most people’s lives spread across these three areas – professional, social, interests – so you need to decide if you want the virtual you to balance across them or focus in one particular area.

Here are a few simple steps to get you going:

1. Make a list – 3 columns with Professional, Social, Interests at the top.
2. Write a quick sentence or two as to what you want the virtual you to represent in these categories.
3. List the organizations the real you belongs to or participates in
4. List the online organizations you participate in

This exercise will give you a view into your goals, the audiences you want to reach and how you are reaching them today. Here’s an example exert from my list:

Thinking through the people or audiences you want to reach is the most critical step in this process. Do the people you want to connect with fall in to the professional, social or interests part of your life? Do any them belong in more than one category? A long time colleague from work who has become a close friend over time or a great friend from college that you now work with are a good examples.

Why is this so important? Well think about the real world for a moment. You would not invite your mother, your high school BFF, your boss, a prospective employer, your girlfriends / guy friends and your child’s teacher all to your house for dinner at the same time would you? Of course not. So why would you mix all those audiences in the virtual world?

Not thinking through audiences early is what gets most people in to trouble in the virtual world and in social media in particular. We have all read the stories of people fired for Facebook comments and there are likely countless other missed opportunities or missed promotions because of bad audience mixing that never make the news. Do not leave it to chance. Having a plan for the virtual you improves your chances of success dramatically.

Now that you have your list, you can sort through your connections in each of the online communities where you are active. Sort people into the appropriate part of your life and if needed, reconnect with them in the new and more appropriate way. Do not worry about ruffling anyone’s feathers. If someone asks, for example, why you un-friended them on Facebook but sent them an invite from LinkedIn simply say you value the professional connection with them and wanted to make sure the way you stay in touch best supports that connection.

Then you can add some humor if people push back. Humor always makes people back off. Here’s one I’ve used: “I so much enjoy talking to you about channel marketing opportunities, but I thought I’d spare you the Facebook pictures and commentary of my gourmet cooking escapades. So I moved our connection to a better venue for dialogue that helps both of us and cuts down on the noise for you.” Trust me, it works. I have used exactly that reply myself with a corporate recruiter who wanted to friend me on Facebook after a couple phone calls. We now connect regularly on LinkedIn and I have sent several referrals his way and vice versa. Maybe if over time, I get to know him much better I will add him as a friend on Facebook, but for now, this is a much more productive arrangement.

This approach is logical, fits with the real you and lets the virtual you be the best reflection you can create. Putting the people from your life in to the virtual connection that makes the most sense for how you know them will help you enjoy the virtual you more. And it will give others who do not know you a more accurate reflection of what they can expect from you and wonderful reasons for them to get to know you.

I hope you find this helpful and that the Virtual You is a positive mirror image of the Real You.