Businesses Lack Social Media Policies!!

Not every opportunity is an opportunity for everybody!

We need to understand, ideate, analyze Social media before embracing it into our corporate culture. So how about a quick SWOT analysis, but you can have your SWOT analysis of SMM based on your own perspective.

Strength:

1) Social Media Marketing holds tremendous potentiality for marketing products and services. Provided that it is used as a tactic and becomes part of an overall strategy rather then strategy itself.

2) Good for branding as it opens a direct communication channel with your customers. Aggregating views/feedbacks becomes easier.

3) Can do wonders to the recruitment drives at fraction of the cost with amazingly higher returns.

4) Creates a kind of "warmth circle" between the employees spread over large geography.

Weakness

1) Needs constant monitoring thereby demanding some resources to be engaged.

2) Excellent communicators required to man these Social Media bunkers. Loose hands can diminish the value faster.

3) Absence of Social Media guidelines can eat up substantial man-hours in the organization.

Opportunities:

Most of the strength mentioned are opportunities apart from :-

1) Tremendous opportunity to create a buzz.If handled properly can also turn your brand famous over night literally. ( heard of moonfruit :) just google it ! )

2) Can serve as a wonderful customer care desk extension.. ( Think Twitter )

3) Excellent networking medium for targeted groups.

Threats:

Rome was not built in a day! but destroying it definitely took less then that.

The way Social Media can help you build your brand faster it can destroy it equally faster. So tread the path of SMM with caution but for sure it has more opportunities that threat.

Among all other views i second the thoughts of Amit, Sudeep & Dayanad in particular..Good job guys!

According to me companies should embrace technology at the moment, and Social media is the big thing at the moment where one can benfit most.  And in a recent survey it is said that 73% of those surveyed said they plan to increase their use of social media. Most are already using it like, 80% use Facebook, 66% use Twitter, 55% use YouTube, 49% use LinkedIn, and 43% use blogs. With so many people hooked on to social media, it makes sense that companies to associate with them and stay ahead with its benefits.

I totally agree with Sumitra here and the companies should first decide whethere their policy is open to embracing the technology or closed to it.  And it should make certain adjustment to its policies and the policy should apply to everyone in the company, not just to employees of the marketing department or something like that. Other policies on conduct, such as those governing ethics and harassment, must apply in social media as well.

The policy should also address managers fears concerning productivity and security here. The social media policy should be very explicit about reinforcing existing policies concerning confidential information.  In addition, companies will need to decide whether or not employees are allowed to use social media during the work day, and whether they can use such Web services during their personal time, such as during a lunch break.

A well defined strategy, coupled with clear policies and effective training will place your company in the best position possible to take full advantage of social media's potential.

Great Contest Sumitra....

In addition to this guidelines (social media policies), companies need to realize that they can’t control what people say about them. If a product sucks, customers already tell each other, if not in public then definitely in private. If the work environment sucks, employees will talk about it with each other, and with family and friends.

Corporates & executives are primarily concerned that employees will say bad things about the organization (sponsors, vendors, customers, etc.); Customers/constituents will say bad things about the organization (sponsors, staff, vendors, etc.); Employees will tell secrets.

The shared root of all the concerns is control: controlling the outbound message, and controlling the availability of avenues for customers to say bad things about the company.

Rather what companies should control & strive for is the quality of their products, services, work environments, and cultures. And if those are all good, they’ll have nothing to worry about when it comes to social media.

Corporates should definitely encourage listening to the blogosphere, participating in the conversations, and building a community which are instrumental to success.

An interesting video where a leading web startegist explains on
How to Implement a Corporate Social Media Strategy...

I hope this helps....:)

There should be a proper set of guidelines for corporates by which it can help them....

Firstly employees should know and follow Business Conduct Guidelines. Corporates must make employees, clients & partners to be aware of and participate in the sphere of information, interaction and idea exchange. (Responsible engagement in innovation and dialogue)

Employees are personally responsible for the content they publish on blogs, wikis or any other form of user-generated media & one should make sure that his/her online activities do not interfere with job or commitments to customers.

Organization needs to define policiea related to use of social media,in most of the offices employees are used to log in with live chats or srcapping ,blogging during office time which affects their productivity and is a loss to the organization as well .

Hence use of social media during the break or after finishg work is advisable .