On Words and Business

Want to create a social media policy but don’t know how? Want to make sure your existing policy passes muster?

Check out Social Media Governance, a website with over 100 policies from companies like the BBC, FedEx, and Sun Microsystems. In addition, there are links to over 100 research reports about social media policy, some of them free.

A great resource.

The small business success index takes on social media:

• 75% have a company page on a social media site like LinkedIn or Facebook.
  I have a company page on LinkedIn and am wishing there was more I could do with it. In my world, Facebook is for personal use and I don’t see that my customers would be looking for me there. Are you?
• 39% have a blog
  Check. This is it.
• 26% tweet
  Nope.
• 61% use social media to identify new customers
  Working on this one.

How are you using social media technologies in your business?

Straight Talk with Nigel Hollis

Thoughts on marketing, branding, and communications from the folks at market research agency Millward Brown. Good stuff.

If you haven’t heard about this yet, you should know there’s a bit of a kerfuffle about a change in blogging policy at Forrester. It’s an interesting debate.

What I really like is Bruce Temkin’s piece offering five lessons companies ought to take away from this:

1. Assume everyone will find out.
2. Don’t get bullied by the crowd.
3. Pick your battles.
4. Be open and honest.
5. Don’t obsess about social media.

To those I add:

1. Be on the same page. When communicating with the media, which includes the press and anyone keyed into your social media outlets, have guidelines for communication. Since you can’t vet every single word or thought in a fast moving social media environment, make sure those communicating with the public understand how they represent the company and the limits of their communications responsibilities.
2. Don’t be afraid. Social media has the edge over traditional media in its immediacy and viral reach. But don’t let that stop you or your company from stating your opinions or policies. The quick feedback allows for a quicker course correction if necessary.

According to a recent survey , more than half the journalists surveyed said that social media sources are important or somewhat important, and 89% said they used blogs in their research.

If you want to get noticed, it seems like socializing in cyberspace is increasingly the way to do it.

Read more about the story on MediaPost.

I get the irony of linking to this article, but I loved it: Meet the rehashed, repeated, warmed over web

It begins…”Stop me if you’ve read this one before. Actually, stop me if you’ve read anything at all original on the Web over the last year. Odds are whatever you did read was copied or repeated from someone else, who took it from someone else, who took it … and so on and so on.”