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This podcast is part of the Marketing Edge series of conversations with speakers at the NewComm Forum, April 20-23. This comprehensive conference produced by the Society for New Communications Research is one of the best events of the year covering social media, networks, and policies. It is a packed agenda and if you register use the promo code NCFPPP to save money off the registration price. In this podcast we feature Eric Schwartzman, who helps corporations and large government agencies establish social media policies.

Many a social media speaker will suggest that the rules regarding employee’s public discussions about the affairs of an employer are covered in most HR personnel documents. Whether those discussions take place over the telephone, been around since the late 1800s, or on social networks – I heard Andy Sernovitz talk about creating a policy that simply adds social media to the list of communications devices in public disclosure documents email, fax, telephone, social media. And yes in general that is quite true, we need not make this more complicated than necessary. When it comes to the issue of individual employees and their public disclosure about company information, a whisper at a trade show booth is no different than a Tweet ahead of the quarterly earnings report.

Great, now that we’ve established social media from the context of distribution channels, let’s examine the potential details of a policy across an organization with tens of thousands of employees with sensitive information, a visible brand, involved in controversial issues and now essentially conducting customer service in public. Yes, this requires a little bit more thought. Should there be official blogs or should everyone be allowed to blog? should there be a corporate blogging platform? Should there be a corporate workflow process to handle customer service type social comments? What are the enforcement, monitoring and punitive policies?

In this podcast with Eric Schwartzman and I highlight Eric’s presentation to the NewComm Forum. His presentation entitled Building a Social Media Policy covers the ups and downs of securing consensus and how social media involves a bit of change management to create a successful policy.

Does your company have a separate policy for social media or is social media included as another distribution channel for corporate information?

We donate a food item to a St. Paul, MN food shelf for every comment we get on this blog.

Cathy Dunham a Marketing Edge podcast listener from Lannan, WI. She listens to the podcast with her colleagues at KKom Marketing. We’ll send out the book World Wide Rave by David Meerman Scott to you this week. Cathy thanks as well for your email compliments on this piece about generating leads with social media. If lead generation is a a topic of interest give a listen to Swartzman’s interview with the CEO of Slideshare about using that presentation community platform as a forum for thought leadership. His podcast is called On The Record Online.

The Marketing Edge podcast will also have more with David Meerman Scott. we’ll have him on a upcoming episode of the Marketing Edge podcast about the second edition of his book New Rules of Marketing and PR. The New Rules of Marketing and PR is available now.

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