Last week saw two military organizations announced social media policies that fell about as far apart as possible. The US Marines announced a one year ban on the use of all social media sites by Marine personnel. During the same week the UK Ministry of Defense announced a new service wide policy aimed at commanding officers and line managers that encourages the use of social media. The 13 page guidelines encourage military and MoD personnel to blog, Tweet and generally engage through social media use. While the guidelines are designed to help managers advise their troops they will also be worked into training for all personnel. Armed forces and MoD personnel can talk about their work and lives within the advice of the guidelines without prior permission.
I've read several commentaries on the two policies over the last few days, everything from condemning the Marines to using them as a model for corporate policy. A few bloggers have recognized that without prior military experience they were not qualified to comment on the Marines very restrictive policy. As a ten year veteran Naval Officer I do actually have the background to form some educated opinions and of course I do have those. That's not really what I want to talk about in this post though. I will say that I applaud the UK MoD for taking a very realistic approach to the use of SM, and recognizing that there is value in its use by service members. My real point in this post is to use these two opposing views to talk about corporate policies on employee use of social media. There are two things that I want to focus on, 1. how realistic is it to ban social media use entirely, and 2. can reasonable guidelines be applied in a way to prevent behavior that is counter to the objectives of the organization?
There was a third announcement last week that we could also include in this analysis, ESPN's clamp down on employee use of social media sites for posting sports related content and content that gives "behind the scenes" information on ESPN programming. The policy prevents ESPN personnel from having personal web sites, blogs, Tweet or use social networking sites for sports related topics, one of the most restrictive policies announced for traditional media employees. While we might question how reasonable these guidelines are, after all, many of the people in question are celebrities in the sports field and have a strong personal brand around sports already, this is still an example of policies that are clear and aimed at protecting the objectives of the organization.
So back to my questions, first how realistic is it to ban social media use entirely? I've been asked frequently "what do we do if our company has blocked social media use at work (by blocking access while on the corp network)?" My response, well, actually I usually snicker and hold up my iPhone and point out that companies can block SM sites on their network but unless they think they can control smartphone use too, they are only fooling themselves. (this is a corporate comment btw, certainly the Marines could control anything they decide to) From a corporate perspective it's simply not realistic to think that you can control employees use of social media. You may block it on the network but that really doesn't stop anything. The forbid SM and "stick your head in the sand" approach will not work in corporate America IMHO.
Which brings us to question #2, can reasonable guidelines be applied in a way to prevent behavior that is counter to the objectives of the organization? This is of course the UK MoD approach as well as ESPN's (and many others). I believe the answer is yes, developing a reasonable policy around the use of SM is a much more informed approach. I'll add to that and say that the company should tie this into an overall SM strategy as well, I mean if you're going through the trouble of considering how you want your employees to use SM (and how you don't want them to use it also) then why not use the opportunity to align this policy with your overall enterprise social strategy? Companies can drive real value in an integrated approach to use of SM that helps employees understand how they can fit into the overall company strategy. And a look at the UK MoD overall plan is important, they build the guidelines to help managers manage SM use AND they are planning a comprehensive training program to make sure everyone understands the guidelines and how they relate to the individual.
One more interesting military example came to light today, an article from the AP talks about the Airforce unit the "Combat Information Cell" is used to monitor Twitter and other social media to understand public reactions to related news releases. The unit came to light in the recent Airforce One fly-over photo op scandal in NYC. The corporate analogy is the concept of brand monitoring and how important it is to know and understand what people are saying about your brand online.
