I found an article on 123 Social Media dot com which includes a list of at least 30 social media policy examples (included below):
POLICY EXAMPLES
- Blog Council – Disclosure Policy
- Greteman Group (Marketing Agency)
- IBM Social Computing Guidelines
- CISCO Internet Postings Policy
- HP Code of Conduct
- Intel – Social Media Guidelines
- Opera Employee Blogging Policies
- Sun Guidelines on Public Disclosure
- Harvard Law School – Terms & Policy
- BBC – Editorial Guidelines, personal use of Social Networking
- US Navy – Web 2.0 – Utilizing New Web Tools
- CivilService – Code for Online Participation
- (CIPR) Chartered Institute of Public Relations Social Media Guidelines
- CIPR – Social Media Guidelines for Consultation
- US Air Force Social Media Policy (with flow chart)
- Porter Novelli (PR Firm – added 2-26-08)
- Government Policy (added 2-26-08)
- Dow Jones Social Media Interaction Policy
- WellsFargo Community Guidelines
- Wall Street Journal
- GM Motors Blogging Policy
- Gartner Web Participation Policy
- Associated Press Social Media Policy
Some things I noticed in exploring these policies:
- As I’ve previously mentioned, many social media policies are taking a positive stand point and telling employees what they can do as opposed to what they can’t. For example, Opera Software encourages employees to
- IBM’s Social Media Policy is much longer and more detailed than Opera Software’s. It also has a special section directed at managers and executives:
“Managers and executives take note: This standard disclaimer does not by itself exempt IBM managers and executives from a special responsibility when blogging. By virtue of their position, they must consider whether personal thoughts they publish may be misunderstood as expressing IBM positions. And a manager should assume that his or her team will read what is written. A public blog is not the place to communicate IBM policies to IBM employees.”
I thought this was a brilliant addition to the policy. Although every employee has a responsibility to their company, it’s important for managers and executives to remember that they are especially visible as representatives of an organization, as well as “role models” for the employees that they supervise.
- Another important point that policies explore is content rights. I found that Harvard’s Social Media Policy thoroughly covered these rights from the get go:
1. Rights in the Content You Submit
Default Creative Commons Public License
Unless you specify otherwise, any and all works of authorship copyrightable by you and posted by you to any blog (“Content”) are submitted under the terms of an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons Public License. Under this license, you permit anyone to copy, distribute, display and perform your Content, royalty-free, on the condition that they credit your authorship each time they do so. You also permit others to distribute derivative works of your Content, but only if they do so under the same Attribution-ShareAlike license that governs your original Content.
Please read the full text of the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons Public License.
Amongst other things, this license permits RSS aggregators to copy, distribute, display and perform any Content on your blog that you syndicate using RSS. All Content on your blog is syndicated for RSS aggregation unless you change your settings to indicate otherwise.
Option for More Restrictive License Terms
If you prefer to offer your Content on more restrictive terms, you may do so as follows:
For Content you submit to your own blog, remove the Creative Commons logo from your blog template (contact us if you require instructions).
For Content you submit to a blog other than your own, label your submission with a full copyright notice, i.e., your name, the word “copyright” or symbol “©” and the year of first publication.
By posting your Content using the Services, you are granting Harvard a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, and worldwide license to use your Content in connection with the operation of the Services, including, without limitation, the license rights to copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate and reformat your Content, and/or to incorporate it into a collective work.
Attribution
When publicly displaying, publicly performing, reproducing or distributing copies of your Content, or Content as incorporated into a collective work, Harvard will make best efforts to credit your authorship. You grant Harvard permission to use your name for such attribution purposes. You, likewise, agree to represent yourself accurately. You acknowledge that misrepresentation may lead us, in our sole discretion, to cancel your use of the Services and delete any of your Content.
Social media policies are written differently for every organization. Some go into more detail regarding rights, some regarding content, etc. Ultimately, they are written to encourage social media usage as well as to encourage conduct that supports both the individual and the organization.
