Chris Syme serves as a sports information director at Montana State and coordinates website and new media duties among her responsibilities. This is from her blog "New Adventures of an Old SID." Among her duties at Montana State are website and new media coordinator, cross country, track and field and golf. She was a presenter at the 2009 CoSIDA Convention and will speak at the 2010 CoSIDA Convention in San Francisco.
See the prior Syme postings on this topic: May 1, 2010:
Developing a Social Media Policy - Part Two (Collecting Best Practices)April 23, 2010:
Developing a Social Media Policy - Part OneThere is no shortage of information out there about social media--so much you can't read it all. And, everybody has jumped on the social media bandwagon. Or should I say “the cart”—as it seems many of us have put the cart (social media) before the horse (policies and guidelines). In an attempt to help us hook up the horse, I have put together a comparative analysis of four policies to look at that will lead to establishing some best practices for putting a policy together. You've got questions--hopefully I have answers.
As I mentioned in the previous post, there are several elements that show up in social media policies--Purpose, rules of engagement or policies (which includes info on responsible posting, copyright and proprietary information, permissions, etc.), consideration of audience, building authenticity, how to respond to negative feedback, where to get help, monitoring procedures, and possible consequences for policy violations, to name a few. After looking over many policies in several fields (business, education, media, technology), I honed in on four that I really liked:
Dell,
IBM,
RightNow Technologies, and
Ball State University.
The first three are technology companies, so naturally their policies are filled with an abundance of information on copyright rules, proprietary information and other specific information that doesn't apply too heavily to college athletics. Dell’s is particularly short, something I really appreciated. IBM’s was too long. RightNow’s was almost conversational in its approach, which I think reflects the culture of the company. They happen to be located here in Bozeman, Montana, and I follow them with interest as I think they’re extremely innovative in the field of customer service software development.
The Ball State University policy was institutional, which is understandable. It read like a typical university policy document, full of institutional protections and permissions. But, I liked it. After all, I work for an institution. I think it is interesting to note that of the four, the university policy was the only one asking social media users to "register" with the organization. This procedure definitely helps the monitoring process.
Three Important Elements: Purpose, Policies and ProceduresAll four of these had three important elements in common that are vital, and because I used to be an English teacher and I work with coaches - the world’s busiest people - I try to keep it simple and memorable.
A good social media policy needs to address the following: purpose, policies and procedures. In the following
powerpoint example, I do a comparative analysis of how the four policies address these elements: Comparative Analysis of Social Media Policies.
Social media policies must address these three areas to cover the basics: purpose, policies, and procedures. In my next post, I will define what each should look like in a university athletics policy and how you can fit each one to your department culture.I hope this information is helpful to you. I'd love to hear from you. Are you writing a policy for your department? What are the questions you have?
You can reach Chris Syme at csyme@montana.edu