Social Media Posting Guidelines

Chapter 13 in Real-Time Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott discussed the IBM Social Computing Guidelines and how not all employees have access to social media at work. The IBM Guidelines were created to give helpful and practical advice to individuals on the variety of social media channels we have. These guidelines have been put in place by companies, so employees will know their constraints when posting on social media. It's important that companies pass these guidelines throughout the chains of command, as all employees need to know these so they don't do something stupid via social media and get put on disciplinary action.

In this chapter we also discussed the idea of social media being blocked at work. Executives feel they are the only ones who should have access to social media. The executives feel this way because they want their employees to be productive at work and actually get work done, and they believe if employees have access to social media then they won't get done what they need to. The negative to this is depending on who the company has blocked, their media relations team may not be able to respond to questions and complaints in real-time, if they don't have access.

Through my internship experience I have realized that our society does block social media access at work. Working in the marketing and communications department, I had to get my id and username approved to have access to social media, so I could do daily postings and reply to customers with both positives and negatives in real-time. I believe blocking employee access to be a good thing, but it's also important to have individuals in certain departments allowed access to it as it's their job to keep your company in good standing with your customers via social media.

Social media is going to continue to keep growing and is going to continue to be a bigger part of every company, as this is how companies will engage with their customers and keep them coming back and happy.