Mashable had a great post today about organizations needing to have social media policies. 

This is applicable not only to how employees use social media tools like Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook but also how they respond to questions put to them by bloggers, citizen journalists or even their friends with Twitter accounts.

In the past, I have been the one who needed to enforce organizational policy on “all calls must go to media relations.” (A policy not everyone is always thrilled about, but which in a large organization has several benefits. These include keeping everyone updated with current information and not having several people respond to the same call thereby wasting scarce resources.)

Now as a communications consultant, I need to help clients understand that with social media the rules have changed–we’re no longer waiting by the phone for media calls or an occasional e-mail query. It’s all media all the time. As Shel Holtz says in this presentation on crisis communications, anyone with a cell phone these days could be a “photojournalist,” (without perhaps the contextualizing skills of a trained, professional journalist).  Staff need to be informed and trained how to respond to people who are eager to “twitter” the latest news on your organization. Policies help to make their role clearer.

Not that this is a totally new phenomenon. Even back when there was only traditional media, company employees frequently presented at conferences where media was present. When the presenters were questioned during or after the talks, they could not just refer the media to the official spokesperson back at head office. They would speak to their area of expertise but knew what bigger questions they could not answer accurately and authoritatively.

Social media opens up these opportunities for public discourse that much more. 

A recent example of how this was handled effectively was when there were rumours spreading online about a controversial vote to take place at Mountain Equipment Co-op’s annual general meeting in Canada. I called to find out the facts and was expecting to be put on hold and referred to the company spokesperson. Instead the customer service reps provided me with the information I was looking for, and when they didn’t know the answer to a question, they put me on hold briefly, went and found out and gave it to me straight. I was impressed with how well the company equipped their front-liners with the information and the freedom the staff had been given (or taken perhaps?) to be candid and up-front with callers. Good job MEC.

What do you think?  Have  you trained your staff on how to deal with social media? Have you revised your old media policies?  Any hard learned lessons you’d like to share?