The resource at Social Media Governance includes links to policies from a range of organizations — media companies, governments, universities, PR firms, non-profits, public companies and more. Some focus on how the organizations use social media for their own ends. Others seek to govern how employees use social media on their own time.

I read a bunch of them. Some were very long. Others concise. Drawing on the common themes I saw, here my seven guidelines for drafting social media guidelines.

Be encouraging
I was amazed how few guidelines overtly encouraged employees to use social media. Then I saw this from Chicago’s DePaul University: “DePaul University supports your participation in these online communities.” If you really do think social media is important for your organization, say so.

Be positive
The best of the guidelines I read framed their advice positively – do this, rather than don’t do this. Some of the guidelines I read credited Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, for inspiration. Almost every point of its social media guideline is expressed in the form of “respect” for various principles: for the church and staff; for the beliefs of the church; for copyright laws; for your time at work; and so forth.

Be brief
Less is more. The longer your guidelines are, the more your employees will be discouraged from participating. If employees fear running afoul of an edict buried in a morass of examples, what-ifs and scenarios, you’ll teach them that nothing can be gained by dipping their toe into social media. You can’t anticipate everything. Don’t try. I thought the American Red Cross did a pretty good job of respecting this suggestion. So did a template suggested by Shift Communications in Boston. The BBC didn’t.

Be respectful
Your guidelines should send a message to your employees: You trust them. You already trust them to speak to customers, readers, sources and advertisers on the phone, by e-mail, on the street. Trust them elsewhere.

Be reflective
Reflect back on existing policies. Why repeat what’s already spelled out in your existing ethics guidelines? You’ve already told employees that they shouldn’t reveal proprietary information, trade secrets and private data. For journalists, you’ve already got guidelines that caution against overtly supporting campaigns, candidates or issues that could open them to charges of bias. A quick reminder of how that plays out in the language of social media — friends, followers and causes — would suffice. This, BBC did well. So did Dell, the Mayo Clinic, Yahoo! and National Public Radio (which I also reviewed, though it is not included in the database just yet).

Be social
Many of the guidelines I reviewed encouraged employees to participate in dialog, with three reminders: Remember how your online behavior reflects on you and the company; respect colleagues’ privacy; assume nothing posted online will remain private.

Be available
Many of the guidelines recognized that they couldn’t anticipate every situation. They encouraged employees to ask a supervisor if they had questions.

Here’s a few specific highlights I ran across.

Value what employees can do. The American Red Cross asks employees to let headquarters know if they’re blogging. “National headquarters does not intend to ‘police’ the blogging community. Quite the contrary: we want to aggregate all the powerful stories Red Crossers are telling and showcase your individual contribution to the overall mission and gather links in a page at Redcross.org.”

Over-thinking, over-regulating, over-doing it. The BBC’s guidelines include this: “Through the open nature of such sites, it is also possible for third parties to collate vast amounts of information. For example, The Shawshank Redemption is the most popular film amongst the 11,899 members of the BBC network on Facebook and 8 percent list their political views as ‘liberal’.” My heavens. Is this kind of detail really necessary? This sounds paranoid, not encouraging.

Disclosure is good. Almost every policy requires employees to make their affiliation clear. Some only require it if employees will be mentioning their association with the company in their online activities. I found this line curious in the Mayo Clinic’s guidelines: “If your blog, posting or other online activities are inconsistent with, or would negatively impact Mayo Clinic’s reputation or brand, you should not refer to Mayo Clinic, or identify your connection to Mayo Clinic.”

Friends aren’t necessarily friends. Guidelines that dictate who I can have on my “friends list” rub me wrong. That seems to invest the concept of “friends” with more meaning than it should. It doesn’t account for the fact that anyone, at any time, could become a “source.” Or that a friend who works in the neighboring cubicle today could work for the PR firm across town tomorrow.

The Roanoke Times‘ guidelines say, “Manage your friends carefully. Having one source on your friends list but not another is easily construed as bias. As above, be consistent. Accept no sources or people you cover as friends, or welcome them all.” Sure, ask employees to “manage friends carefully.” And leave it at that.

Don’t make it sound scary. This line in NPR’s guideline strikes me as raising fear: “Use the highest level of privacy tools available to control access to your personal activity when appropriate, but don’t let that make you complacent. It’s just not that hard for someone to hack those tools and make public what you thought was private.”

Courtesy kogakure, via Flickr under CC 2.0 license. http://bit.ly/tzAfY

One of my small pleasures at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch is a blog our religion writer Tim Townsend and I created. It’s called “Civil Religion.” For a year and a half, it’s been The Little Blog That Could. Nearly every post attracts comments. It gets respectable traffic numbers (more when it’s featured on the home page of STLtoday.com, of course). And its following is a loyal one.

The blog started with a dozen writers from the St. Louis community, representing a variety of faith traditions from Judaism to Islam to Christianity in many stripes — Catholicism, Mormon, evangelical and Episcopalian.

About a week ago, we debuted an expanded stable of bloggers. Some had dropped out of the earlier group. Now we’re up to about 30 who contribute and, already, we’ve seen traffic increase from the more-frequent contributions to the blog. I’m grateful for their contributions and their passion for the subject. They engage readers, they are often insightful and frequently controversial.

Now, a new development: Public relations people have begun taking notice of the blog, and send releases to our contributors, all of whom have day jobs, some of whom are clergy men and women. They have asked Tim what they can do with the releases. Some are interested in pursuing interviews, doing some research on the books, people, products and events that are presented to them.

They want to be reporters.

But they have never done it before. Tim compiled a basic primer on headline writing, linking to source material, verifying information and, of course, the ethics of journalism. As Tim wrote in his note to our bloggers, “Journalists have very, very strict guidelines about what we can, and can’t accept from PR people who hope to elicit some coverage for their product or service in the newspaper. Since you’re blogging on a Post-Dispatch platform, we ask that you, too, abide by these ethical guidelines.”

He included the Post-Dispatch’s ethics guidelines, which I’m not including here. I am including a number of online primers that I’ve shared with Tim for the benefit of our Civil Religion crew. They range from the ethics of journalism and blogging to the basics of reporting and writing.

Maybe you have a similar project that can benefit. And maybe you have other sites to suggest!

journopdx – Journalism basics
Literally, the basics. This is an outline of a session by Michelle V. Rafter at a conference for bloggers. Even the outline would provide good basics for beginners.

Weblog Ethics
From Rebecca Blood’s “Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog.” This stuff stands up.

bighow guides: the online journalism handbook citizen journalism basics
Includes links to some other helpful sites. I particularly like the brief mention of JD Lasica’s and Dan Gillmor’s “five basic principles of citizen journalism.”

Infinite Zoom: Journalism Basics
Journalist Curt Milton started a series on journalism basics on his blog Infinite Zoom, presumably targeted at bloggers. He didn’t get very far, but what’s there is worth looking at.

Citizen Media Law Project
A great resources. It is exactly what its name implies. If you’re not subscribing to the CitMedia blog, you should be.

Society of Professional Journalists: Code of Ethics
Hard to go wrong with the code of ethics of SPJ. It pretty much spells out the ethical issues — and it keeps it short and to the point.

Principles of Journalism | Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)
Like the SPJ code, this is a great primer.

Richard Binhammer (Credit: www.briansolis.com via Flickr)

I came across the social media engagement report in July from Wetpaint and Altimeter focusing on how companies measure the bottom-line effectiveness of their social media efforts. The report focused on four companies — Dell, Starbucks, SAP and Toyota. The online database/website focuses on a great many more. To me, it’s not surprising that the study found…

…that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement. The relationship is apparent and significant: socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful. So now we know it pays to be social, but it is important to note that by “social,” we’re talking about deep engagement, not merely having a presence.

The report ranked the level of social engagement by various brands. Dell was second. That, of course, is noteworthy four years after the “Dell Hell” period, in which the company seemed to turn a deaf ear to the rage in the blogosphere over various customer service issues. Chief among the negative bloggers was Jeff Jarvis, who shared intimately his own customer service issues with Dell, and later declared an end to Dell Hell in Business Week after having an opportunity to interview Michael Dell himself and spend time at the company.

Not long after the Engagement report came out, I was offered the chance to speak to Richard Binhammer, Dell’s senior manager of corporate affairs. This was shortly after the uproar over the Washington Post’s social media guidelines for its newsroom. So it was amusing to see how open and engaged a massive company like Dell was willing to allow its employees to be.

Dell's Community Page

We also talked about Dell’s willingness to listen to — and host — readers’ comments on their various sites, which is something newspapers are still struggling with. Of course, Dell has also been willing to put resources behind its efforts, which at least 30 people who have responsibility for tending to the conversations the company has on its own community site, on Twitter, on Facebook and elsewhere. You can link to all Dell’s social spots from its community page.

Dell’s social media strategy falls under Binhammer’s domain. Binhammer comes out of public relations after working in Canadian politics. He had a two-year stint with Fleishman-Hillard in St. Louis from 1995 to 1997 and joined Dell in 2005 — right around the “Dell Hell” period, when he was given the assignment of dealing with the blogs that were talking about the company.

“It was an assignment I hadn’t asked for. I think I got the assignment because I was doing community affairs and we identified digital media at the time as almost community outreach. I think it was also my background in politics and issues management.”

Binhammer is accessible at his personal blog, on Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and Twitter. Here’s a few other highlights from our conversation.

On corporate social media policies.
“Every business has its employees sign some sort of employment contract or code of conduct. We ask employees not to divulge proprietary information, or badmouth competitors. My argument  is you already have rules and regulations that govern how to represent the company. In terms of representing the company, be smart, don’t be stupid. Are there times when people make mistakes? Absolutely. And we learn from them.”

Does Dell have a guideline for social media?
“There is a policy that we call the Policy on Electronic Dialog. You need to make it clear that you speak for Dell and you have to live up to your obligations under the Dell Code of Conduct. We’re forcing the issue of transparency onto the web.”

But in general, “Do you give (your employees) guidelines when they take an employee to lunch or speaks to someone on the telephone? I know I have to live up certain standards with respect to our own code of conduct. How does social media become different?

“If you are a person in the company who is going to both upload under your blog and have pictures of your kids online, but you’re also going to talk to datacenter IT managers about issues around green data centers, he does have to identify himself as a Dell employee. And I think that’s OK because it humanizes the company.”

On community ambassadors. Dell’s community website lists bios for 30 of them.
“That page is probably being redone, because some of it has changed around a bit. The number is plus or minus a few. What’s happened is that at one time we had a very centralized team and what we’ve done is started to spin off a lot of that team into the various business units. As Dell reorganized into four larger business units — consumer, public sector, small/medium business, large enterprise — that’s how we’ve changed. We’ve been driving deeper into the business at it relates to social media. There are still 30-some people. Some have jobs mostly involved in community forums. It all depends on the business.

“The other thing that is of interest, we also know of about a hundred individuals on Twitter that are using Twitter. For example, there is JohnBatdell …who focuses on the gaming community. Not only does he attend gaming conferences and send reports and interact with the gaming community there, but he’s on gaming blogs.

“I think it’s interesting because if it was five years ago or even three years ago and two customers were having a conversation in a Starbucks, I can’t hear that conversation or hear that conversation. But if they’re exchanging that on the web, I can become part if it and contribute or learn from it. That whole part of listening is a competitive advantage.

“Businesses are used to hosting the dinner party. The situation has fundamentally changed. The dinner party is being held and we’re guests.”

How much traffic goes through the Dell Community web site — page views and unique visitors?
“I don’t know the answer to that question. It’s not Dell.com. But it gets enough that it’s important to us.”

Can you quantify how much money your social media efforts have generated?
“@DellOutlet (on Twitter) has generated over $2 million in revenue in a year-and-a-half. It was $500,000 and then suddenly it was a million in half-the time.

“People are also following the DellOutlet link on Twitter, then going on to Dell.com.” Binhammer explains that readers will click on a link for a deal they’re offering; if they buy from DellOutlet, that contributes to the $2 million. Reader also come in through that link, and may not purchase and outlet item, but they’ll slide over to the main Dell.com and purchase something new. “It’s having a spinoff effect.”

On the effectiveness of Twitter versus conventional advertising.
“The important thing to remember about DellOutlet is that it is an outlet for returned products. We take it back, it’s never been used.” So, he says, he may never know at any one moment how much inventory he has, how many clearance items. “Taking an ad in the paper isn’t effective….I can clear them on Twitter and they go out the door that day.”

On non-revenue benefits to being involved in social media.
“We always think in terms of the revenue benefit, but there are other benefits as well. By listening and learning you can become a better company. You can always improve. You can only improve your business processes by garnering that kind of direct feedback. That’s a business improvement that can be realized by solid listening and learning.

“In some cases, we’ve heard about those kinds of cases (customer issues) sooner on the web than we would have otherwise — we’ve tracked it to a three-week advantage in some cases. If an issue bubbles up — say a driver (conflict with) a mouse — suddenly a little issue bubbles up. Normally that would bubble up through the call lines. By the time that gets aggregated and goes to the engineers, sometimes this gives us three-week advantage.”

On the initial blogger relations program. How did it work?
“Here’s the history. In the first part of 2006, we established essentially some tech savvy and people savvy team members into what you might call a SWAT team. They began filtering various searches to identify customers who were having issues and/or blogging about them. They would go in and help solve the problem. Some were simple issues where people didn’t know they needed to get a driver update. That came directly from Michael (Dell). People can phone us and go to our forums. If people are blogging about us, we need to be there.

“In June 2006, we started blogging (the direct2dell blog). And then in August 2006, we established a broader view. It’s more than just customer support. They’re interacting with us in all sorts of ways, why would we not extend this beyond just tech support. We broadened our blog outreach to whatever other issues they might be talking about. For example, people were talking about whether it was right for us to be in Walmart — Dell’s strength was always in direct to the customer…

“In the early days, in early 2006, almost 50 percent of what we saw on the web about the company was negative. We’ve seen it decline at least 30 percentage points — it ebbs and flows depending on different things. The metrics aren’t perfect. We try to capture most of the conversations.”

On allowing customer comments on blogs, in forums.
“In the ratings and reviews in Dell.com — low ratings aren’t deleted, but we reach out to those customers and see what we can do to fix that problem. Now if you bought a low-end product and are expecting to do high-end work with us, there is a bit of a conflict there.

“It’s also important to remember in social media is that social media is not just a way to say yes for companies. There are some people who make negative comments that don’t really comprehend the whole picture or have a complete understanding. When you go in an explain that, that’s often very helpful. I’m not saying that deals with all negative commentary. I remember one blogger — when Michael came back as CEO — this blogger wrote that Michael Dell needed to understand his company had a customer service issue.” But what the blogger could see in public coverage of his return didn’t include any mention of the issue to his employees.

Binhammer said he reached out to the blogger with evidence to the contrary. “You need to see what he had to say to Fortune two months ago,” and the entirety of Michael’s email. “The next day that blogger wrote ‘this blogger stands corrected.’”

On being Dell’s social media guru.
“I’m part of a team. I happen to be the forward-looking face for a lot of the team and I became part of the team early. I’m not the guru, I’m just one of many. I come out of a public relations background.”

You may remember these guys from their previous spoof outing, the holiday video, “God Rest Ye Weary Journalists.”

Chris Cooley

My son insisted I go to YouTube last night and watch the NFL Fantasy Files with him. The videos are spectacular. Even if you’re not a football fan, you’ve got to watch them. I’ve embedded one of the combo videos below.

My question: Where’s the “how they did it” video? The videos themselves are incredibly cool. Why don’t they show us how they did them? Wouldn’t it keep the buzz alive?

The premise of the videos: Stars from the NFL show-off the reason fantasy football players should “pick me” — that’s the tagline of the campaign — for their fantasy teams.

Washington Redskins tight end Chris Cooley shoves his hands through a wall to catch a pass blind. Arizona Cardinals place-kicker Neil Rackers (from Florissant, Mo.) lines up four footballs from at least 30 yards out and announces he’ll hit the left upright twice and the right upright twice — which, of course, he does. New England Patriots runner Laurence Maroney (from Normandy High in St. Louis) highlights his ability to find holes in the defense by leaping through the front-seat windows of an SUV.

Videos along these lines have been done for the fifth time by New York Production house Blue Room. They’ve gone totally viral, of course, as fans post them to YouTube, and chat them up on every possible site. They’re mesmerizing.

In a news release, Robert Stecklow, the NFL’s Director of Advertising said, “We are always astonished by the unique and extraordinary displays of NFL players’ talents as they are revealed in the NFL Fantasy Files.”

I think I broke my son’s heart when I mused aloud, “How did they do that?” The feats captured on these videos are clearly ginned up in the studios of an F/X shop. NFL players can’t risk serious injury — and ending their careers — by really attempting some of the feats they’re shown to do.

If the “behind the scenes” videos are out there, I haven’t been able to find them. Let me know if you’ve seen them.

So the question now, after five years of these cool videos: Why don’t they circulate “behind the scenes” videos of these? Wouldn’t that keep the buzz going for longer? People eat that stuff up. I know I’d be just as interested in the “how they did it” as in the “what they did.”

Joan Lipkin

A colleague of mine has written a story about playwright Joan Lipkin, a veteran of the drama scene in the St. Louis area, who found inspiration for a play from the story comments she found on our newsroom’s website, STLtoday.com.

As Doug Moore described it, the original story (which he also wrote) was “about prominent gays turning to activism.“ Readers posted at least 330 comments on that story, many of them less-than-supportive of the gay community. Unfortunately, the original story is no longer in the STLtoday database, so I can’t link to it. An excerpt from Doug’s follow-up story:

“It is ridiculous that there is a story about a successful gay man in the paper. Now I know why the Post is going under,” wrote one reader, identified as “W. Champion.” It is one of 16 reader comments sprinkled throughout a new play Lipkin has written with Sharon Bandy, a playwright from Chattanooga, Tenn.

And there’s this:

The play is called “Beyond Stonewall: Why We March” and references the long battle for gay rights, including a clash between police and gays in 1969 outside the Stonewall Inn in New York City.

The play begins with a television reporter sent to do a story on a prominent gay male in his new role as activist. But the interview goes off track when two ghosts from Stonewall, bloggers and a longtime African-American lesbian activist intervene.

Doug told me he wasn’t aware of another case in which story comments had inspired art. The play is freely available online (PDF here). Lipkin has waived any royalty rights and is encouraging companies to stage performances before the National Equality March in Washington on Oct. 10-11.

Here are some of the comments included in the play:

From “J.R.”: “Gays and lesbians have a right to live as they choose; they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for all of us.”

From “Justtruth”: “The real reasons for all the attention is not really for equality. All they want is the spotlight, and to push their personal agendas.”

From “Ophelia J”: “You all might think I’m kidding about this, but I am very serious! I think all people should be able to experience misery and that hopelessly trapped feeling of being married. Come on in. The water is fine!”

From “TaterSalad”: “I’m a business owner and I don’t care what they look like or what their sexual orientation is as long as their money is green.”

I’ve said for some time that just because some readers’ comments are hard to “hear,” it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be allowed make them. This is an example of how some good might have come from them.

UPDATE :: I’ve substantially changed this post since it was written originally. Turns out, there was a controversy over one of the comments that the playwrights used. This post was never supposed to be about that controversy; it was supposed to be about the work inspired by the reader comments.

That said, I’m sorry for the damage that might have been done to “Shelley Powers,” one of the readers whose comment was originally used in the play. I’ve removed the quote that was attributed to her from this post. The playwrights later acknowledged that her comment was taken out of context and portrayed the exact opposite impression that she meant to convey. I had quoted the comment from the play; in a subsequent update I delved into the controversy that erupted. Since, again, that’s not what this post was supposed to be about, I’ve removed those references. The playwrights have revised the play without the use of Shelley’s quote.

Jeff Greenfield

CBS Sunday Morning was a celebration of its 30 years on the air, with features that looked back at life in 1979. It included a segment with media critic Jeff Greenfield, who whirled through a look at how the media has changed. He effectively described how the digital revolution has converged our information and entertainment into a handheld box.

What stuck in my craw was this line, delivered with an image of the Los Angeles Times on an iPhone: “You don’t want to buy a newspaper? Read it for free online — one reason why newspapers as we know them may not be around much longer.”

Watch CBS Videos Online

My wife turned and said that’s probably true. Ugh. My own wife. A week earlier, I had this debate with colleagues in own newspaper. I’m tired of people blaming free content. It’s not one reason why newspapers are in the fix they’re in. It’s not the 10th reason. It’s not in the top 100.

What did a newspaper cost in 1979? Well, I found an article that said the Los Angeles Times increased its newsstand price to 25 cents that year.

If you don’t think that we were (and still are) effectively giving away newspaper content for free, then I guess we can’t have a conversation about this.

FarmVille!

My son Matthew and I were on separate computers a moment ago, minding our own business, when he turned to me to say, “I’m addicted to FarmVille.” He described the Facebook game, which is apparently now the No. 1 application on Facebook, with 13.4 million daily users. “I find myself sitting here waiting for my strawberries to be ready to harvest,” he confessed.

My confession: I’d never seen FarmVille. So I asked Matthew (who turns 14 next week) to write me a little something about it for my blog — what it is, why he likes it and what he finds addictive about it.

* * *

Matthew

A few days ago on the online social website Facebook, one of my friends informed me about a game known as FarmVille. I was intrigued by the notion of a game about farming on a website such as Facebook, so I checked it out. My first impression upon seeing my tiny patch of land was, “Wow, this game is incredibly stupid, and the only way to communicate with your friends through it is putting up signs on their farm.”

However, there was something I did not notice at first, but slowly came to realize, that being that the game was utterly addicting. It’s a game where you cultivate crops in a shortened amount of time with less work than real farming. You use the coins you earn to increase the amount of things you can cultivate and how conveniently you can do it. You can also increase the size of your farm.

I soon found myself increasing the area of my land greatly, trying to get myself as many coins as possible, making sure my crops hadn’t gone bad, and other remedial tasks that proved that I truly had nothing good to do with my time.

I actually became excited by what used to bore me, such as the signs. My girlfriend put up a sign on my farm that said, “I love it how you have an emo farmer,” because my farmer did indeed have a sort of dark goth look.

Soon the addiction turned to insanity, as I was soon checking FarmVille every two minutes waiting for my strawberries to be ready for harvesting. In fact, halfway through writing this, I went over to my other tab and harvested my strawberries.

Something to do in your spare time: Yes. Something that may consume you: Yes. Something that you will get bored of: No. So enjoy it, but remember to stand up every now and then, get some fresh air, and maybe try eating some strawberries.

* * *

Fascinating. This is a kid who is also addicted to World of Warcraft. He just told me that he’s looking forward to “leveling up” in FarmVille so he can start cultivating pineapples. The arc of this game can take hours, or days, as crops are planted, grow and are harvested. So much for instant gratification on the Internet. I’d love to hear from others about what they find addictive about this game. WOW, indeed.

Mapping the extended auto warranty companies.

One of my colleagues, Matt Hathaway, has been doing a great job for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch covering the industry that provides extended auto service contracts to consumers. The industry has been under fire by state and federal regulators, as well as consumer-protection agencies such as the Better Business Bureau. Certain firms within the industry have been accused by those agencies of unfair or deceptive marketing practices.

I’m Matt’s editor. He’s done a great job covering the story. About 10 days ago, he suggested mapping the companies in our area. Our region is “ground zero” for the industry. There have been more than 40 companies in our area that market the so-called “extended warranties.” You might be familiar with companies that advertise heavily on television such as US Fidelis and Mogi.

I set Matt to work on a Google Docs spreadsheet with a bunch of information about all the firms he could find in the area. I took the data and threw it onto this Google Map, which is a work in progress.

At the moment, we have the basics about the companies, links to their websites, links to any blog entries he’s written about the companies and links to the St. Louis Better Business Bureau’s reports on the companies. We plan to add to the map with links to stories we’ve done, marketing materials from the companies and more.

Kudos and gratitude to my colleague Erica Smith, who blogs at graphicdesignr.net and offers plenty of tools and advice for folks looking to do this kind of work. She was a huge help.