guidelines to help you engage your community online
DESCRIPTION
This document outlines some key things to consider when managing and delivering your online community engagement project through a range of social media channels. We hope the guide helps you develop your own internal procedures and policies to support your online engagement in line with your organisation’s goals and strategy…and limitations.TRANSCRIPT
GUIDELINES TO HELP YOU ENGAGE YOUR COMMUNITY
online
EngagementWWW.TABLETALKENGAGEMENT.COM
INTRODUCTION
Congratulations for taking the leap into the world of online
engagement.
Perhaps your journey to this point required a lot of cajoling
and convincing, but we’re confident that you’ll soon see the
benefits of your decision.
This document outlines some key things to consider when
managing and delivering your online community engagement
project through a range of social media channels.
We hope it helps you develop your own internal procedures
and policies to support your online engagement in line with
your organisation’s goals and strategy…and limitations.
THE PERFECT WORLD SCENARIO!
In a perfect world we would advise
that your organisation take a holistic
approach to developing your social
media and online engagement policies
and procedures, starting at the grass
roots level of company culture and
aligning it with over arching business
strategy.
We can help with that if you need
it, but we are realists, so we’ll start
small with a few practical tips to help
you take your first steps to engaging
online.
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REALITY BITES!
The adoption of online engagement and social media participation across
organisations still varies widely. Here are a couple of scenarios, you may be
familiar with one or all of them:
Your organisation actively encourages staff to use social media tools as part of
their job and has policies and procedures that support this approach and social
media participation is woven into the fibre of your organisational culture.
Your organisation imposes a total ban on the use of social media channels in
the workplace, including blocking access to sites such as Facebook, You Tube
and Twitter on company computers.
Your organisation is somewhere in between scenario one and two. It’s entering
the world of online engagement, but has yet to fully integrate the practice across
its business operations and processes.
We have found that for an organisation entering the world of online
engagement, scenario three is often the reality.
GETTING STARTED
Some of these points are practice based, while others are purely operational
or technical. Either way, to participate in a successful online engagement, they
should all be considered.
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TIP
Because processes are often fluid and need to be changed periodically, online Wikis are a great way to manage this.
By enabling a group of people within your organisation to actively contribute to the ongoing development of your internal processes online in a Wiki, it is more likely to be a success and reflect the practicality of what it means to engage online in your organisation.
Treat your social media policies as living documents, updating them as your organisation evolves, business strategies change, technologies advance and your social media skills increase.
CHAPTER 1
A FEW POINTS ON POLICY DEVELOPMENT
Because the use of online tools and participation in social media does not apply to each
employee equally, it is not unreasonable for organisations to need multiple social media
policy documents for different purposes and audiences. Such documents could include:
• Social media for employees: broad overview of expectations of employees
participating in social media, not necessarily on behalf of their employee or as part of
their role.
• Guidelines for employees working in social media: specifically outlines guidelines
for employees representing their employee through dedicated organisational social
media channels.
• A community policy: the terms and conditions expected of the public when
participating in an organisation’s online space. This usually includes Terms of Use,
explanation on the site moderation, privacy policy, use of personal information etc.
• Manager Training document: the inclusion of social media training for all managers,
regardless of whether they are directly involved in social media for the organisation,
ensures that their is a high level of understanding of social media across the entire
organisation as opposed to simply siloed in the corporate communications or
community relations team.
Banishing social media is not a Policy. Provide the right balance of
empowerment & accountability. After all trust & empowerment are
inherently less expensive than control.
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Reviewing policies, procedures and protocols
The trends in online engagement and the tools that
people use are constantly changing. To keep up with
these, it is important to periodically review your policies
and procedures for your online engagement activities.
A statement within your policy that outlines this review
process is important.
Define your Scope
This links back to our first point on policy development.
When setting up your policies and procedures for online
engagement, it is important to clarify their scope, or
who and what they relate to.
For example, if you are an organisation participating
in limited online and social media engagement for the
purpose of a particular project, it is important to make
that clear.
A scope statement in this case could include
parameters such as “this policy/procedure applies to all
communication staff with formal roles on the x project
and governs all communication undertaken online in
relation to the x project”.
Link to related policies
Many of the rules and expectations that apply to your
traditional offline communication channels should,
and most likely would, also apply to your online
communication channels.
For example, the following policies would be
applicable across both channels:
• Privacy Policy
• Legal Policy
• Ethics Policy
• Sexual Harassment Policy
• Media Policy
• Communications Policy
Refer to and integrate relevant policies within your
social media policy, and make sure the already
established policies are reviewed for their relevance to
your new social media policy.
Integrate your social media policies with other
relevant policies already established in your
organisation.
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CHAPTER 2
SETTING CLEAR PROJECT OBJECTIVES
Objectives are a great way of mapping out early what you want to
achieve with a consultation and then using these goals to shape
other processes, activities and requirements needed to successfully
meet them.
For example if one of your objectives is to “maintain a positive
relationship with the community by providing accurate and timely
information”, you will need to have systems and procedures in place to
ensure this happens. These could include:
• developing a set of FAQs to ensure your team is able to respond
quickly to commonly asked community queries
• assigning responsibility to a team member to respond within a
certain timeframe to community queries and making this part of their
annual KPIs
• ensuring community expectations are established early by
publicising your promise to them. For example: We will respond
to community enquiries within x hours between 8am to 5pm on
Monday to Friday.
Use project objectives to help shape your social media processes and
activities.
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TIPS
Registering the site: most of these social media tools need to be linked to a
private account and email when they are registered. Consider who may be
the most appropriate person for this role and ensure you have processes in
place to manage those corporate sites if that person ever decided to leave.
Branding: it is important that all your social media sites reflect your
organisation’s brand. Maintain the same standard across these sites as
you would your traditional marketing and communications collateral, from
naming conventions to look and feel.
Verification: many large corporations find themselves being parodied by
fake accounts – Apple and BP famously among them. While there are some
processes you can follow with sites such as Twitter and Facebook to rectify
these situations, you are never guaranteed a response. One way to ensure
authenticity is to provide a link to your corporate site in your social media
bios and vice versa links your social media accounts on your corporate site.
That way, anyone who decides to dig a little further can be guaranteed of
your authenticity at least.
Managing your tools: there are some great platforms out there that help you
manage your selected online tools from one spot - Hootsuite, Tweetdeck
and Networked Blogs to name a few. The key point being, make these
technologies do all the heavy lifting for you and take advantage of the clever
options available to streamline your online activities as much as possible.
CHAPTER 3
TOOLS
The choice of social media tools is endless.
And just because they are available, it does
not mean you have to try to use them all.
While many of the most popular social media
tools – think Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and
LinkedIn, are free to use, they cost you in the
most important currency we have – that of
time.
The tools you use relates directly back to your
project objectives, where your audience is
hanging out on the web and most importantly
what you are able to manage in terms of
resources. If you decide to set up other
social media channels, in addition to your
EngagementHQ site, check out our tips.
One tool does not f it all! Choose yours
wisely & link them with your target
audience, your resource capacity & your
project objectives & strategy.
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CHAPTER 4
LANGUAGE AND APPROACH
The type of language that is most effective in an online engagement
space is often in direct contradiction to the formal business speak
many organisations use across their traditional communication.
Long, formal and over-edited copy simply puts people off. When writing
copy for your site, write punchy copy that has clear calls to action and
grabs attention . Every word counts, but too many and you’ll lose your
audience.
A final word on language. Think about the type of audience you are
trying to engage with and adjust your tone accordingly. Connecting with
communities online, whether it is through an EngagementHQ site, Twitter
or Facebook, or other platform, means dropping some of those corporate
barriers and engaging on a human, open and most importantly honest
basis.
People engaging with you online are often time poor and very good at
seeing through the spin. Just don’t do it!
Drop the formalities and corporate jargon when engaging
online. Be polite, honest and human.
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CHAPTER 5
ACCESSIBILITY
It is not uncommon for many organisations to restrict
employee access to social media sites on work ICT.
This physical restriction of access is something that
needs to be carefully thought about, especially if it
becomes a requirement for certain employees to
interact in online engagement spaces as part of their
role.
Restricting access is like asking a carpenter to do his
job without his hammer. Consider what steps can be
taken to ensure the appropriate personnel have access
to the tools they need to carry out their role effectively,
and document this in your policies and procedures.
Provide the appropriate levels of access to online
tools for employees charged with managing your
organisation’s online presence.
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CHAPTER 6
TRAINING
Like Accessibility, training is another area
that needs to be considered when embarking
on an online engagement process.
At a minimum, there should be processes in
place to ensure your employees are receiving
appropriate training and up-skilling across the
online engagement tools and social media
platforms from a technical perspective, as well
as training on a practice-based perspective.
Provide technical as well as
practice-based training.
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CHAPTER 7
RESOURCING
It is not uncommon for an organisation to “tack on” the
responsibility for managing an organisation’s social media efforts
to an already fully committed staff member, or in some cases, to
the most junior employee just because they already know how to
use Facebook or Twitter!
When embarking in online engagement, here are a few important
questions to ask yourself when it comes to resourcing:
what approach to online engagement do you want to take, i.e. will it
require daily or weekly engagement or facilitation across a number of
different tools or just one?
does the employee(s) have the training and knowledge to represent
your organisation appropriately in the online space?
what mechanisms do you have in place to support your social media
staff, i.e. clear policies and guidelines, appropriate levels of authority,
access to the appropriate tools?
do you have a number of staff trained to support your organisations
social media efforts?
is there a clear position description and adequate role clarity for the
person taking up your organisation’s digital reigns?
Develop clear positions descriptions and
allocate appropriate resources to your
online engagement efforts.
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CHAPTER 8
MEASURING
You’ve started to engage online. That’s great, but
how do you know whether it’s working or not?
Def ining what you want to achieve by going online
is the f irst step in answering this question.
Firstly, you must understand why you are going
online to engage. What are your goals?
Next you need to have some clearly defined KPIs or
targets. What are the definitive targets you will use to
measure against?
Finally you need to have ways of measuring all
of this - both from a qualitative and quantitative
perspective. What tools will you use?
Track and measure your online
engagement activities so that you can
ref ine and improve your performance on
an ongoing basis.
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CHAPTER 9
MONITORING
Monitoring is slightly different from measuring and is just
as, if not more important.
Social media has given everyone a voice in the online space and
people will talk with and about you whether you like it or not. The
sensible thing is to know where and when these conversations
are happening so that you can add your organisation’s voice to
the conversation if necessary.
At the simplest end of the monitoring spectrum, you can at a
minimum set up a Google Alert for your organisation’s name
and some key topics of interest. This option is free, effective and
timely.
There are other paid tools out there that provide more extensive
online monitoring options, such as ability to easily apply
sentiment and group key words into broad topics, etc. Whatever
the case, make sure you are listening to what’s being said.
Have your say in the online conversation by
monitoring your brand and the topics that affect
your organisation online.
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