Why don’t we turn it around and look at some criteria that should be part of any social media policy:

1. Simple & common sense: don’t make it too complex. That’s what I really like about the social media policy of Coca Cola. It’s just 10 simple rules. The full document is no longer than 3 pages. And the content is just common sense.
2. Positive: Your policy should make people enthusiastic. If your policy is full of stuff people shouldn’t do, well, the result will be pretty predictable: they won’t do anything out of fear of doing something wrong. Engage your employees to go out there and to promote the great things of your company.
3. Facilitating: Help your employees to deal with this new medium. It starts with giving people the proper education. We train our employees in almost everything except the usage of social media. Train them to increase the self confidence of your team. Next to that, tell them the type of words, sentences you would like them to use when they talk about your company. By offering them the right tools, training and vocabulary, people will know what to do.
4. Respect, listen & be open: make sure people respect each other, respect competition, respect other opinions. A social media policy is about introducing ‘openness’ as a company value. We’re open to other people’s opinions and embrace them where we can. Listen to what others tell you and see if you can take their feedback forward. Listening is not enough, taking feedback from the outside world back into your company is what this is all about.
5. The three magic beliefs: Finally, there are three magic believes when it comes to online conversations: always be positive, say “Thank you” when needed and say “I’m sorry” if you screwed up.

Simple rules that help you to turn every situation into an opportunity for your organizaion.

1. What is the power of ‘conversations’ and ‘social media’ for your organization?

Social media, and conversations via these media, are a reality in today’s society. It’s clear that social media are here to stay and that it’s not just a passing trend…

The impact of media was very important when the Ghent police force was reformed. Especially the impact of the television series ‘Flikken’ (‘Cops’) is noteworthy; people started talking in a very personal way about ‘their police force’ and ‘their cops’. It was the perfect foundation to join the conversation with our citizens.

I believe that the impact of social media today is even bigger. As a consequence, we want to spread our vision on this topic to create a support system internally. Ghent is the largest student city in Belgium. We have to be innovative; we have to keep on reaching out to young people, and start involving them by making use of these new forms of media.

2. Who convinced you to start thinking about concrete actions?

My 15-year-old nephew did. I’ve been looking at our police force through his eyes for years now. It helped me to see certain things in a different perspective.

From his very own bedroom, Matisse can play videogames with people from around the globe or get in touch with peers from all over the world. So don’t tell me youngsters are not social anymore. They have much more social contacts than previous generations, and we shouldn’t be afraid of this evolution. We have to think about the opportunities.

3. How exactly do you leverage the power of conversations and social media? And what is the underlying purpose?

In my paper “A social media strategy for police forces” I specifically described all social media options for our police force. It deals with job information (recruitment), passing on traffic information, online availability for citizens (a virtual form of local police work) and an increased accessibility for young people (student inspectors).

The underlying philosophy is the ‘community-oriented police care’ – program, a model that takes into account the input of citizens, solves problems more efficiently and above all: emphasizes partnership.

The police force is a governmental organization, but that should not limit us in paying attention to developments in the corporate business world. The paper I wrote is a vision for the future. I support the vision of a corporate communication for each communication department.

4. What real-life examples illustrate the importance of the dialogue?

We have experienced a number of real-life examples lately: the Ghent mayor addressing Dutch football fans via Youtube, controversial pictures of police officers during the City Parade appearing on Facebook,…

We are using social media in a proactive way as well: through a number of blogs that we created, our projects can reach an audience that is interested and committed, people who could not easily be involved before. The “Flikken” (Cops) comic fanpage for example is a success on Facebook. Today, we can reach target groups and age categories that were very hard to involve in the past.

5. What are the key factors for success?

Our presence on social platforms does not remain unseen. I get an increasing number of official questions on my Facebook page for example. Questions and comments that I actually have to forward to other departments within our police force and even to other local police teams, since Facebook reaches many citizens outside the Ghent area of course.

We get lots of positive reactions from other police forces. And also from the academic & corporate world: we collaborate with university students on several projects, and I am invited at different fora to talk about our vision on this matter.

Success is mainly in the cross-media story. On the one hand, social media allows us to pass on information much faster and easier, also to regular media. We are available non-stop and we can react to questions and remarks immediately . On the other hand, by using our own media we can share news and information that is of less interest for regular media.

6. Who takes the lead internally? Who are the conversation managers within your organization?

We are still in an experimental phase, in which we are carefully trying out social fora and platforms. The official start of the social media implementation is scheduled after the appointment of the new Superintendant in March 2011.

Within this new vision, we are currently building a structure of communication managers in different police departments (traffic department, criminal investigation department, youth departments, local police inspectors…). That way we want to achieve a united management and a shared responsibility.

7. ‘Anyone’ can start a conversation ‘anytime’. So how do you deal with the 24/7 context?

The 24/7 context is not new for us; the police department is organized to be present all the time, and to start the conversation ‘anytime’.

8. What KPIs do you keep in mind when measuring the impact of your actions?

As I said before, we are still experimenting in order to learn more about the possibilities of conversations & social media. That is why, at this stage, we do not measure nor keep track of structured results. We intend to do so in the near future, because it’s of vital importance. Fortunately, we can collaborate with the Ghent University and the Artevelde Hogeschool students to set up our measurements.

9. What are the key aspects of your social media policy and what exactly is the power of that policy?

A number of guidelines need to be followed. We want to provide something to hold on to for both our professional communicators and for our people who are actively online in their spare time. The guidelines are based on our mission, the vision and the values, that were determined by the department management of our police district.

The 5 following guidelines help to avoid most problems:

• Transparency: identify yourself and write in your own name (cfr. ‘Join as a peer’ – Steven Van Belleghem). Clarify your relation to the subject. Do not create false messages or fake accounts to communicate about the Ghent police department.
• Respect the copyright laws, brand laws, publicity laws and other laws: do not copy other people’s texts without their explicit consent. Only quote other people if you explicitly mention their name. Do not claim someone else’s rights.
• Responsible use of technology: do not use (or associate with) websites or software that use adware, malware, viruses, spyware or excessive tracking software.
• Respect your audience: do not publish any false, misleading, obscene, blasphemous, belittling, vulgar, discriminating, threatening, bullying, insulting, hateful or humiliating information on online platforms.
• Look before you leap: if you are on the verge of publishing something that you are not 100% certain about, read these guidelines and the following ones again. If still in doubt, do not publish anything. Postpone it and talk about it with someone.

10. What are mistakes you’ve made in this context that can be avoided by others?

The biggest ‘mistake’ we made is that, because of our burning enthusiasm , we might have been a little too fast in spreading our vision on social media & conversations. Our desire to get started was based on the enthusiasm of a number of key people, without having the necessary strong bearing surface within the organization.

The beginning of learning: a motive, a mission: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)

Thanks for sharing your viewpoints Steven!

Now we are 2010 and some companies really didn’t get the message. It even scares the hell out of them, so they wanted to proof that they could still control things. This means that in 2010 we have a new mission towards larger enterprises: let go of the ‘illusion of control’.

The policies that companies have in place to control word-of-mouth of their employees (like blocking Facebook, Twitter, …) is not working and is even decreasing the business value of these companies.

By blocking social media two things happen:

1. Your lousy employees find other ways to kill their time and are still not productive (you should fire them instead of blocking useful sites)
2. Your superstar employees don’t have the means to express their positive attitude towards consumers, suppliers and future employees, which decreases the value of your growth.

These people are the means necessary to promote your brand. A policy to stop people from communicating about your company is the biggest illusion there is in corporate life. This is the metaphor (I love metaphors ) I like to convince people about this.

Find yourself a wet piece of soap and find out what works best to hold the piece of soap: grab it as hard as you can or just open your hand and place the piece of soap on it….

• Who should we appoint as our Conversation Manager?
• What impact will Conversation Management have on our company structure?

Understanding the vision of the Conversation Manager is easy, but its implementation within the framework of an organization is much more complex. And it is the personality of the Conversation Manager which makes the difference between success and failure. He looks beyond social media and understands that word-of-mouth is the most important driver of growth.

Download the extra chapter now and find out if your company is ready for the Conversation Manager.

I would like to share some of our key take aways, conclusions & questions we had after a day of very interactive & inspiring discussions. Feel free to add, comment or share these.

1. What do you want people to say about your brand: it’s a simple question, but so hard to make it concrete for brands/companies. The reflex is to start with the internal perspective rather than answering this very simple question. Most discussion about conversation management are about the how and the tools, but it’s impossible to answer those if you don’t know what the end goal is. Really, try this one at work: you’ll be surprised how difficult it is
2. Certainty to see verses opportunity to see: letting go the ‘illusion of the big numbers’ remains a challenge. The typical question remains: should I pay attention to 2000 people because we have a penetration of 2 million people. To deal with this, we used the volume. For most companies 10% of the consumers are accountable for 90% of the volume. So, if your penetration is 2 million, the real activation potential is probably closer to 200.000. Getting this in the right perspective remains challenging.
3. Global versus local conversation management remains a challenge where we didn’t really find a concrete answer to, maybe some of you can share insights about this.
4. Observe: JUST DO IT, still too many people are not actively using social media and are making decision about it. Let’s stop that for once and for all
5. It’s about people, not about technology: people talk to people. People are no silo’s, they talk through different media with each other. Believe it or not, but the ones who don’t use Facebook actually know people who are using it…strange isn’t it.
6. Joining the conversation can use some simple rule: Always be positive, learn to say thank you and sorry
7. Don’t solve everything online: it’s good to pull a discussion offline to really help someone further It’s okay to give your organization a trial period. Decision about social media shouldn’t be overrated as well. So, if you don’t fully agree with each other: agree on a test period and re-valuate after a few weeks.
8. 5%-95% rule works: to move forward, be explicit about the situations in which you won’t react until consulting some other stakeholders in the company. In most cases, people agree on 95% of the cases, but don’t move because of 5% of the cases. Writing the 5% down helps to avoid this
9. Copy the existing business processes where possible: let’s not change everything because of social media, but find a way that social media can tap into everything
10. Real openness is a challenge, but metaphor works: which restaurant do you trust most, one with an open kitchen or one with a closed kitchen. Besides that: if you have an open kitchen you have external pressure to keep things clean and friendly.
11. Don’t feed the trolls: if people are bashing you without a reason, they probably had a bad childhood and we don’t need to give them further attention
12. Superstar Company: create a company with as many people as possible who are on social media to boost the openness and the visibility of your brand. In the end: they are the brand ambassadors and build the brand positioning.
13. We all have a pot of gold waiting for us: consumers who are functionally satisfied about our company are the growth potential. Find a way to activate them and the pot of gold will be yours.
14. There is no control, but many departments still have an illusion of control by blocking stuff. Convince them about the illusion and confront them with the brutal facts

“If you are Disney, Apple or Studio100 your story is easy, but for us… well, it’s difficult,” is a common sentence among many marketers. Now, last week I had the pleasure to give a workshop at Studio100 and they said exactly the same thing. “For us it is more difficult with these brands of ours and because we are so mediatized, if you are a FMCG brand, it is a lot easier.

And you hear this everywhere: B2B companies think that it’s easier in B2C and the other way around, the big brands think it is easier for small brands and the other way around. Funny, isn’t?

Conclusion: it’s not difficult for anyone. Question is: where are your priorities, how dedicated are you and how far are you willing to go?

Since conversation management should be a very flexible and spontaneous matter, we cannot settle for a check-double check approach. We have to act ‘in the moment’ to be relevant for our customers. Remember: it’s a 24/7 world, you have to be prepared.

Hence, it’s essential to agree upon a conversational policy that works before you start, instead of having to discuss all activities with legal departments and other regulators. Once everyone is aligned, you can establish the necessary flexibility.

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