IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO DEVELOP

A SOCIAL

MEDIA POLICY
ByTedJanusz
otzebue, Alaks4 is so close to another continent, politician Sarah palin almost could have been describing it when she said, 'You can actualiy see Russia from land here in Alaskal' It's just above the Arctic Circle and the village has never seen 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Google Maps says there are no roads traversing the 549 miles between it and

Anchorage. The route can onlybe flown.

And so I will fly to Kotzebue, remote fishingviliage with a population of3,200 people, to speak to an association there on, of all things, developing a social media policy
a

gives

ence either

friend or an associate a positive referduringwork hours or on their own time on a social media site such as Linkedln. "It may appear that the company endorses the individual
being recommended," she says. "This

"We know how prolific

social media is becoming, es-

could create a liability situation" for your company.

pecially in a far-flung area like ours which needs to reach out to the resr olthe world." the organizer told me.'nVe're justtryingto be proactive." Ifdeveloping a social media policy is ofinterest to a distant fishing village in Alaska, just maybe it should be of interestto your parkingfaciiity as we11.

CreatingYour Social Media Policy Before you think that developing a social
media policy can be about as exciting as finally makingthat long-awaited trip to the dentist for root canal surgery, let me assure you that there is no need to painstakingly desigr-r a social media policy for your parking facility entirely from scratch. To see what other organizations both like and unlike yours have already done, you can visit a website that currently houses about
250 actual social media policies: socialmediagovernance.

Prohibition
"We don't need a social media policyi'you might say. "We just prohibit employees from visiting Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and every other social networking site you discuss in this column that we
happen to come across." Just like Prohibition during the 1920s didn't work in the U.S., neither will blocking all social media sites at the corporate firewall. After all, if your empioyees can't access their favorite Internet locations on their corporate-issued desktops or laptops, they will simply pull out their smartphones and personal tablets to get to those social media sites. Don't believe me? About 150 million users in the U.S. access Facebook so1ely from

TED JANUSZ is a professional speaker

on the topic of "Social Media for

com. The owner of the website, Chris Boudreaux, has categorized these sociai media policies into six industry groupings and offers a separate group ofgeneral guidelines and templates as we11. The ohio State University (oSU) Medical Center, in

their Policy and Procedure Manual, for example, tells

employees, "What you should do: Be authentic. State

Baby Boomers," author, and marketing consultant. He is the author of the Soc/a/

that it is your opinion. Uniess authorized to speak on

behalf of the medical center you must state thatthe views expressed are your own. Be responsible and act ethically. When you are at work. your primary responsibiliry is the work of the medical center. "Whatyou should never disclose: Confidential OSU information. If you find yourself wonderingwhether you
can talk about something you learned at

Media Marketing
Guide for Parking

mobile devices each month.

'You can'tblame employees forviolatingpolicies and rules that don't officially exist," says Debra Littlejohn

Professronals, which is a free publication

for lPl members and

can be downloaded from parking.org/ socialmediaguide. He can be reached at
j a ri x s i.r

ted(@
$n

Shinder, a former police officer and criminal justice instructor who nowworks as an IT analyst.'You need a social networking policy that explicitly lays out what is and isn't permissible, both on the company's network and outside of it if they are presenting themselves as
representatives of the company." Shinder discusses a situation in which an employee

work-don't."

o J

r*.${ r leii

s.

You'll find many such examples, and it's easy-and smart-to build your policy from there. Take the lead from a remote fishing village, as well as from a small online village of sample social media
policies, and protectl,our

I t
I

*iim or

614.440.7487.

organization.

E u a l E O

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TNTERNATTONAL PARKTNG TNSTITUTE I

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