As I was presenting today at the Communitelligence conference on social technology, I realized I’ve never actually blogged about policy and code of conduct for social technology. It’s something we help our clients with often and there are some key considerations:

  • While you may create policy and code of conduct elements that specifically address social technology, these should be integrated into your regular code of conduct and existing usage policy
  • It is important to give specific examples of appropriate and inappropriate behaviors in code of conduct
  • Don’t be unnecessarily complex, restrictive, or lengthy in your policy and code of conduct
  • Think broadly about the tools – new technologies will constantly be joining the fray, so think generically rather than specifically about technology tools
  • Think broadly about behaviors – we want employees to demonstrate brand-supportive behaviors in many different ways, not just in our social technology channels, so consider the entire brand experience
  • Don’t discount the legal issues, but work with your legal team to be clear, simple, and definitive

You can’t ignore policy and code of conduct, but you can do it simply, well and strategically.