Comments on: Some perspectives on ESPN’s new "social" media guidelines

By: Kimberly

Kimberly — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 18:00:47 +0000

Adam, I found this blog post very interesting and am interested in communicating offline about this. I can be reach at the above email. Thanks, and I hope to hear back from you.
Best.

By: Social Media Policies in the Corporate World « A Young Professional

Social Media Policies in the Corporate World « A Young Professional — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 03:35:16 +0000

[...] types of business’ seem to be able to have a bit more control. Another blogger has made some excellent points about the creation of policies being dictated by the employees that will be subjected to [...]

By: adamclyde

adamclyde — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 23:25:10 +0000

Olivier. Thanks for the thoughts. I wouldn’t say we’ve had NO issues. We have. But I think they’ve been kept in perspective given the many people engaged and the tremendous amounts of good work around too. And the fact that the community of IBMers who were engaging in these spaces were really the drivers behind the guidelines has helped tremendously to making it a continued success.

By: Olivier Blanchard

Olivier Blanchard — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:33:55 +0000

Fantastic post, Adam.

Command decisions of this sort often happen in an operational vacuum and are thus almost always deeply flawed.

Taking the time to ask real questions, to engage with internal users of Social Media platforms, to truly weigh the pros and cons / risks vs. opportunities of the technology across the entire organization would have probably yielded very different guidelines and policies from ESPN and the USMC.

IBM did it right, and as far as I can tell has had zero issues. (At least no bad press about any incidents.) In sharp contrast, organizations whose command teams make unilateral decisions about things like this invariable turn a precarious situation into a very bad one, not only operationally, but from an image and PR perspective as well.

Your points here are fantastic and well taken.

By: Noah Kuttler

Noah Kuttler — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:41:09 +0000

“The first and only priority is to serve ESPN sanctioned efforts, including sports news, information and content”

To your comment about heavy handed. While it is true (the actions of employees should be to further the company), the wording sounds downright Draconian. Community interaction is the way to go when it comes to establishing policy.

The irony is that ESPN were the ones that changed the game when it came to sports reporting by _not_ sticking to just sports. By making things like SportsCenter more relivent and linked to pop culture and things outside of sports. Apparently they are forgetting their own roots and just simply want to turn the social media into PR feeds. Pass.

By: Tiffany Page

Tiffany Page — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:28:06 +0000

It seems to me that many of the corporate decisions about social media and the use of social media by employees are being made by people who wouldn’t use it in the first place. Perhaps the CEO of ESPN would never tweet s0 it seems perfectly reasonable to him t0 say no tweeting unless ESPN says to do it. It is a relatively new landscape and people are going to make mistakes, but if people are not respected for their professionalism, they are not likely going to stay with their current employer for long!

By: Bilal Jaffery

Bilal Jaffery — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:37:05 +0000

“Don’t create social media guidelines for employees without including employees in process.” Love it, don’t mind me if I quote this.

Social Media is a network effort and without the network supporting it, guidelines are useless.

Great post.