TNT employees Social Media Guidelines: A great example of can-do attitude

Over the past week, I've talked about the conflict between legal staff and communicators when if comes to real-time media.

My post When lawyers stupidly get in the way of marketing kicked off the series followed by my video interview with Vivienne Storey Is social media worth the risk? A lawyer's perspective.

Next up is a terrific set of social media guidelines from TNT. Rather than saying "no," the legal and HR staffs, communicators, and management of TNT have created an environment of "yes."

Notice how clean and simple the TNT employees Social Media Guidelines document is. No Times New Roman 12-point single-spaced legal document here! Also notice that it is available to anyone on the public web.

Here are some additional posts with links to other organizations' guidelines to check out. Some of these blog posts are dated but still interesting examples. These organizations created guidelines as much as four years ago!

Video conversation with John Suffolk, CIO of UK government, on social media and data mashup (2010)

IBM blogging guidelines and the company's 3,000 employee bloggers (2007)

US Navy issues one of the first social media guidelines in the government sector (2008)

As I travel around the world, it is clear that organizations everywhere are struggling with real-time media. Some, like TNT, are positively thriving.

These global examples are important – Vivienne is based in Sydney but advises multinationals, TNT is in the Netherlands but operates worldwide. The UK government clearly has constituents everywhere.

Many thanks to my friend Remco Janssen who introduced me to the work of Cecilia Scolaro, online communication specialist for TNT Group, who was instrumental in working on the TNT guidelines.

Comments

[Dave Madsen]

David, thanks for sharing this. It's a breath of fresh air to read the TNT guidelines because it treats employees like partners in making their company successful.

[Franklin_Adam]

Hi David,

Great interview with Vivienne yesterday, thanks.  Here's a tool that you and your readers may be interested in.

SOCIAL MEDIA GUIDELINES TEMPLATE
http://www.bluewiremedia.com.au/free-social-media-guidelines-template

There are 3 options:  
1. Unrestricted
2. Moderate
3. Conservative

They are editable Word documents and free to download. They are released under Creative Commons so you can share and edit to your heart's content!

Vivienne Storey (Blands Law), Alan Jones (Qudos) and our guys at Bluewire Media have collaborated to produce these tools for you, free of charge,

We hope you find them useful,
Adam

[David Meerman Scott]

Dave -- Indeed it is. Glad you liked it.

Adam -- Thanks so much for posting this tool.

[Unitseven]

You may have had some trouble with Adam's link, it has a space at the end and doesn't work.

For his Social Media Guidelines Template try this:
http://www.bluewiremedia.com.au/free-social-media-guidelines-template

[David Meerman Scott]

Thanks so much Unitseven. I fixed it in Adam's comment too.

[شات]

Excellent post Thanks your article was really interesting and it was very relevant to for answering my questions will definitely read more of your posts in the future

[krysia]

Thanks for posting this, this subject has been on my mind a lot. I work for a large outdoor retailer and blog about climbing http://venturesomekrysia.com/ I was hesitating about disclosing where I work because as a woman, I was afraid of attracting stalkers. I did finally add it to my bio, because I don't want to seem unethical. However, even though I sometimes write about gear, my day job has nothing to do with my Web presence.

[Website Designers Brisbane]

The tool which is shared by Blue Wire Media is a good to manage all the things and it is a good example.