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

I write about strategies to turn fans into customers and customers into fans. I also share ways to use real-time strategies to spread ideas, influence minds, and build business.

Social Media  |  Public Relations  |  Case Studies  |  Best Practices

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.

TNT 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.