Monday, July 20, 2009

Don't Have Social Media Policy for Your Firm Yet? Better Start!

Ignoring the social media revolution is not going to make it go away. Even if you won't want to Twitter or update your status on a Facebook account- chances are your Firm's associates, paralegals and even pother partners will. So how do you keep your company reputation under control? Regulate!

According to a recent post on Kevin O'Keefe's Lexblog, Real Lawyers Have Blogs, the key to success is inclusion of all stakeholders. Associates, paralegals, managing partners, shareholders, partners, client development pro's, PR people, knowledge officers, CTO's, CMO's, and who have you.

Portland Attorney Craig Bachman shared what I thought was a great idea during Lane Powell's Social Media Seminar I had the good fortune of presenting at. Inclusion is the key. Get everyone involved.

As is usually the case, success leaves clues. Craig saw what IBM did in adopting social computing guidelines covering Blogs, wikis, social networks, virtual worlds and social media.

As explained in the intro to IBM Social Computing Guidelines, IBM used a wiki allowing everyone to participate.

In the spring of 2005, IBMers used a wiki to create a set of guidelines for all IBMers who wanted to blog. These guidelines aimed to provide helpful, practical advice—and also to protect both IBM bloggers and IBM itself, as the company sought to embrace the blogosphere. Since then, many new forms of social media have emerged. So we turned to IBMers again to re-examine our guidelines and determine what needed to be modified. The effort has broadened the scope of the existing guidelines to include all forms of social computing.

Getting everyone's input is so important. Young people know the tools. Senior rainmakers know how to engage others and build relationships, both at the heart of real client development. Marketing knows the importance of a brand. And everyone has seen success and failures in social media they can share.

I've not seen tremendous success in law firm use of wiki's. But in the case of formulating a social media policy a wiki like IBM used could be a real winner.

Allow everyone (I mean everyone) to contribute. Sure, kick it off with an outline framing the discussion. Every project needs a starting point. But allow all to participate.

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