By Laura Morris
We recently hosted a conference call that gathered progressive marketers from highly regulated industries (like pharma, financial services, and healthcare) to discuss how companies facing strict legal constraints could make the most of social media. Here’s what they suggest:
1. Do No Harm
Regardless of how active (or inactive) your organization plans to be in social media, the marketers on the line unanimously agreed on one thing: Every organization should have a social media use policy in place.
An effective use policy isn’t a novel written in legalese. Most often, it’s a one-pager linked to the company’s code of conduct that explains what’s expected of employees when they engage with social media. Here’s an example from the Mayo Clinic.
The key? Recognizing that your employees will engage in social media (yes, even if you block Facebook at the office) and providing guidance on how they should talk about their relationship with your company when they join the conversation online.
You might also consider taking Intel’s approach—Intel has built out training programs to help employees figure out how to blend policy guidelines with social media practice.
2. Forget That It’s Easier to Ask Forgiveness Than Beg for Permission
Despite operating in a complex (and often ambiguous) regulatory environment, marketers agree that it’s critical to loop the legal team into your social media efforts early on to ensure the organization has a comprehensive risk mitigation plan in place.
The payoff to bringing legal into the fold? It’ll save you time. I know, it feels counterintuitive – but it makes sense. By asking your legal department to “pre-approve” the substance that can feed replies (whether by Tweet or blog comment) to commonly asked questions /concerns, you’ll speed up your response time and make your legal team feel much more comfortable in the process.
3. Start Small, Share Widely
The single biggest piece of advice: Start with small experiments and share credit widely.
Each marketer on our panel spoke about the importance taking advantage of near-term “quick wins” to help build the company’s confidence in social media early on. Short on ideas for how to get started? Hear how Johnson & Johnson selected their first social media experiments to get your wheels turning.
How do you keep up the momentum once you dip your toe in the water? Don’t hog the spotlight. Share credit for early social media victories with your partners in legal, IT, and finance that supported you behind the scenes. One of legal’s biggest gripes with social is that they feel all of the heat and none of the love – do your part to change that and you’ll win advocates across the organization.
Looking for examples of how companies in highly regulated industries are blazing new trails using social media? MLC members can check out the Council’s Social Media Showcase to see how companies like American Express, Dupont, and Wells Fargo are mitigating the risks to take advantage of the opportunity that social media provides.
MLC Members: This post previews some of the nuggets that we’ll cover during our upcoming webinar Cross-Functional Collaboration in Social Media: Strengthening Marketing’s Relationship with Legal. Join us on February 18th to hear panelists from Allstate, Coca-Cola, and Wal-Mart share their tips on managing legal landmines to take advantage of the opportunity social media provides.
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