Guidelines to Help You Engage Your Community Online

GUIDELINES TO HELP YOU ENGAGE YOUR COMMUNITY

online

EngagementWWW.TABLETALKENGAGEMENT.COM

INTRODUCTION

Congratulations for taking the leap into the world of online

engagement.

Perhaps your journey to this point required a lot of cajoling

and convincing, but we’re confident that you’ll soon see the

benefits of your decision.

This document outlines some key things to consider when

managing and delivering your online community engagement

project through a range of social media channels.

We hope it helps you develop your own internal procedures

and policies to support your online engagement in line with

your organisation’s goals and strategy…and limitations.

THE PERFECT WORLD SCENARIO!

In a perfect world we would advise

that your organisation take a holistic

approach to developing your social

media and online engagement policies

and procedures, starting at the grass

roots level of company culture and

aligning it with over arching business

strategy.

We can help with that if you need

it, but we are realists, so we’ll start

small with a few practical tips to help

you take your first steps to engaging

online.

GUIDELINES TO HELP YOU ENGAGE YOUR COMMUNITY ONLINE

©TABLETALK ENGAGEMENT PTY LTD 1

REALITY BITES!

The adoption of online engagement and social media participation across

organisations still varies widely. Here are a couple of scenarios, you may be

familiar with one or all of them:

Your organisation actively encourages staff to use social media tools as part of

their job and has policies and procedures that support this approach and social

media participation is woven into the fibre of your organisational culture.

Your organisation imposes a total ban on the use of social media channels in

the workplace, including blocking access to sites such as Facebook, You Tube

and Twitter on company computers.

Your organisation is somewhere in between scenario one and two. It’s entering

the world of online engagement, but has yet to fully integrate the practice across

its business operations and processes.

We have found that for an organisation entering the world of online

engagement, scenario three is often the reality.

GETTING STARTED

Some of these points are practice based, while others are purely operational

or technical. Either way, to participate in a successful online engagement, they

should all be considered.



TIP

Because processes are often fluid and need to be changed periodically, online Wikis are a great way to manage this.

By enabling a group of people within your organisation to actively contribute to the ongoing development of your internal processes online in a Wiki, it is more likely to be a success and reflect the practicality of what it means to engage online in your organisation.

Treat your social media policies as living documents, updating them as your organisation evolves, business strategies change, technologies advance and your social media skills increase.

CHAPTER 1

A FEW POINTS ON POLICY DEVELOPMENT

Because the use of online tools and participation in social media does not apply to each

employee equally, it is not unreasonable for organisations to need multiple social media

policy documents for different purposes and audiences. Such documents could include:

• Social media for employees: broad overview of expectations of employees

participating in social media, not necessarily on behalf of their employee or as part of

their role.

• Guidelines for employees working in social media: specifically outlines guidelines

for employees representing their employee through dedicated organisational social

media channels.

• A community policy: the terms and conditions expected of the public when

participating in an organisation’s online space. This usually includes Terms of Use,

explanation on the site moderation, privacy policy, use of personal information etc.

• Manager Training document: the inclusion of social media training for all managers,

regardless of whether they are directly involved in social media for the organisation,

ensures that their is a high level of understanding of social media across the entire

organisation as opposed to simply siloed in the corporate communications or

community relations team.

Banishing social media is not a Policy. Provide the right balance of

empowerment & accountability. After all trust & empowerment are

inherently less expensive than control.



Reviewing policies, procedures and protocols

The trends in online engagement and the tools that

people use are constantly changing. To keep up with

these, it is important to periodically review your policies

and procedures for your online engagement activities.

A statement within your policy that outlines this review

process is important.

Define your Scope

This links back to our first point on policy development.

When setting up your policies and procedures for online

engagement, it is important to clarify their scope, or

who and what they relate to.

For example, if you are an organisation participating

in limited online and social media engagement for the

purpose of a particular project, it is important to make

that clear.

A scope statement in this case could include

parameters such as “this policy/procedure applies to all

communication staff with formal roles on the x project

and governs all communication undertaken online in

relation to the x project”.

Link to related policies

Many of the rules and expectations that apply to your

traditional offline communication channels should,

and most likely would, also apply to your online

communication channels.

For example, the following policies would be

applicable across both channels:

• Privacy Policy

• Legal Policy

• Ethics Policy

• Sexual Harassment Policy

• Media Policy

• Communications Policy

Refer to and integrate relevant policies within your

social media policy, and make sure the already

established policies are reviewed for their relevance to

your new social media policy.

Integrate your social media policies with other

relevant policies already established in your

organisation.



CHAPTER 2

SETTING CLEAR PROJECT OBJECTIVES

Objectives are a great way of mapping out early what you want to

achieve with a consultation and then using these goals to shape

other processes, activities and requirements needed to successfully

meet them.

For example if one of your objectives is to “maintain a positive

relationship with the community by providing accurate and timely

information”, you will need to have systems and procedures in place to

ensure this happens. These could include:

• developing a set of FAQs to ensure your team is able to respond

quickly to commonly asked community queries

• assigning responsibility to a team member to respond within a

certain timeframe to community queries and making this part of their

annual KPIs

• ensuring community expectations are established early by

publicising your promise to them. For example: We will respond

to community enquiries within x hours between 8am to 5pm on

Monday to Friday.

Use project objectives to help shape your social media processes and

activities.



TIPS

Registering the site: most of these social media tools need to be linked to a

private account and email when they are registered. Consider who may be

the most appropriate person for this role and ensure you have processes in

place to manage those corporate sites if that person ever decided to leave.

Branding: it is important that all your social media sites reflect your

organisation’s brand. Maintain the same standard across these sites as

you would your traditional marketing and communications collateral, from

naming conventions to look and feel.

Verification: many large corporations find themselves being parodied by

fake accounts – Apple and BP famously among them. While there are some

processes you can follow with sites such as Twitter and Facebook to rectify

these situations, you are never guaranteed a response. One way to ensure

authenticity is to provide a link to your corporate site in your social media

bios and vice versa links your social media accounts on your corporate site.

That way, anyone who decides to dig a little further can be guaranteed of

your authenticity at least.

Managing your tools: there are some great platforms out there that help you

manage your selected online tools from one spot - Hootsuite, Tweetdeck

and Networked Blogs to name a few. The key point being, make these

technologies do all the heavy lifting for you and take advantage of the clever

options available to streamline your online activities as much as possible.

CHAPTER 3

TOOLS

The choice of social media tools is endless.

And just because they are available, it does

not mean you have to try to use them all.

While many of the most popular social media

tools – think Facebook, Twitter, You Tube and

LinkedIn, are free to use, they cost you in the

most important currency we have – that of

time.

The tools you use relates directly back to your

project objectives, where your audience is

hanging out on the web and most importantly

what you are able to manage in terms of

resources. If you decide to set up other

social media channels, in addition to your

EngagementHQ site, check out our tips.

One tool does not f it all! Choose yours

wisely & link them with your target

audience, your resource capacity & your

project objectives & strategy.



CHAPTER 4

LANGUAGE AND APPROACH

The type of language that is most effective in an online engagement

space is often in direct contradiction to the formal business speak

many organisations use across their traditional communication.

Long, formal and over-edited copy simply puts people off. When writing

copy for your site, write punchy copy that has clear calls to action and

grabs attention . Every word counts, but too many and you’ll lose your

audience.

A final word on language. Think about the type of audience you are

trying to engage with and adjust your tone accordingly. Connecting with

communities online, whether it is through an EngagementHQ site, Twitter

or Facebook, or other platform, means dropping some of those corporate

barriers and engaging on a human, open and most importantly honest

basis.

People engaging with you online are often time poor and very good at

seeing through the spin. Just don’t do it!

Drop the formalities and corporate jargon when engaging

online. Be polite, honest and human.



CHAPTER 5

ACCESSIBILITY

It is not uncommon for many organisations to restrict

employee access to social media sites on work ICT.

This physical restriction of access is something that

needs to be carefully thought about, especially if it

becomes a requirement for certain employees to

interact in online engagement spaces as part of their

role.

Restricting access is like asking a carpenter to do his

job without his hammer. Consider what steps can be

taken to ensure the appropriate personnel have access

to the tools they need to carry out their role effectively,

and document this in your policies and procedures.

Provide the appropriate levels of access to online

tools for employees charged with managing your

organisation’s online presence.



CHAPTER 6

TRAINING

Like Accessibility, training is another area

that needs to be considered when embarking

on an online engagement process.

At a minimum, there should be processes in

place to ensure your employees are receiving

appropriate training and up-skilling across the

online engagement tools and social media

platforms from a technical perspective, as well

as training on a practice-based perspective.

Provide technical as well as

practice-based training.



CHAPTER 7

RESOURCING

It is not uncommon for an organisation to “tack on” the

responsibility for managing an organisation’s social media efforts

to an already fully committed staff member, or in some cases, to

the most junior employee just because they already know how to

use Facebook or Twitter!

When embarking in online engagement, here are a few important

questions to ask yourself when it comes to resourcing:

what approach to online engagement do you want to take, i.e. will it

require daily or weekly engagement or facilitation across a number of

different tools or just one?

does the employee(s) have the training and knowledge to represent

your organisation appropriately in the online space?

what mechanisms do you have in place to support your social media

staff, i.e. clear policies and guidelines, appropriate levels of authority,

access to the appropriate tools?

do you have a number of staff trained to support your organisations

social media efforts?

is there a clear position description and adequate role clarity for the

person taking up your organisation’s digital reigns?

Develop clear positions descriptions and

allocate appropriate resources to your

online engagement efforts.



CHAPTER 8

MEASURING

You’ve started to engage online. That’s great, but

how do you know whether it’s working or not?

Def ining what you want to achieve by going online

is the f irst step in answering this question.

Firstly, you must understand why you are going

online to engage. What are your goals?

Next you need to have some clearly defined KPIs or

targets. What are the definitive targets you will use to

measure against?

Finally you need to have ways of measuring all

of this - both from a qualitative and quantitative

perspective. What tools will you use?

Track and measure your online

engagement activities so that you can

ref ine and improve your performance on

an ongoing basis.



CHAPTER 9

MONITORING

Monitoring is slightly different from measuring and is just

as, if not more important.

Social media has given everyone a voice in the online space and

people will talk with and about you whether you like it or not. The

sensible thing is to know where and when these conversations

are happening so that you can add your organisation’s voice to

the conversation if necessary.

At the simplest end of the monitoring spectrum, you can at a

minimum set up a Google Alert for your organisation’s name

and some key topics of interest. This option is free, effective and

timely.

There are other paid tools out there that provide more extensive

online monitoring options, such as ability to easily apply

sentiment and group key words into broad topics, etc. Whatever

the case, make sure you are listening to what’s being said.

Have your say in the online conversation by

monitoring your brand and the topics that affect

your organisation online.



Documents

Guidelines to Help You Engage Your Community Online