According to this article in The Drum, only 24% of companies give guidance as to what can and cannot be posted on Social Networking sites.
We know how powerful Social Media is; we’ve also blogged previously how you cannot control the conversation. Making sure that people who work for you know what can and can’t be said or posted in the Social Media arena frees your employees as they know what the boundaries are. Instead of wondering if they can, for example, post the picture taken at a company get together they’ll know straight away that they can as they have been trained in what sort of postings are acceptable.
It doesn’t all have to be company based postings either.  It’s a rare day when the official Betfair Poker twitter posts about poker (it’s actually a rare day if they post anything grounded in reality) but it’s fun, it’s entertaining and the person behind it knows exactly what they can and can’t post, whch gives the twitter account the freedom to operate within those boundaries in whichever way it wants. It’s an innovative account with a highly imaginative person operating it.
Making sure that everyone who works for the company knows what they can post on both company and their private accounts isn’t some Draconian measure. (Of course when we say private accounts we only mean guidelines in terms of company-related postings) You might not be able to control the message or conversation, but you can avoid people overhearing snippets that aren’t a true reflection of your company and values!
A set of guidelines and a day of training can avoid days of  future bad publicity.