By Joanna Belbey.
“How much bandwidth do we need?” is one of the first questions that senior management asks when firms consider setting up programs allowing regulated employees to using social media.
The answer naturally that depends on the scope of the program, the technology you use to support your program, the number of social networks that you plan to use, the number of people who will be using social media, the amount of content you plan to share and the Social Media Employee Usage Policy that you develop.
Here are some guidelines to help you get started with your planning:
- Assume one full time project manager to champion the program for the first six months.
- Create a Social Media Working Group that includes all of your key stakeholders that may include corporate communications, marketing, legal, compliance, risk, IT, data security, human resources and the lines of business. Plan on meeting once a week for an hour for six months.
- Involve the Social Media Working Group to craft and approve social media usage policies.
- Illicit a part time commitment for a technical liaison from IT / Data Security to evaluate third party technology vendors and to oversee the deployment of new technology.
- Tap your Social Media Working Group to test new technology.
- Adapt an existing process used to pre-review marketing content to create a workflow process for Compliance to review content for social media. Establish parameters for volume and turnaround times in advance.
- For social media use policies that allow “an authentic voice”, ie, user generated content, plan on asking the compliance department to review individuals’ content daily.
- If individuals only post only pre-reviewed “canned” messages, less bandwidth from Compliance is required, but, campaigns may generate less engagement.
- Going forward, include social media content in the existing content review cycle of other types of materials.
- Engage either the Marketing Communications or Corporate Communications teams to develop content. Many firms start by tweaking their existing content to make it appropriate for social media. Others hire third parties to create original content. Some firms do both. Think of a social media as just another type of ongoing marketing campaign when determining resources (for example, copywriter, agency, in-house staff).
- Dedicate resources to monitor your corporate site and engage with followers. As social media doesn’t take vacations or weekends off, work through how to support these activities during off hours.
- Ask your Public Relations team to include social media within their existing crisis communications plan.
- Think through training requirements based on the culture of your firm. You may elect to use vendor supplied training programs. Or in some cases, you can tap your house training department to develop and conduct customized training.
- Some users need more help than others. Assign someone to answer questions on how to get started on social media after the initial training.
- Schedule periodic reporting and analyses.
That’s it! By defining your staffing requirements in advance, you will ease management’s mind and be able to get your social media program up and rolling.
This post was provided by Joanna Belbey. As Social Media and Compliance Specialist for Actiance, Inc, Joanna Belbey helps regulated firms use social media effectively while complying with rules and regulations. Joanna is an enthusiastic user of social media (follow her on Twitter @belbey) and her background includes leading the development and delivery of more than 350 compliance educational programs per year for Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). Connect with her on Linkedin.
Actiance delivers a unified platform that allows firms to manage all electronic communications and collaboration. This article appeared previously on the Actiance Blog July, 2014. View the original article here.
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