On Monday I shared some background information on our social media efforts here at the World Company, and today I’m sharing our complete Social Media Policy.

Please take a moment to read Monday’s Post to get a clear idea of our overall strategy and how the policy fits as part of those plans.

Our Social Media Committee created the policy in order to help guide the company and our employees. I took the lead in creating the policy, with input from the members of the committee.

The policy is split in to two sections. We define social media, and explain the differences among personal and professional social media accounts. Then we put together some basic guidelines geared toward protecting our company, employees, sources and clients. Basically, we want everyone to use common sense: If you wouldn’t say it in a column or on a postcard or on air or to a customer on the phone, don’t say it on Twitter or Facebook.

The basic guidelines apply to everyone in our company. In addition, each department is adding its own how-to’s. For example, Sunflower Broadband staff focus mostly on customer service, while our newsrooms’ relationship with their communities focuses on news, information and the people that provide or consume them.

After we finished putting the policy and basic guidelines together, Maria Preston-Cargill and Mike Zimmerman in our marketing department organized two “lunch and learn” meetings for the company’s managers and the social media liaisons so that they could preview the policy and provide feedback.

Kelly Calvert, our human resources director, distributed the social media policy early this month to all employees. After three months, the social media committee will review the policy to see if we need to make any changes.

I’m sharing the entire social media policy with you, you can download a PDF of the policy here. Feel free to read it, share it and discuss it in the comments. I’ll try to answer any questions you have.

Ben