Following my article yesterday about how the Local Government Association (LGA) has introduced a Social Media Friendly Mark, I asked LGA whether they would be open to the idea of other people using their initiative.
If you missed the article you can catch up here, but in a nutshell, it is a logo that comms pros can use internally to let employees know whether the information is ok to be shared via social media.
I think this is such a smart idea and this morning I tweeted LGAComms to ask them whether they would be happy for other people to adopt what they are doing and use their mark. I can see the value in having something like this within companies outside of local government and think it will work well.
I’m delighted to say that they tweeted me back to say yes: “Glad you like it Rachel! We created it for #localgov, but as the spirit is kept, no problem with it being used more widely”
Thank you to LGA, the spirit of sharing underpins social media and you’re a great example. This guidance and mark should help internal comms pros define what is appropriate to be communicated both inside and outside of their organisations.
There are lots of different logos available – e.g. this meeting/event is Social Media Friendly, I’ve used some of them on this page so you can see the variety.
So… go forth and get marking up! You can read the full guidance and download all the images via the Knowledge Hub. What do you think? Will you use it? Do let me know what you think by commenting below, Rachel
First published on All Things IC blog 30 March 2013.
Staff usually default to erring on the side of caution when it comes to sharing work-related content online because they’re terrified of getting into trouble. So any tool that gives staff more clarity about what they should and shouldn’t share online is certainly welcome.
LGA are definitely onto something here but they’ve approached it completely backwards. A ‘social media friendly’ seal of approval assumes a starting point of ‘nothing work-related should be shared online (EXCEPT things they give the seal of approval to)’. This is a typical outdated, top-down local government approach.
A more useful approach would assume a starting point of ‘everything is sharable online (EXCEPT things they explicitly want to keep private internally)’
Thanks for your comment James, I can see where you’re coming from. I think that clarity is the most important thing and people can choose how to implement it to best suit their organisation. In my mind, as long as everyone knows the rules, it should minimise confusion and hopefully make things clearer all round, Rachel
Hi James – We are deliberately trying not be perscriptive about how organisations adopt the mark, but it’s our hope that those who use it believe in the ethos in freeing up social media use wherever and whenever possible.
Here’s one scenario we envisaged:
Often town halls can be quite grand and as a member of the public you can be unsure of protocols etc – perhaps you are not allowed to even have your phone on?
If there were signs outside a council meeting saying Social Media Friendly it would give you the added reassurance that it was OK to take out your smart phone and write on your Facebook wall that you were there.
Here’s a link to the guidance we developed which hopefully gives you a sense of our approach http://bit.ly/ReLFtB.
Thanks for this! Great idea, I am just seeing if I can get it on our slides before our event next week. Not sure if I am too late or not but sending it over.
Either way we will make it clear that we welcome social media – as I think you so right may need to really feel they have permissions before they are willing to ‘put themselves’ out there as it were.
I missed this piece, great idea to encourage sharing of certain types of information we communicate internally. Will look to adopt this ASAP in my case, thanks!