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ation to help assess if real communications
objectives are being achieved.
4) Policies and governance It is essential
for every organisation to set-up appropriate
policies and governance to cover
online communications and social media.
Even if an organisation makes a conscious
Even if an organisation
makes a
conscious decision
not to participate
in the social web, it
must accept that it is
already part of the
conversation.
decision not to participate in the social
web it must accept that it is already part of
the conversation. Its employees, investors,
customers, suppliers, regulators and every
other stakeholder group are already using
social media and social networks so it is
no longer possible to simply opt-out. The
best social media policies are ones that set
out to empower and permit rather than
those that restrict and prohibit. However,
it is noticeable from recent research in
Europe (see the European Communication
Monitor, 2011) that this is not being
wholly enacted by organisations.
A mistake made by many organisations
is to simply search the web and ‘take’
WORKING FIELDS OF COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT
THEORETICAL APPROACH
one of the many public examples of social
media policies that have been published
by companies. Although these policies can
create inspiration and guidance they cannot
simply be adapted and used. If a social
media policy is to be truly empowering
and enabling it needs to be created to fit
the people within the organisation. It has
to take account of their skills and beliefs.
It also has to take account of the organisation’s
culture, values and the societies in
which it operates. It has to take account
of the laws and regulations governing that
organisation. One of the best approaches
to creating a social media policy was established
by IBM in 2005 when it ‘crowdsourced’
its policy by involving employees
and creating a bottom-up policy.
5) Identify resources and implications
on organisational structure
A traditional online communications approach
is to capture stakeholders and
ensure that they stay on your website for
as long as possible in order to persuade
them to take action – whether to buy a
product, apply for a job or support a policy.
The new approach is to recognise that
it is engagement and interaction that will
help to secure that action or behavioural
change and that it is more important to
offer stakeholders content that they value,
wherever it might be.
There are numerous structures that
organisations can deploy in order to effectively
implement online communications
strategies. The first is the centralised structure
that attempts to impose a traditional
organisational structure on an increasingly
fragmented world where historical