These sad employees aren't allowed to use social media at work. Could their boss help them use it to be more productive?

A recent survey reveals that social media remains a challening obstacle for employers and employees to tackle. Who’s surprised? According to the survey, “half of companies have not set out a specific policy for workers’ online social networking activities.” And one-quarter of the 800 professionals surveyed claimed their organization has had to discipline an employee for activities on social networks. Yucky stuff.

So what’s to be done? Employers, here’s some advice:

1. Throw out your draconian internet rules. Unless legal or other rare circumstances require it, don’t completely prohibit your employees’ access to Facebook, LinkedIn or other social networks simply because you’re afraid they might use them for nefarious or time-wasting purposes. Social networking can be used to grow your business (if your employees are educated how to do so).

2. Use social media (and your employees’ attraction to it)  to your advantage. Brainstorm with your staff and find out ways to use social media in your marketing or sales campaigns. You could require your employees to connect with at least one potential business client on LinkedIn each day, or have a couple workers update and maintain your company’s Facebook page twice a week. Don’t be afraid of social media. Use it.

3. Talk to your staff openly about your company’s social media expectations and requirements. It’s fine to make rules about Facebook or Twitter usage and formulate effective company policies that protect your business from rogue or irresponsible employees that misuse social media. But banning social media outright is like banning email or phones. Not smart in the 21st century.

Now, some words for employees:

1. Do not, do not, DO NOT waste your company’s time, money and talent by surfing your social networking sites during business hours–especially if it’s not for business reasons.

2. Don’t post stupid pictures of yourself or offensive/inappropriate/creepy comments on your social networks. If you must, learn about the privacy settings, and learn them well. Also, don’t EVER post your company’s private or confidential information on the interent.

3. Keep brainstorming about what you can do to help your company grow using social media. Maybe you can volunteer to create or revitalize your company’s blog. Or you can create a company Facebook, Twitter or YouTube page. Present some ideas to your boss and work with him or her to use social media for your business’ advantage, not for its self-destruction.

What do you think? Do you agree with my advice? Disagree? Do you need some help thinking up ideas on how to use social media to help your company? Let me know by commenting below.

Facebook leaves us with...questions.

Facebook’s newly unveiled contest rules are, well, confusing. At least that’s the only determination I can come to today. That might change in the future as more information becomes available. But Facebook hasn’t released a lot of helpful instruction as of yet, so I’m left to ponder on the meaning and significance of the new guidelines.

In case you missed the announcement, administrators of Facebook fan pages can no longer host contests through their pages without written permission from Facebook. You can still use third party applications to host contests, but you can’t do anything now that requires users to become a fan, interact with a feed story or do anything else outside an application tab or canvas page in order to enter or win a contest.

So…what does all that mean? Facebook gives some examples of what you can and cannot do under the new guidelines, but many questions still remain unanswered:

• How are you supposed to contact Facebook to receive “written approval” to run a contest on your fan page? Facebook reveals very little, if any, legitimate contact information on its site. And even if you do contact Facebook through a message option, the company rarely replies.
• Can a business still give away products, promotions or coupons to customers that become fans of its page, even if no contest is involved? I think so, but Facebook doesn’t specify.
• Are there separate rules for contests on personal profiles? For instance, a blogger running a contest through her own profile page (as opposed to a fan page). Probably not, since a personal profile is part of the larger “Facebook Platform”. But the rules are still sketchy and open to interpretation.
• Why has Facebook changed the rules? Is it to protect itself from potential legal disputes arising from contest malpractice? Or does it just want more control over fan interaction with businesses on its site? Has a promotion gone wrong in the past?
• How will Facebook enforce these new rules?
• Doesn’t this just hurt small businesses? They can’t afford to hire large social marketing firms that specialize in creating third-party applications. Many small businesses rely on Facebook for promotions and contests that drive customers to their products.

Social media is like the weather–it’s always changing. So as always, Blue Helm will stay on top of Facebook’s new developments and rules. We live and breathe this stuff (so you don’t have to).