This is part 2 of an ongoing twitter them, view Part 1.

As Social Media blurs the boundaries between work and play many corporations have applied related rules to their employees. The same issues apply to associations and clubs.

WallCann has put together a brief overview of the guidelines we use. These four main principles are the core of many current corporate social blogging rules.

• corporate bloggers are personally responsible particularly when acting as a company representative

Example: Blogs, including microblogging sites like Twitter, wikis and other forms of online discourse are individual interactions, not corporate communications. Employees/Staff/Members are personally responsible for their posts.

• they should abide by existing rules,

Example: As a condition of your employment, you agreed to abide by the rules of the Company Handbook. This also applies to your blogging, twitter and social media activities.

• And keep secrets

Example: …it’s perfectly OK to talk about your work and have a dialog with the community, but it’s not OK to publish the recipe for one of our secret sauces (any confidential information).

• And be nice.

Example: You may not post any material that is obscene, defamatory, profane, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful or embarrassing to another person or any other person or entity. This includes, but is not limited to, comments regarding company employees, partners and competitors.

Some other common principles are

• Add value - Bloggers are recommended to be relevant, to write about what they know.
• Respect copyright
• Follow the law
• Discuss with your manager -       Bloggers should discuss with their managers if they in any way are uncertain about what they’re going to write.

In some cases these may need to be added

• You can / cannot write on company time – Define within your company policy or job specifications.
• Stop blogging if we say so
• Contact PR - If a member of the media contacts you about a Company related blog posting or requests information of any kind, contact PR.

For Associations and Businesses Twitter can be a very useful tool.

• Use Twitter to keep the connection with customers / members, to be able to just quickly ask their opinions, listen to their suggestions, spread some useful links and maybe help out.

• Listen to what your audience has to say, and pay attention to their needs.

• Write in a conversation tone. Think of it as sharing headlines with friends - what you say if you were telling a friend via e-mail

What to Tweet about.

• tweet about new clients/ members
• tweet links to articles, new products or services
• tweet meetings and activities
• ask questions, and sometimes retweet the answers you receive
• tweet links to new content on your business website
• update daily

Twitter Etiquette

• Build for quality not volume. Only follow people who you trust, you think are interesting, or that you learn from. However don’t be afraid to take some risks and follow someone outside your immediate circle
• Make it clear who you represent and why you’re on Twitter. The more up front you are in your profile description about who you represent and what you plan to talk about, the more you’ll allow yourself some cover
• Be personal - twitter can be a very personal medium, and that’s not a bad thing for business people.
• Reciprocate gracefully. Be honest, interesting and unselfish. That means not just tweeting links to your own company or website. It also means when you tweet other people’s work or news.  Add your personal feeling or commentary.
• Use the Direct Message correctly. You can use this option for any message that doesn’t concern the rest of your followers. Also, remember what someone sends you via a direct message is NOT for public consumption.
• We recommend a minimum of 3 tweets per weekday and unless a special circumstances or event no more than 10 per day.

WallCann.com  - Online Marketing Solutions

WallCann integrates a suite of online ecommerce activity into existing business to generate online sales and service enquiries. WallCann also delivers training to coach and develop a workforce in the effective use of web technology. WallCann has an extensive and strong client base with services extending across Australia, N America, UAE, India and China.

Established in 2002 WallCann has built an international strategic platform of websites and training resources. WallCann’s rapidly expanding network of many hundreds of websites can quickly leverage high relevance traffic linkages to significantly enhance marketing programs.

This blog enables contributions from the diverse departments of the WallCann network.

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