Now my current job has a NDA but otherwise I seem to have more freedom of internet usage than others here as long as it doesn’t interfere with my job. Case in point, I’m here now during work because I was asked to start reading more SEO related sites and blogs (we all know I really come here cause its Lisa) but I shouldn’t be on Facebook and Twitter since it has nothing to do with my job responsibilities and we have a guy who specifically does that for us under the brand name.

In my personal life on the internet I live by two rules: one I learned from 4chan and /b/, the other is Wheaton’s Law. Any self-respecting geek should know Wheaton’s Law as the statement “Don’t be a dick” as codified by Wesley Crusher… err Wil Wheaton. The 4chan (yes its a horrible awful place that you should never admit to frequenting and block your children from ever accessing no matter how wondrous and hilarious it can be) rule I follow is “Don’t feed the trolls.” People will continue to cause trouble on the internet due to anonymity but there are people just like them in real life. They’re the people who you purposely don’t acknowledge because you know they do it only for attention (“for the lulz”).

Personally I think that people in an office setting need access to Facebook, Twitter and other personal sites for the sake of their sanity. Its like giving a smoker a cigarette break. Every now and then you need to push back from that desk, queue up some sites, and decompress before getting back to work. But its those people that do it every 5 minutes or spend an hour on FB when they should have been working who are the issue. Take everything on a case by case basis but having the umbrella policy as the guideline is a good jumping off point. And once your company is big enough, delegate it to someone else so you don’t need to be the “bad guy” anymore.

http://womma.org/main/Quick-Guide-to-Designing-a-Social-Media-Policy.pdf

Hope it helps!

Pat McCarthy
Social Media Coordinator
WOMMA

Especially during the preparation of videos for our blog, the participation of the team is a very happy moment in the company’s life.
We have come to this in time though, doesn’t happen overnight, and I can name at least one occasion during which I had to phone a member of my team to tell him to take something back off his Facebook regarding some client (not directly named, but clear enough if you know about it). That was an embarrassing incident but you learn from mistakes, more often than not.

Productivity usually isn’t a problem, I mean, they sure use social media for personal reasons as well but we have deadlines, and if they are not screwed up, everything’s fine.
I don’t like strict policies like blocking Facebook access or stuff like that, they wouldn’t work out good for our needs and there’s always a better way around that.