Michelle Golden has a nice little quiz to help firms determine their social media risk tolerance. Simply answer three questions, add up your scores, and you will have a good indication of your risk tolerance. Michelle then gives you some guidelines on how to use your score to determine how detailed your policies need to be.
If your score falls in the lowest group, "Social Media doesn’t fit well with your current culture." Michelle is much nicer than I am. I would have phrased this as "conversations don't fit well with your current culture". I hope that stings a little more, because the problem is bigger than just "how do we control social media".
I completely agree with Michelle's assessment of the relationship between policies and the level of trust in an organization. If you are honest with yourself and you scored in the 1-5 range, put the social media policy aside and start talking about trust.
Of course, if you scored in the lowest group, you have the most potential for improvement.
Bill Brelsford Small Business Marketing Consultant
