Social Media Policy for the Performing Arts sector I

Today I will take a look at Social Media Policies. A policy is a guideline instituted to avoid negative behavior, or to guide positive behavior towards a desired outcome. A social media policy is intended to give employees guidelines of how to act on social networking sites, both as an employee for the company and as a private person at home.

Mark van Bree, a Dutch public relation practitioner working in Chicago, made a survey in December last year about the social media use in orchestras. There were only 15 orchestras participating in the survey so the sample is not very big, but the survey shows that a majority of the orchestras do not have an internal social media policy and that 40% do not consider that they need one. Van Bree upholds the importance of implementing a policy and how that easily can be done when renewing the freelancers’ contracts.

There are however discussions both for and against Social Media policies on the internet , so we really have to ask ourselves if our performing art organizations should implement an internal Social Media Policy or not, and what we can gain from it.



Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, who was once the architect of his company's social media policy, has now on his blog published 5 reasons why your company does not need a social media policy. He stresses that people can be (1) TRUSTED, social media is just another way to (2) COMMUNICATE, rules just make your company (3) BUREAUCRATIC, policy will (4) DISCOURRAGE PARTICIPATION amongst employees, and finally, there are probably other policies to govern (5) INAPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR. 


Does those five reasons apply to the performing arts sector?

• TRUST
  It is a sound idea for any organization to consider their people as trustworthy. There are however some facts that performing arts organizations face that has to be raised as a concern here.
  

1. Our organizations are often offering very insecure employment conditions. Short contracts and no guarantee for future employment does not necessarily encourage a sense of belonging to the organization. We have to ask ourselves if the organization can expect commitment from the employees.
   
2. Many performing arts professionals are freelancers with their own person as the most important brand. It is quite probable that they already have their own "social media strategy" going.
   
3. Some performing arts professionals are very well known to the public and their personal brands might depend on a certain attitude which is already developed in their social media networks. This might be rough language and humor, irony that is understood by the selected community etc and will not be able to change, or "worth changing" during the persons limited employment.
   
4. Because of the employment conditions and the specific artistic creation process, disputes or disagreements do occur in performing arts organizations.

• COMMUNICATION
  It is true that social media is just another way to communicate, but the viral effect of social media should not be overseen. If you have worked in a big performing arts organization you have most likely experienced a "scandal" of some kind: someone doing or saying inappropriate things in public, theatre directions taking unpopular decisions, people in the audience being upset by the nature of a performance… But as we used to know scandals they had a beginning and an end: Next week, this week's news is old news. The internet has a timelessness that makes "news always news" and the authors of news can get equal importance. It takes a lot of work to repair a damage brand when the news never disappears, like for Domino's Pizzas whose brand got radically damaged when two employees published revolting films on Youtube.
   
  
• BUREAUCRATIC
  It is true that bureaucracy can be heavy and many art organizations, depending on size of course, are already considered too bureaucratic. A social media policy does not have to be a long document though. Many companies keep their policies very short and strait. Coca Cola has for example succeeded in making a three page social media policy, consisting in 20 points.
   
  
• DISCOURAGE PARTICIPATION
  When using social media as marketing tools we are aiming for the viral effect. We want the information about our plays, performances, brands to travel beyond our websites. This will only be done with as much publishing, sharing, tagging and commenting as possible. Employees in an organization should absolutely not get the feeling that they are discouraged to participate in social media activities. It would quite certainly give a negative effect in a performing arts institution.
   
  
• INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR
  There are often policies that prevent different inappropriate behavior in performing arts organizations: Equal rights policies and policies or legislation against sexual harassment etc. I don't really see why other policies should prevent the creation of a short social media policy. It should also be underlined that the Social Media Policy can actually protect the employees, if it outlines what the company considers inappropriate behavior. Where someone sees humor someone else might see an inappropriate behavior, like when actress Catherine Deveny was fired from her role as columnist at the Australian newspaper The Age because of one Tweet.
  

We should keep the characteristics of our specific organization (its size, its public brand, its marketing and its general approach to its employees) in mind, as well as the specific characteristics of the performing arts sector, when deciding whether or not to implement a social media policy. If we finally decide to implement a policy there are some basic points to consider that I will go through tomorrow!