The First Amendment of the Constitution promises Freedom of Speech.  But does it guarantee Freedom of Tweets? And, should it?

When it comes to tweeting (and other forms of social communication), many brands, companies and organizations are struggling with guidelines.

Even my alma mater – UNC – is no exception. When members of the men’s basketball teams were a little too open with their tweets this season, the athletic department stepped in and told them to tone down their online conversations.

So should there be any rules? And if so, where should the line be drawn?

I believe it depends on who is doing the talking (or tweeting) and in what role they are recognized. When communicating socially, most people fall into one of three categories:

• Personal Communicators: They are not necessarily known or linked outside of personal relationships. It could be your next door neighbor, your child, or even Ashton Kutcher.
• Corporate Communicators: They are linked to an organization because they are speaking on their behalf, they are a fairly high-level executive, or they have purposely associated themselves with the organization. See Scott Monty, head of Social Media for Ford.
• Public Figures: People know them and they are linked to an organization . . . like some of UNC’s basketball players (meet Deon Thompson).

So what should the rules be?

In general, Personal Communicators should have no guidelines other than what they self-impose based on values and common sense.  On the other hand, Corporate Communicators and Public Figures should be held to a higher standard. Intentionally or not, they represent certain organizations and their comments impact those groups, companies and brands.  And by the way, you might fall into more than one category depending on where you are speaking. For example, your Facebook might be totally personal, but on Linkedin or Twitter you might be associated as an employee of an organization.

But I also have a suggestion for the organizations to which these people belong. Spend a little less time trying to control the dialog, and a little more time trying to improve the situations your people are complaining about. This would fix two things:  whatever they are complaining about and their complaints.

And finally, whatever you do as an organization, don’t ignore this and assume it will simply take care of itself. Determine your guidelines, and then make sure your people clearly understand the things you welcome and the behavior you won’t tolerate. Don’t make them guess.

How about you; what’s your opinion?

Oh yea, I almost forgot. Do you know how I found out about the UNC basketball situation? From a Tweet, Toning down the Tar Heels Tweets.

There is a very simple reason why many companies are leery of engaging in social media: control. Be it politics or business, control is power. Lose control and power wanes. Organizations want to maintain and control a centralized voice, not give way to the voice of individuals.

It’s the age-old argument: Is social media a great marketing tool or a communications liability? Depending on who you talk to, the answer will vary.

I think there is an important middle ground/step that can be taken to alleviate some of the concerns. It is pertinent for companies to institute a social media policy.

A social media policy lays ground rules for individuals and ensures that an organization is speaking with one voice, even if multiple people are doing the talking. Your strategic communications goals should shape your policy. Start with the end in mind. Then execute.

A social media policy should include the following:

• It should mirror your corporate culture
• It should define who can speak on behalf of the organization
• Train people, through examples, of what is appropriate and inappropriate, personal and professional, and clearly define the consequences of unethical behavior
• Be authentic when posting
• Add value through your posts

Yes, many on the outside are going to criticize you for not being totally transparent and there is credibility and truth to that. However, it could also be a key factor in getting a company or client to tiptoe into the social media waters so they can witness first-hand the power and positive aspects that social media brings to their brand. It’s social media with rules that can change the perception of social media as a liability to that of a positive marketing communications tool.

A simple and straightforward social media policy may be the difference between a company or brand engaging in social media or not. Think about it.

I saw an interesting study today on brands mentioned in tweets – one of the big concerns many clients have is that by participating in social media they are going to get a lot of negative feedback or opinions expressed about their brand.  This study provides strong support for something we’ve been saying for a long time – the vast majority of brand mentions are not even expressing opinions.  This review of nearly 150,000 tweets found only about 20% actually expressed an opinion and two-thirds of those were positive opinions.

While your gut may be telling you there’s all kinds of negativism out in social media just waiting to attack your brand if you wade in, the facts just don’t support it.  So now what’s keeping you from taking an active role in social media?

For any stat crunchers out there, here is the full research report.

So we’ve all read about and had direct experiences with social media from an external internet standpoint, but what about inside our companies? Probably not too much going on there other than a simple intranet and emails. That is unless your company is an innovator like Accenture.

According to an article in 1to1 Magazine, Accenture is making bold moves to help their 180,000 employees get to know each other a whole lot better. Using web 2.0 technology, Accenture is moving toward what they call the Borderless Workplace Initiative.

The article quotes Frank Modruson, Accenture’s CIO as saying:

We feel with this kind of technology the advantage will go to the early adopters. The core of our initiative is bringing social networking into Accenture, to bring the power of every employee together to make it easier to do business.

So their Borderless workplace includes the following:

• A wiki call Accenture Encyclopedia which is a media exchange resembling YouTube
• Personal blogs for employees
• A social network for employees so they can collaborate, share knowledge and find subject matter to answer customer questions.

The company also developed 148 customer microsites to help its marketing and sales teams develop stronger customer relationships. Each site acts as a portal for each client’s team so members from every customer touchpoint have access to the content and receive feedback through the site. The sites can also leverage all of Accentures social media tools including discussion boards, podcasts, video streams and wikis.

Accenture measures both hard and soft metrics to see how well the concept is utilized. Cost of operation is how the company measures ROI and they say with the reduced travel costs from telepresence alone the intiative is a slam dunk. They plan to roll the program out by the end of the year.

Accenture says it has shaped its culture around networking, sharing, connecting and teaming. Any company or organization who wants to stay out front in the race for innovation and efficiency should go to school on what Accenture is doing with social media.

For companies both large and small, its time to embrace social media from the inside…out.