These are the official guidelines for use by Enterprise Ireland staff participating in social media communications. The organisation expects all who participate to have attended a training session and to understand and follow these guidelines. Guidelines are broken down into the requirements for an Individual and for the Moderator of a community.
Be Transparent
Your honesty or error will be quickly noticed in the social media environment. If you are discussing your work at Enterprise Ireland, use your real name, identify that you work for Enterprise Ireland and be clear about your role. If you have a vested interest in something you are discussing, then be the first to point it out. Transparency is about your identity and relationship to Enterprise Ireland. You must maintain confidentiality around proprietary information and content, especially on behalf of Enterprise Ireland clients.
Be Judicious
Be scrupulous about protecting yourself, your privacy, Enterprise Ireland’s and our clients confidential information. Always ask permission to publish or report on conversations that are intended to be private or internal to Enterprise Ireland. What you publish is widely accessible and will be around for a long time, so consider the content carefully. Please respect brand, trademark, copyright, fair use, confidentiality, and financial disclosure laws. If you have any questions about these, you should contact the Enterprise Ireland legal representative.
Write What You Know
Make sure you write and post about your areas of expertise, especially as related to Enterprise Ireland. If you are writing about a topic that Enterprise Ireland is involved with but you are not the Enterprise Ireland expert on the topic, you should make this clear to your readers and write in the first person. If you publish to a website hosted or maintained outside of Enterprise Ireland, please use a disclaimer statement such as: "The postings are my own and do not necessarily represent Enterprise Ireland's positions, strategies, or opinions". All statements must be true and not misleading, and all claims must be substantiated and approved. Remember, you are personally responsible for any content you publish.
Perception Is Reality
In online social networks, the lines between public and private, personal and professional are blurred. Just by identifying yourself as an Enterprise Ireland staff member, you create perceptions about your expertise and relationship to other staff, clients, researchers, the press and the general public. Be sure that all content associated with you is consistent with your work and with Enterprise Ireland's values and professional standards.
It's A Conversation
Talk to your readers as you would talk to real people in professional situations. In other words, avoid overly composed language. Don't be afraid to bring in your own personality and say what's on your mind. Consider the use of content that's open-ended and invites response. You can also broaden the conversation by citing others who are taking part in social networks on the same topic and allowing your content to be shared or syndicated.
Are You Adding Value?
There are millions of websites and articles out on the Internet. The best way to get yours read is to write about things that others will value. Social communication from Enterprise Ireland should help our clients, partners, and colleagues. It should be thought-provoking and build a sense of community. If what you publish helps people improve knowledge or skills, build their businesses, do their jobs, solve problems, or understand Enterprise Ireland better — then it is adding value.
Your Responsibility
What you write is ultimately your responsibility. Participation in social networking on behalf of Enterprise Ireland is an opportunity, so treat it seriously and with respect. Failure to abide by these Guidelines, as well as the Enterprise Ireland Code of Conduct and the applicable sections of the IT Security Policy could put your participation at risk.
Be a Leader
There can be a fine line between healthy debate and incendiary reaction. Do not denigrate other contributors or Enterprise Ireland. Nor do you need to respond to every criticism. Try to frame what you write to invite differing points of view without inflaming others. Once an inflammatory discussion gets going, it's hard to stop. Don't use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, or engage in any conduct that would not be acceptable within the Enterprise Ireland workplace. Encourage constructive criticism and deliberation. Be cordial, honest and professional at all times.
Did you make a mistake?
If you make a mistake, admit it. Be upfront and be quick with your correction. If you're posting to a social network, you may choose to modify an earlier post, if so just make it clear that you have done so.
Giving client references
As a representative of Enterprise Ireland you must guard against recommending one client over another; however commenting on achievements by client as a statement of fact, for example announcing a new sale win, is encouraged. Giving client references to individuals within other enterprises is not recommended.
All sites that rely on user generated content, and in which Enterprise Ireland could be considered to be the publisher, need to be moderated to an agreed level, in order not only to foster and encourage quality content and contributions by usersTo do otherwise exposes Enterprise Ireland to considerable risks.
Responsibilities
These guidelines provide Enterprise Ireland staff with guidelines regarding moderating social media communications. Moderators have a wide range of responsibilities in terms of managing the forum on a day-by-day basis. These include:
- Guiding and supporting forum members;
- Welcoming newcomers and making them feel at home;
- Defusing arguments if they get too personal;
- Sustaining interest in the forum by starting useful new threads;
- Encouraging conversation while keeping threads "on topic";
- Assisting in answering queries, and directing members seeking questions towards previous threads that may have already addressed the issue in depth;
- Removing inappropriate content;
- Monitoring posts for issues and taking prompt and appropriate action where necessary;
- General housekeeping duties, such as merging separate threads started about the same subject, archiving material where necessary, developing useful FAQs, and giving technical assistance to members (e.g. retrieving passwords, or editing a user's post on their behalf and at their request).