Where Can I Find Examples of Social Media Policy?

Okay, you’ve had enough. Maybe it’s your office manager or your technicians, or maybe even that freshly minted doc you just hired. You just want them to go away and leave you alone about the whole social media thing and how your practice needs to be there.
If their nagging is not enough, consider that Scott Duke Harris of the San Jose Mercury News published an article on August 1, entitled, “Americans spending more time on social networks than on emails, portals.”

The latest research Harris cites comes from a study by Nielsen Online titled, "What Americans Do Online." It shows nearly one-third of the time Americans spend online is devoted to social media activities, while regular old email and portal sites have lost ground. Nielsen's research also shows that Americans now spend more time playing games than handling email. Most are staying in touch on Facebook rather than using Yahoo Mail or Google's Gmail.

Essentially what social media does is roll all the best parts of the Internet as we knew them into one place for service—networking, messaging, email, games, photos and video, and more. In effect, patrons build an online family that has many of the same attributes you try to build into a practice. Half of those surveyed between ages 18 and 45 had a profile on a social networking site. And Facebook now has more than 500 million users worldwide. Had enough yet?

If so and you’ve decided to make the leap, here’s where to start: http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php. At this site, you will find a very good list of links to social media policies others have developed when they have adopted the tools. Policy is what seems to help business owners and administrators slip more easily into change whereas the younger folk tend to adopt such things with the speed of a mid-winter Minnesota streaker.

The bottom line is, it’s easy, it can be effective, and the problems you foresee can be managed.