The Social Media Hanbook by Nancy Flynn Book Report

The book I chose to do a report on is ‘The Social Media Handbook: Policies and Best Practices to Effectively Manage Your Organization’s Social Media Presence, Posts, and Potential Risks’. The title may seem a bit wordy, but the actual book is much more precise. Author Nancy Flynn presents the information in a unique way that lends itself to use by groups both large and small.

The introductory chapter of this book explains the unique way in which the data will be provided. Unlike a normal book that reads chapter-to-chapter, each often building and referencing to the last. ‘The Social Media Handbook’ is more of a choose-your-own-adventure for creating a social media policy for the workplace. Chapters are broken into topics such as “Blog Risks and Compliance Rules” and “Writing Effective Social Media Policies” each of which re broken into sub chapters that give details on the chapter heading. A user may never have an issue with blogging and skip straight to Social Media Policies. This book becomes more of a reference tool than just a how-to book. Although the title and chapter names are a bit wordy, the actual data presentation is concise and presented in an easy to understand way. In many ways the wordy chapter names make it much easier to jump right to the piece of information that you are looking for. Data is often given in a top-ten list of steps on what needs to be done, issues to be aware of, or examples of problems that can be encountered. Government regulations are also discussed in-depth. Policies such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the U.S. Patriots Act are covered in regards to social media policies and issues that may be encountered. Also included is a chapter that provides sample policies that the reader can use to establish their own companies policies. Any of these samples could be modified to work with your individual company’s needs. If you don’t like the first sample that you see? You can simply review on of the other samples. For example, the Social Media Policy sample has 3 separate design choices. The first is an eleven point list of regulations that employees should follow. The second is designed as a definition list and then bullet points of accepted use of social media. The last sample is setup as a breakdown of issues and accepted policies that the company expects everyone to follow. Some other samples are almost completely ready to print and distribute to the employees, including an area to sign and date for filing.

The drawback of this book is its scope of audience. I wouldn’t recommend this book for the casual reader curious about creating policies and regulations. This book is most effective for a small to medium sized Human Resources group. Even though this book does discuss some of the legal issues that may be encountered, I would suggest running any created policy by either your company’s legal advisor or an outside lawyer. Going through the trouble of establishing a policy or procedure and then having it turn back on you would be possibly worse than having a less than effective policy in place.