If you need a Corporate Social Media Policy document to get started, use this template. It outlines most of the steps you need to write your first set of Corporate Social Media Policy guidelines.

Purpose of this Corporate Social Media Policy
This policy governs all information sharing and commentary on Social Media by employees of your Business and its related companies.

Definition
For the purposes of this policy, Social Media means any application, tool or software used for online information and publication including blogs, wikis, and social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube.

Other Policies
This policy complements existing policies regarding the use of technology, computers, e-mail and the internet.

Employees Rights
your Business employees are free to publish or comment on Social Media sites in accordance with this policy.

Compliance
your Business employees are subject to this policy to the extent they identify themselves as a your Business employee.

Scope
This policy applies to all types of social media, including personal, by your Business employees as their position with your Business would be well known within the community.

Ethical Standards
All uses of social media must follow the same ethical standards that your Business employees must otherwise follow.

Setting up Social Media Sites
To get assistance in setting up Social Media accounts, please contact your Business's (fill in details).

Confidential
While it's fine to talk about your work with the community, it's not acceptable to publish confidential information. Confidential information includes unpublished details about our software, details of current projects, future product releases, financial information, research, and trade secrets.

Privacy #1
Ensure that your privacy settings on Social Media sites are set to allow anyone to see profile information similar to what would be on the your Business website.

Privacy #2
Control other privacy settings that might allow others to post or see information that is personal and should not be displayed. Do not publish information that you would not want the public to see.

Identify Yourself
Do not blog anonymously, use pseudonyms or false screen names.

Use your real name and identify that you work for your Business.

Integrity
Do not say anything that is dishonest, untrue, or misleading. If you have a vested interest in something you are discussing, say it.

Copyright laws
Show due respect for the laws governing copyright, fair use, and fair dealing of copyrighted material owned by others, including your Business own copyrights and brands.

Do not quote more than short excerpts of someone else's work, and always attribute such work to the original author/source.

Respect
Respect your audience, your Business, and your coworkers

• Do not say anything in conflict with your Business website.
• Do not cite customers, partners or suppliers without their approval.
• Do not identify a customer, partner or supplier by name without permission and never discuss confidential details of a customer engagement.
• Do not be afraid to be yourself, but do so respectfully.

Partners
Protect your Business customers, business partners and suppliers

Use common sense and be sure to make it clear that the views and opinions expressed are yours alone and do not represent the official views of your Business.

About the Author: Arthur Grant helps companies develop Corporate Social Media Policy Guidelines for Facebook, Twitter and Blogs. You can download his Corporate Social Media Policy Templates here.

Business Rules vs. Business Requirements

Post by Ivan Walsh. Follow me on Twitter.

One area where many graduates and business analysts get tripped up is confusing Business Rules and Business Requirements. We looked at how to write Business Requirements last week, so let’s look at what Business Rules and Business Requirements have in common and where they differ.

Business Requirements – Excel Template

Difference Between Business Rules and Business Requirements?

What is the difference between a business rule and a business requirement?

• Business Rules – these are statements (or conditions) that tell a person whether they can perform a specific action that relates to how the business operates. Business Rules also give you the criteria and conditions for making these decisions.
• Business Requirement – this may include what you need to do to enable the business rule to be implemented. In other words, a business requirement may not be valid if it contradicts or breaks an existing business rule.

Example of Business Rules

Let’s step back a minute. My Dad has three pet ducks at his home. One water duck and two land ducks. Yes, it gets very loud sometimes.

So, here are some rules regarding the ducks health and safety:

• Ducks cannot be given bread. It may choke them.
• Ducks cannot be left unattended when swimming. They are poor swimmers and may drown.
• Ducks must be given water with all meals. Helps them digest.
• Duck must have buddies. They’re very socialable and pine when alone.
• Ducks must be kept out of the kitchen. Yes, I see the irony

Ok, these are some of the rules we have for the ducks.

From Business Rules to Business Requirements

Now, imagine we were building a new apartment block for millionaire ducks. No doubt there will be many requirements about their lifestyle, feeding, entertainment and transport. While gathering and defining these requirements, we need to consider:

• The new apartment owners must not allow folks to give bread to the Ducks.
• If you’re building a swimming pool. They can have a pool if it’s a requirement, but they also need a life guard.

You get the idea, right?

Connection Between Business Rule and Business Requirements

Now that we’ve looked at how Business Rules work, let’s look at how and where they are connected:

1. Do business rules exist even when you can’t implement a requirement? Yes. The Business Rules inn independent of the requirements gathering process. It can and must exist independently of other processes.
2. Does implementing a business requirement mean complying with the business rule? Depends. In general, Yes, but there can be exceptions.
3. Does implementing the business requirement make it easier to comply with the business rule? Yes. The connection will be stronger across all business process and allow greater understanding of how the Business Rules to Business Requirements function.

Sample Business Rule

This is an example of business rules for a bank taking credit card applications over the web.

Example: Taking Credit Card Applications Over The Web

Business Rule: Customer has an Email Address.

Business Requirement: Ability for bank staff to send and receive emails to the customer.

Now if we change the business rule:

Revised Rule: Customer must have a valid Email Address.

Note: A second rule is required to define ‘valid email address’. An Email Address is considered Valid if does not return as ‘undeliverable’ within 60 minutes of being sent out.

Additional Business Requirement to support Business Rule:

System will immediately send email to customer once email address is received. The email is not batch processed but sent in response to each email received.

Note: The smallest change in the wording of the business rule can have significant impacts on other business processes. When testing business requirements make sure that you consider all possible scenarios where the revised business rule will impact other parts of the business.

Recap

• Business rules describe what you may or may not do in a specific business scenario. It also gives the criteria, conditions and exceptions for making these decisions.
• Business Requirements capture what a user must do to implement and/or comply with a Business Rule.
• You may need different sets of business requirements to implement different sets of business rules, for example, when dealing with complex business processes with complicated conditions and exceptions.
• Business rules are independent of business requirements and shouldn’t be changed to accommodate a requirement.

Be careful when changing a business rule in case it impacts how a business process functions.

Conclusion

There is one final point I want to share. Make sure that ownership of the business rules is properly assigned to someone – and make the person accountable.

One approach is to assign this activity to a business analyst with strong skills in document control and with the ability to push through new versions of revised Business Rules.

Try to find the most practical solution for managing your business rules. We used a networked Excel spreadsheet at a large European bank and it worked very well. All documents were version controlled and we followed a strict naming convention which made it easier to retrieve and update the rules when needed.

Don’t get tripped up on the technology. Once the team understand how the documents are structured, written and shared, then you should be fine. Also, remember to purge out-dated business rules. This means you’ll have fewer documents to manage and should speed up annual audits if/when the auditors want to check your document repository.

Final tip: in the Excel spreadsheet, cross-reference the business rule to the business requirements so you can quickly identify where one change impacts another.

About the Author: Ivan Walsh shares Small Business and Small Business Information for Entrepreneurs at Klariti. He also runs a Business Planning Blog

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