Here are a num­ber of pub­licly avail­able social media poli­cies and guide­lines for cor­po­ra­tions, non­prof­its and media com­pa­nies. In some cases, we’ve repro­duced them on this site because of how often they get moved around or dislodged.

In addi­tion, these are his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments and as such will be ana­lyzed, reviewed, com­pared and cri­tiqued on a reg­u­lar basis here in the years ahead. To do so, we need access to the orig­i­nal source mate­r­ial and so will post them here for archival and edu­ca­tional purposes.

When devis­ing a social media pol­icy, a good place to start is Best prac­tices for devel­op­ing a social media pol­icy. Devel­oped by the Soci­ety for New Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Research, it addresses the major issues related to employee blog­ging but its prin­ci­ples can be applied to more recent forms of social net­work­ing as well. All such poli­cies need care­ful tai­lor­ing, depend­ing on what sec­tor your com­pany is in. For a boil­er­plate but use­ful social media dis­clo­sure pol­icy, see disclosurepolicy.org.

Know of other poli­cies we should add? Drop us a line or post a pointer in the com­ments below. Thanks!

SKIP DOWN TO | Cor­po­ra­tions
SKIP DOWN TO | News orga­ni­za­tions
SKIP DOWN TO | Non­prof­its
SKIP DOWN TO | Gov­ern­ment
SKIP DOWN TO | Hos­pi­tals & health sec­tor
SKIP DOWN TO | Addi­tional resources

Cor­po­ra­tions

Tech & Web companies

• Cisco’s Inter­net post­ings pol­icy
• Dell’s Online Poli­cies
• HP Blog­ging Code of Con­duct
• IBM’s social com­put­ing guide­lines
• Intel’s social media guide­lines
• Microsoft: Chan­nel 9 Doc­trine
• Opera Employee Blog­ging Poli­cies
• Ora­cle Social Media Par­tic­i­pa­tion Pol­icy (also down­load as a PDF)
• Plaxo’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tion (Blog­ging) Pol­icy
• Right­Now Social Web Employee Pol­icy
• SAP Social Media Par­tic­i­pa­tion Guide­lines
• Sun Microsys­tems Pol­icy on Pub­lic Discourse

Other brands
• FedEx Cit­i­zen­ship Blog’s Blog Pol­icy
• Gart­ner Pub­lic Web Par­tic­i­pa­tion Guide­lines
• GM Motors Blog­ging Pol­icy
• Kodak Social Media Tips
• Walmart’s Twit­ter Exter­nal Dis­cus­sion Guide­lines
• Wells Fargo Com­mu­nity Guide­lines
• Yahoo! Blog­ging Policy

PR, mar­ket­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tions firms

• Gibraltar’s Social Media Pol­icy
• Grete­man­Group Social Media Pol­icy
• Jaffe PR: Social Media and Social Net­work­ing Poli­cies and Pro­ce­dures
• Porter Nov­elli (PR)
• Porter Nov­elli Blog­ging and Social Media Pol­icy
• Razor­fish Employee Social Influ­ence Mar­ket­ing Guidelines

Addi­tional com­pa­nies
• Char­tered Insti­tute of Pub­lic Rela­tions (CIPR) Social Media Guide­lines
• CIPR – Social Media Guide­lines for Con­sul­ta­tion (PDF)
• eWay Direct Social Media Pol­icy
• Feed­ster
• For­rester cor­po­rate blog­ging pol­icy
• Head­set Bros Social Media Pol­icy
• Hill & Knowl­ton Blog­ging at H&K
• Live­World Social Media Con­tent Guide­lines
• Mason Social Media Guide­lines (PDF)
• Net­flix Guide on Free­dom & Respon­si­bil­ity
• Opera Employee Blog­ging Poli­cies
• Regler for blog­ging i Spare­Bank 1 Grup­pen
• Right Now Social Web Employee Pol­icy
• Telstra’s 3 Rs of Social Media Engage­ment (PDF)
• Unic Social Media Guidelines

News orga­ni­za­tions

Best of breed:
• Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Corporation’s social media pol­icy
• BBC – Edi­to­r­ial Guide­lines, per­sonal use of Social Net­work­ing
• NPR News’ social media policy

Other:

• AP’s social media pol­icy
• ESPN Employee Social Media Pol­icy
• Los Ange­les Times’ social media guide­lines
• New York Times’ social media pol­icy
• The Roanoke Times News Stan­dards and Poli­cies
• Wall Street Journal’s social media pol­icy
• Wash­ing­ton Post’s social media policy

Non­prof­its, acad­e­mia & community

• Amer­i­can Red Cross Online Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Guide­lines
• Bread for the World’s Social Media Pol­icy
• B’nai B’rith Youth Orga­ni­za­tion
• DePaul Uni­ver­sity
• Easter Seals (reported on Beth Kanter’s blog)
• Easter Seals Online Com­mu­nity Guide­lines
• Fel­low­ship Church
• Har­vard Law School – Terms & Pol­icy
• Fra­ter­nal Order of Eagles (PDF)
• Pow­er­house Museum Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Using Public-Facing Museum Blogs — Pol­icy (PDF)
• Smith­son­ian Web and New Media Strat­egy
• Social Media Hand­book for Local Red Cross Units

Hos­pi­tals & health sector

• Kaiser Per­ma­nente Social Media Pol­icy (PDF)
• Mayo Clinic Par­tic­i­pa­tion Guide­lines
• Red Cross Cres­cent Social Media Guide­lines (PDF)
• Sen­tara Social Media Pol­icy (PDF)
• Sut­ter Health and Affil­i­ates Pol­icy for Social Net­work­ing and Other Web-based Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (PDF)
• The Uni­ver­sity of Texas MD Ander­son Can­cer Cen­ter Blog Poli­cies and Guidelines

Gov­ern­ment

• Aus­tralian Pub­lic Ser­vice Commission’s pro­to­cols for online media par­tic­i­pa­tion
• British Gov­ern­ment Twit­ter pol­icy guide (PDF)
• City of Hamp­ton Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­ogy Pol­icy: Social Media Pol­icy (PDF)
• City of Seat­tle Blog­ging Pol­icy
• Cir­cu­lar 2008/8: Interim pro­to­cols for online media par­tic­i­pa­tion
• CivilSer­vice – Code for Online Par­tic­i­pa­tion (UK)
• Face­book Com­ments Pol­icy
• Gov­ern­ment Pol­icy: Why gov­ern­ment and non­profit orga­ni­za­tions should set up Social Media Pro­files
• GSA Social Media Pol­icy (PDF)
• New Zealand State Ser­vices Com­mis­sion: The Guide to Online Par­tic­i­pa­tion
• New Zealand State Ser­vices Com­mis­sion: Prin­ci­ples for Inter­ac­tion with Social Media]
• State of Delaware Social Media Pol­icy (PDF)
• Trea­sury Board of Canada Sec­re­tariat: Guide­line to Accept­able Use of Inter­nal Wikis and Blogs Within the Gov­ern­ment of Canada
• U.K. Gov­ern­ment: Tem­plate Twit­ter Strat­egy for Gov­ern­ment Depart­ments
• U.S. Air Force (Pub­lic Affairs Officer’s Guide)
• US Air Force Social Media Pol­icy (with flow chart)
• U.S. Army Corps of Engineers-Jacksonville Dis­trict: Social Media User Guide­lines (PDF)
• U.S. Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA): Blog­ging at EPA for Green­ver­sa­tions
• U.S. Gen­eral Ser­vices Administration’s (GSA) Office of Cit­i­zen Ser­vices: Blog Poli­cies
• US Navy – Web 2.0 – Uti­liz­ing New Web Tools
• Wake County, N.C., Web 2.0 Guidelines

Addi­tional resources

• About.com: Blog­ging and Social Media Pol­icy Sam­ple
• Top 10 Guide­lines for Social Media Par­tic­i­pa­tion at (COMPANY) (PDF)
• Char­lene Li’s Blog­ging pol­icy exam­ples
• Col­lec­tion of Social Media Pol­icy Exam­ples
• DisclosurePolicy.org: Gen­er­ate Your Own Dis­clo­sure Pol­icy
• Enter­prise: List of 40 Social Media Staff Guide­lines
• Fred­erik Waka’s Begin­ners’ Guide to Cor­po­rate Blog­ging
• JD Lasica’s com­men­tary: News­pa­per social media poli­cies: Out of touch
• Poyn­ter, News­rooms Develop Social Net­work­ing Poli­cies for Jour­nal­ists on Face­book, MySpace, Twit­ter
• Judith Lin­deau:Social Media Pol­icy for Asso­ci­a­tions: Off Stage
• Mash­able: 10 Must-haves for your social media pol­icy
• Nicky Hardy: Social media guide­lines for brands
• Rhetor­ica: Rhetor­ica Blog­ging and Com­ment Pol­icy
• Robert Scoble’s The Cor­po­rate Weblog Man­i­festo
• Should Your Com­pany Have a Social Media Pol­icy?
• Social Media Busi­ness Coun­cil Dis­clo­sure Pol­icy Toolkit
• Steve Buttry’s Lead­ing Your Staff Into the Twit­ter­verse
• Steve Buttry’s cri­tique of the Los Ange­les Times’ pol­icy, the Wash­ing­ton Post’s pol­icy and Wall Street Journal’s pol­icy
• WOMMA: WOMMA Ethics Code

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