Hi, I'm designing a social networking etiquette class for our employees and trying to keep it to an hour. I've completed the needs analysis and moving into design/develop phase. Key points to the training will be educating them on the privacy settings, and accepting/declining friends (especially those you work with). Want to keep a positive atmosphere to the class and not make it feel like they can't have social pages but at the same time, they are still representatives of the company. I wanted to find out if anyone has information/thoughts they would be willing to share on similar projects? I'm stuck. Thanks.

Hi TMC,

I would recommend making it educational for them, as well as integrating in some best practices. Not everyone will have the same experience with these networks, and so the WIIFM is for them to increase their knowledge. In fact, if you can identify a few employees that have a good knowledge of it, get buy-in from some of them by letting them "drive" in the session - by providing best practices, examples, and so forth. Maybe by letting them collaborate on the objectives of the session, they can be guided and facilitated into seeing how they can protect themselves, protect the company, yet still benefit from it on both sides.

Either way, I would recommend reading these great blog posts from Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang. Some excellent examples in here of how companies have had positive and negative experiences with social media and employee usage.

Your Company May Own Your Tweets, Pokes, and YouTube Videos
http://www.web-strategist.com/...ategy+by+Jeremiah%29

Damage Control: Social Media Reversals
http://www.web-strategist.com/...ategy+by+Jeremiah%29

Be very careful with this topic. We just had an hour long presentation on social networking and it was a disaster. When trying to show what could happen when you post incorrectly or don't manage your audience, the speaker offended half of our audience.
People left the session fearing being on a network more than seeing it as an asset.
This is an important discussion, but could easily go down the wrong road.

It seems as though you are preparing a synchronous event of some kind (ILT or live online). Have you considered using a social network for the event? That might allow better interactive exploration.