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The top six social media tips to know before you leave the office.

You’ve heard it before: there are 350 million users on Facebook, 20 million active Twitter users, and hundreds of millions of YouTube videos are viewed each day. It is a safe bet that your company’s employees are actively using these platforms and are likely discussing their work. But, before locking down access to these sites or banning employee engagement, consider the potential of this ready base of support in shaping the online conversation.

With social media playing an ever increasing role in shaping consumer perceptions, companies must effectively monitor and respond to these conversations – and in this respect, one often overlooked solution is to empower employees as online brand ambassadors. There’s simply no piece of software that can deliver the same benefits as the eye balls and advocacy of your employees.

This week’s Six @ Six discusses ways to leverage your employees in the online arena to respond in crisis, ensure quality customer service, and even assist in marketing efforts. What is your company doing? Let me know on Twitter @dallaslawrence.

1. Develop a Comprehensive Employee Social Media Policy

When empowering your employees to engage online – particularly when they represent the brand itself – the first step is drafting a corporate social media use policy. This policy should outline your company’s view on social media, the types of activities that are allowed, and the consequences for violating the policy. While developing the policy, it’s important to ask input from a variety of divisions and experience levels. Once finalized, this policy should be shared with all employees and saved in a place easily accessible to all employees such as an Intranet. Many companies also choose to share their social media policies with the public – this practice increases transparency and ensures customer expectations are managed. If you need help developing your policy, check out Social Media Governance, which maintains a database of organizational social media policies. The list is an invaluable resource for groups writing or revising their own rules of social media engagement. Coke and IBM have fantastic policies that spell out the rules, energize employees about participating in social media, and offer the appropriate legal protection without weighing down the policy in boring jargon. By arming each employee with sound social media guidance, companies can build an army of employee brand ambassadors, avoid potential problems, and develop a base of support able to respond when online crises emerge.

2. Survey Employees for Existing Expertise

More likely than not, the majority of your employees are already engaged on at least one social networking site. A survey conducted by UK-based firm Morse found that 57 percent of employees surveyed admitted to spending more than 40 minutes on social networking sites each week. To harness this existing online savvy, try conducting a survey of employees to help identify potential advocates on sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Such a survey should also inquire about the blogs employees read or contribute to on a regular basis. Most important, in order to ensure cooperation and to help reassure employees that the company has the best intentions, the survey should be voluntary. Otherwise, your employees may be suspicious of your intentions.

3. Educate Long-serving Employees

Some of your strongest allies are also likely to be some of your longest serving employees. These individuals can stand to benefit from training on the ins and outs of social media – both for themselves and for your brand. In fact, bringing these individuals online will help you reach the fastest growing population on Facebook and other sites – adults 35 and older. While some in this group may be hesitant to engage, far more are interested in learning about the technologies their children – and even their grandchildren – are using. Should you meet with resistance, remind this key group that learning about social media will help not just the company communicate with customers, but will also help each of them communicate with friends and family.

4. Re-educate New Employees

Even the most Web-savvy employees need to be informed of the intricacies of online professional etiquette. New hires just out of college may be actively involved in social media platforms, but they may not be aware of precisely what is acceptable in the business world. Having a social media policy in place will help define appropriate behavior for your staff, but holding training sessions to review dos and don’ts should also be part of your corporate culture. Institutionalized education in this area can help your employees – and by extension your company – avoid the online crises that can arise when an unacceptable photograph or glib remark is posted online. Specifically, keep these employees apprised of ever-changing privacy settings that routinely make more and more material available to the general Internet audience – including the possibility of being found through emerging social media searches offered by Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

5. Encourage Employees To Do the Talking

Social media users have little tolerance for generic marketing campaigns and insincere corporate engagements. Encouraging employees to openly discuss your brand lends credibility to your efforts and can help manage consumer perceptions by putting a human face to the brand. For proactive messaging, channels such as corporate blogs or Twitter profiles also stand to benefit from the inclusion of employee voices. Recruit members of your team from all ranks (customer service reps, sales team members, engineers, etc.) so that each can discuss issues specific to their own specialty. In addition to offering structured opportunities to speak on behalf of the company, also encourage your employees to organically join conversations taking place about your company online. Employees reading blogs that write about a new product release or address a brand rumor should feel free to disclose their affiliation and post a comment within the guidelines defined by your social media policy. This again lends message credibility and reassures your customers that their questions are being addressed by the most qualified members of your team.

6. Provide Messaging that Fits the Platform

Some employees are worried they just don’t know what to say to consumers online. Companies and brands can help end this confusion by providing a cheat-sheet or two featuring easy-to-reference answers to frequently asked questions. But remember, one size does not fit all. Each answer provided to employees needs a version that fits the length restrictions of Twitter, multimedia capabilities of Facebook, or etiquette of blog comment sections. Building responses specific to each of these platforms will provide the maximum return on investment – and empower employees to quickly and appropriately engage when crisis rears its ugly head.

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Dallas Lawrence is Chair of the Social and Digital Media Practice at Levick Strategic Communications, the nation’s top crisis communications firm. He blogs on emerging digital media trends and best practices for social media engagement on BulletProof. Connect with him @dallaslawrence.