I spoke last week on the topic of “Social Media in a Regulated Space” at the first annual Radian6 user conference (Social2011).

Here are some of the topics our panel addressed:

• What challenges have you experienced with your organization’s leadership recognizing the value of social media? And how did you overcome the push-back? How did/do you encourage the organization to be social?
• Do you have a social media policy? If so, what topics are covered in your social media policy?
• Do you allow your non-marketing employees to participate in social community threads related to your school?
• Do you allow access to social community sites for non-marketing employees during the work day?
• Do your employees (including those not in marketing) go through social community training?
• How do you handle complaints when you have so many employees and departments? How to you address attacks on your brand?
• How do you address complaints in public forums that might require personal info or other regulated information?
• Do you have a predetermined set of criteria (resolution tree) for who to respond to and how?
• What types of content are you using to encourage engagement?
• How frequently do you monitor your communities?
• How many people do you have focusing on social media and why?
• How do you coordinate responsibilities when you have more than one person working within social communities?
• What metrics are you using to measure success?
• How do you report to executives on your social communities activities?
• Has your organization allocated a budget for social media yet? If not, how much of a challenge has this been and what creative tools do you use as a work-around?

I plan on addressing many of these questions on this blog in the coming weeks. Until then, I must say I was impressed with the conference, considering it was the first time they hosted it… The venue was great (Boston), the hotel was great (Marriott Renaissance)… logistically everything went very smooth. The keynotes were fantastic as well. The sessions were just average, and I think will benefit from a larger user base in the future. But props all around to the Radian6 team for a successful conference that was attended by far more than I expected.