A whole generation of social media gurus – I said the G word, erch – have made huge amounts of money (some of it real) conning large corporations into thinking there’s a whole new set of behaviours their people need to adopt when talking to other people on social media.

With a mixture of nonsensical flim-flam, marketese, jargon, logical non-sequiturs and solecisms they’ve constructed this piffle into a set of social media engagement guidelines. And they’ve then managed to hawk these impenetrable tomes to gullible marketers who should know better.

So now Ford has come along and burst the gurus’ bubble. One side of A4, 5 essential tenets, 100% crystal clear – the Ford social media guidelines are now the gold standard for intervention in social media, as far as I can see.

Nay-sayers will say there’s no point in guidelines if people don’t follow them or you can’t enforce them. True.

But with such clear instructions on how to take part in social media on Ford’s behalf, my contention is that more people (the right people) will take part. And those who don’t follow the Waterford rules will be easy to spot. The spotters will be a growing army of Ford workers active in social media who feel empowered to talk about their company, its products and how they can help others as Ford customers.

Sounds simple, no? It is.

My other car is an Audi A4 Avant

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