Should businesses offer Twitter guidance/training to their public-facing employees?

Yes, absolutely. In fact there should be separate training for individual contributors and managers, who have different responsibilities and challenges. I provide more details in "Social Media Policies: Necessary but not Sufficient," which can be accessed via http://tiny.cc/SMinOrgsPolicyPost.

I also wrote a post about Twitter "Worst Practices" that is the most popular piece I've published. That popularity indicates how hungry people are for guidance. Here's a link to that piece: http://tiny.cc/SMinOrgsTwitterPost.

I have published other sets of guidelines and tips as well and am about to publish a new set (for both individuals and organizations) in the next day or so. Look for it at http://sminorgs.net.

Absolutely! Policy and procedure is very important too. Courtney Hunt outlines some great content to help you guide your employees on policy and help train on technique and procedures. Mark Schaefer, Star Hall and Bernie Borges are also well known social media experts who have great reference and training material on their websites and blogs.

Some reminders for your staff, if they aren't the best at grammar, ask them to have a "buddy editor" proof any outgoing posts. Assign business unit experts to answer questions, i.e., billing questions go to accounting group, service questions go to customer service, marketing goes to marketing, etc. Remind employees that NDA's and other non-compete agreements exist and to not "tweet" about any potential topics that might stop a sale, or shed negative light on company.

For example, I heard about a B2B organization that at the last minute had one of its sales engineer's join the Chairman of the Board on the company jet. Sales engineer was so excited he "tweeted" about who he was visiting and why he was on the corporate jet. He didn't realize that his company had signed NDA's and that his "tweets" jeopardized the company’s sale due to revealing "competitive" information to others. When he and his chairman arrived onsite at the company they were visiting, the company alerted chairman how aggravated they were that sales engineer "tweeted" about visit and all their "competitors" now knew about visit and meeting was called off. Needless to say, sales engineer had a very short career that day.

Yes, they should. Marge offered a very good example about the possible problems that can arise. In many cases, employees treat business information in the same manner as personal information. Some folks share everything (I ordered a tuna melt for lunch) in social network forums. This propensity can get them into trouble when they extend the same mindset to the business realm. In fact, some firms are using the social sites to garner competitive information, tracking where different employees are and trying to determine why they may be there. In some cases, the information is freely given, but in other cases, the users are not even aware that their whereabouts can be traced.

The scenario is pretty familiar for anyone who has spent time in the IT field. New technologies rapidly evolve, but time is needed before the proper security checks are put in place. Now, we are in the stage where most companies are behind the curve in terms of social media. Many are trying to figure out how to use it effectively for marketing and sales purposes and are unaware of the level of security risk.

There are a number of vendors who have developed various tools to help companies first understand what is being said about them in these forums and then determine if any action needs to be taken. For instance, Addictomatic, Cisco, Dow Jones Insight, Facebook Lexicon, MarkMonitor, Socialseek, Trackur, and Twazzup have developed various tools to help with the process. At the moment, most of the tools are expensive and designed for large enterprises. The bottom line is most small and medium businesses do not yet understand the risks involved and don’t have a lot of good options for properly managing social media interactions.

Absolutely, no question. Any public-facing employee should be trained in all facets of good communication and company representation, and that includes using the social tools of today. Akin to good phone etiquette, email procedures, etc. There's too much to risk to not train employees properly. And to identify who these employees should be - just like any position, not everyone is going to be naturally good at it.

This is completely dependent on the needs of the business. If any of such employees has a profile and is using it to post company-related information, then training and guidance are absolutely needed. If anyone is using it for marketing purposes then they should be trained.

Even if not specifically trained on Twitter, all public-facing employees should be aware of how social media works and why it is so useful to a business. When people are ignorant, they can make written or verbal statements that present the company in a bad light.

All companies with employees should have a Social Media Policy and provide training to ALL employees on what is allowed and not allowed.

I suggest that you empower you employees to be ambassadors for your company. If employees are empowered they can become a leader for your brand, engage with potential clients, add value by answering questions and add excitement by talking about the latest and greatest.

Also teach them what can get them in trouble - both as an employee and legally. Most employees are on the social networking sites already, they must be made aware of security, confidentiality, copyright etc.

I would like to invite you to view a video of me talking about Social Media Policy on YouTube http://youtu.be/Y5IjPCqFEts Thanks, Barbara

Well, I have heard enough stories of rogue employees or people that think they are being "witty" saying the wrong thing. I'd say MAYBE a bit of training is necessary :-)

Training is a MUST to any entity wishing to get better.
It's just a matter of what area to train and what medium to use
which could generally be answered by the organization since
they'd be the one's to train or get somebody to train their people.

Otherwise, get an outsider or someone from the company
to objectively analyze its situation, direction and needs
to have greater understanding before deciding and laying out.

This is @TheGreatLight.