Everyone's heard the horror story about the company who has to send every single tweet through Legal. Communicators have also heard the tale of the Netflix CEO who posted material information to his Facebook page; Justine Sacco, the PR director, and her infamous tweet-heard-round-the-world and the Taco Bell employee who posted a photo of himself licking a stack of tacos. These news-making stories are of shared concern for the professionals who own social media in your organization, as well as for the legal and compliance teams. 

An overzealous approach can make it impossible to innovate and do great social media for business. Too lax and you're left open to an evolving array of liabilities. 

So how do you meet in the middle to protect your ability to innovate while protecting the business? With a great collaborative relationship.

This afternoon at Ragan's Social Media for PR and Corporate Communications Conference at Disney World Robyn Itule, Social Media Manager for Insight Enterprises, shares her four real-world strategies to work with your Legal department while still allowing social media to thrive at your organization.

As a communicator, we know how the real world applies and is interpreted. But as a legal practitioner, your counsel knows how the law is applied and interpreted. ou both need one another to be innovative and compliant.

There's two sides to every story. Tell it together. Tell it to your executives and to your employees. To be able to give the whole story and generate success you need both sides of the story.

Don't just go to Legal when there is an issue. For questions and issues both big and small, keep talking. If they can trust you for the little things, then they can trust you for the big things.

What the policy dictates and how the real world activates rarely look the same. Policy assumes statements like: Our company results were outstanding this quarter. Real world activity looks like this: WooHoo! Major quarterly bonus coming my way! The secret is to train your employees to the policy with real life examples, together as a team.

Legal can often times be the wet blanket when it comes to social media in the corporate world. But Robyn suggest to work with your Legal department to foster a good working relationship so you can easily work together without much fiction. Both sides have to be adaptable in order for this business to work.

So reach out and make friends!