Most companies now use at least some level of social media to promote their business. Assuming your company uses this method of promotion, it is important to ensure that your online message is professional and consistent.
Large companies create detailed social media policies to make clear to staff exactly how their businesses can and should contribute to these online platforms. This ensures that the company creates the correct impression across all of their online presence – from blog posts to Twitter “tweets.”
Given the high visibility and spontaneous nature of social media, it is fair to say that creating a social media policy is equally important for a smaller business, to ensure that costly mistakes are not made when interacting with customers online.
What Should a Social Media Policy Include?
Your social media policy should consider:
1. Tone
Do you want your business posts, updates and tweets to be formal and business-like or more conversational? Consider your audience, along with the impression you wish to give – are you providing information or do you wish to encourage online interaction?
2. Frequency
It is widely considered that the frequency of published blog posts, tweets and updates should remain consistent to avoid confusing or alienating audiences. You should ensure your social media policy takes this into account to avoid your company being over-active or (worse) dormant on social media.
3. Responsibilities
Who is responsible for maintaining your social media presence? Is it the duty of a specific member of staff? Are other staff allowed to communicate via your company’s social media channels? These issues must be clearly defined.
4. Restrictions
It is advisable to decide exactly what your staff can and cannot do online in the name of your company. For example, you may decide to forbid staff from getting dragged into online disagreements or from commenting or contributing to the blogs or newsfeeds of key competitors.
Similarly, you may decide to instruct that no staff may discuss your company online, other than those specifically tasked with maintaining your social media channels.
Launching your Social Media Policy
It’s important that your staff understand the reasoning behind your social media policy. For this reason, it is wise to formally launch it internally and perhaps carry out some training to ensure staff understand the need for it.
Staff may think that contributing to online discussions in the name of your business is harmless, or perhaps helpful, without considering the need for consistency of tone and message. Employees may not consider the data protection implications of informally helping customers online.
The purpose of the social media policy is not just to give staff a list of restrictions – it is to ensure they understand the importance of social media as a very visible public face of the company. If your small business doesn’t yet have a social media policy, it’s time to add the task to your “to do” list.
Debbie Thomson is a Content Marketing Specialist at GFI MAX, she is also a keen blogger and enjoys writing about many topics including business, technology and marketing.
Image Courtesy: ShutterStock
Hi Debbie,
To add just one qualifier to your comments here, I would say that, for some of your employees sharing socially will be the most natural thing in the world and you won’t much need to encourage it. For others, it will be something they perhaps don’t do so naturally and you may have to be a bit of a cheerleader. In either case, it’s important not to create a social media policy so restrictive that employees are discouraged from sharing much of any value. By creating too restrictive a policy, will shoot yourself in the foot and destroy any chance you have of developing a vibrant social media outreach. Instead, create a culture that encourages the sharing you would like to see. That’s the best kind of social media policy any company could hope for. Thanks to Harry for sharing this post with the BizSugar community.