How To Create A Common Sense Social Media Policy

Social Media can be a double edged sword – it’s great to bring a human face to any organisation and is also great at positioning yourself as an expert in your field.

Social Media can be used by anyone within your organisation – and that is a potential negative aspect – how do you as a business owner control all the Facebooking, Tweets and Blog Posts that your staff could be talking about concerning you or your customers.

Overseas there have already been court cases (and some settled out of court) where someone has felt “wronged” by what has been published in a Blog, a Tweet or on Facebook.

Here’s a common sense approach to creating a company wide social media policy.

Social media can improve your companies’ bottom line – it can increase sales and decrease customer churn – if used to its fullest extent.

A social media policy shouldn’t need to be a full legal document – it’s best to make it a simple bullet point list of what you as business owner considers to the “right” way to use social media and a bullet point list of things that you don’t want to see happening.

You may choose to create this yourself – with your management team or create a basic one and then let staff create this collaboratively.

By doing this with a group you can discuss the issues and make sure that the items on each list is understood by all.

Start out with the easy ones for both lists – on the “Acceptable List” would be: -

• Reinforce our positive attributes
• Promote our knowledge and experience
• Show others how we work and have the best interests of our customers at all times
• Show we are human
• Promote the community work we do
• Give thanks to our staff, their families and suppliers
• Etc etc

On the “Is Not Acceptable” list could be: -

• Don’t comment about our competitors in any way
• Avoid swearing or other “not safe for work” content
• Do not identify any of our customers staff by their names
• Always ask people before posting photos of them online
• Don’t use online games on the companies pages or accounts
• Don’t spread rumour or false virus reports
• Etc etc

The lists will change according to your companies’ philosophy and comfort level so feel free to add and discuss your own thoughts with your team.

We can also help you create these lists – use the contact details here