Do You Need a Social Media Policy?
Social media is more mainstream than ever, with most businesses at least aware of blogging, Facebook and Twitter – even if they aren’t using them routinely. Many medium to large sized organizations have now been using or experimenting with social media for some while now, to the point where many individuals and departments have created a range of social media.
However, they do not always have the guidance to use it in an appropriate way that reflects the brand and ‘voice’ of the business – or coherent policies and procedures to inform their use of social media.
This can lead to social media mishaps. Anyone can tweet something they regret later; for a business, it can be disastrous to break the unwritten rules of social media and incite a backlash against your brand.
Look at what happened to Habitat in June 2009. During the Iran election crisis, #iranelection and related hashtags were top trending topics, as Twitter became the main way to get news out of Tehran. UK home furnishing store Habitat suffered a social media backlash when tweets from their @HabitatUK account included updates such as “#Mousavi Join the database for free to win a £1000 gift card”. This is known as “hijacking a hashtag” – and people on Twitter really don’t like it. Habitat swiftly blamed a marketing intern and publicly apologized – but not before damage had been done to their brand.
At the less serious end of the spectrum, even something as seemingly trivial as the naming conventions you use for Twitter or YouTube accounts is important to agree on as an organization, to avoid confusing your audience and to reflect your brand as you would wish. Having a clear procedure for initiating social media campaigns will help you avoid multiple accounts or duplicated effort, and a ‘social media zoo’ of free-range Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other accounts that people across the organization are barely aware of.
Policies, guidance and procedures – which can be communicated to staff via clear documentation and training – will help avoid these traps, big and small.
10 Things to Include in Your Social Media Policy
I make a distinction between top-level corporate policies, departmental guidelines, and team strategies. As these cascade down the organization they get less directive and more strategic. Together with a procedure for initiating social media campaigns, these form the basis of your organizational social media marketing framework.
There is a fine balance between being so restrictive you stifle creativity, informality and the conversational approach that usually works best in social media; and giving employees carte blanche to do as they please with little or no guidance.
A corporate social media policy is the starting point, and will usually be set by a Corporate Communications department or equivalent – ideally in consultation with senior managers, and informed by a social media audit of what is already taking place in the organization. It should include the following key elements:
- Purpose – What the document is for and who it relates to.
- Company Philosophy – What is your overall attitude to social media and how it should be used?
- Definitions – What do you mean by the term ‘social media’? Which tools and platforms are covered by the document?
- Use of Social Media - Include a social media audit – what is the organization already doing? Plus any specific guidance on naming conventions, how the company uses e.g. YouTube, what the organization uses Twitter for, or when to start a new blog.
- Campaign Initiation Procedure – How should a campaign be initiated? Who is responsible for maintaining a central record of e.g. Facebook pages and Twitter accounts to avoid duplication? This may vary between departments or teams, but any company-wide guidelines should be included here.
- Key Principles – Including legal e.g. libel, copyright; transparency; behaviour; and ‘rules of engagement’ (e.g. how you respond to comments / criticism)
- Employee Identification – Do you want employees to include a disclaimer in any personal social media, such as “All opinions are my own and not the BBC’s” in a Twitter biography?
- Terms of Service – i.e. of individual tools and sites – it is important that employees are aware they must stick to the ToS of e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Facebook etc.
- Risk Assessment and Crisis Plan - What are the key risks and how will you manage them? What do you do if it all goes wrong? Not responding to a social media crisis is the worst thing to do!
- Disciplinary Action – For a policy to be effective, there must be consequences for violating it. What actions would lead to disciplinary action? This may be something quite serious which clearly crosses a line, such as setting up a hate page on Facebook.This should link to any relevant HR policies.
The scale of your documentation will vary according to the size of the organization and the scale of social media use. It may be a hefty document, or a couple of pages of guidelines. But thinking through these issues is an important first step for developing a coherent, coordinated and effective plan for using social media in your organization.
Learn more about Managing Social Media on my one-day workshop for managers.
