STOP! Before you setup your Twitter profile or Facebook page, do you have a social media policy for your organization? While your company or organization may just be starting to use social media, it is likely that employees and others connected to your organization are already using and interacting on social media in some fashion. To avoid problems in the future, it’s a good idea to set some guidelines on how you would like employees (and contractors and vendors) to use social media, especially if they are representing the company. While it is almost impossible to completely control how employees and connections use social media, setting guidelines can help employees understand what you expect from them and how you envision using social media as an organization. Setting social media policy should be the first step in any implementation plan.
While social media policy will vary from company to company, depending on your industry, and organizational goals, here are some questions and policies you may want to consider:
- What is your purpose in using social media?
- How should employees, contractors, etc. identify themselves on social media?
- Who is allowed to speak on behalf of your company on social media?
- Define what social media is, and where you intend on having active presences.
- Protection of confidentiality and proprietary information. What’s ok to discuss? Who says what’s ok? Who should employees go to if they want to discuss something online to get an ok?
- Transparency. Anyone who represents your company online should be clear who they represent. Make it clear that using personal accounts to pretend to be a customer to say good things about the organization is not allowed (that sort of thing can be easily uncovered and does a lot of harm to reputations).
- Who will respond if there is a problem or issue online?
- Who is monitoring and responding to complaints and questions? If someone sees a question or complaint online who should they go to? Or who should they refer people to if it’s ok for them to respond?
- Privacy Policy. In general, how does your company use customer information as well as information of people who are in your network. There are some good resources online for putting together a privacy policy to post on your website, or you can have a lawyer help you draw one up (A privacy policy resource from the Better Business Bureau).
Curious about how other companies and organizations are creating social media policy? Check out this online database of social media policies of public organizations: http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php
What sort of policies does your organization have? What are your thoughts on how effective they are?
(photo by Peter Kaminski, on Flickr)