In a digital world infatuated with social media, it’s important to protect yourself and your brand with a solid social media policy. Here’s how to do it.
Policies tend to get a bad rap, especially since they’re known for stringent rules.
But when it comes to an internal social media policy, there’s nothing bad about it. In fact, if your online business is involved with any social media channel, it’s important that you have a set of guidelines to steer your interactions with customers, and more importantly, prevent anyone on your team from botching your reputation.
Watch today’s episode to get started with a social media policy of your own – you’ll be surprised how easy it can be.
Happy selling!
-Matt Winn, Social Media Manager, Volusion
Here’s the transcript if you’d like to read along:
Hi everybody! My name is Matt and I’m the Social Media Manager here at Volusion. Welcome to Two Minute Tuesdays, where we give you two minutes of ecommerce advice to bolster your online success.
A lot of you are involved in social media, and as you probably know, it’s nothing less than a public forum. Social media provides a big opportunity to engage with your customers, but you have to be careful so that someone within your company doesn’t mess up your online reputation. So with that in mind, it’s time for you to put together your internal social media policy and I’ve got six steps to help create a perfect one.
First, determine how official you policy is going to be. If you’re a one man show, there’s no need to have a business document in writing. But if you have a team of employees or you’re outsourcing your social media, you’ll definitely want to an official social media policy on paper.
Next, start drafting you policy. To begin, make sure that you loosely define “social media.” We typically think of social media as just Facebook and Twiiter, but there are several different outlets, like blogs and forums. By loosely defining this term of “social media,” you’re really encompassing all different types of activities that exist online.
Third, always protect your confidential information. Write in your policy that employees aren’t allowed to disclose private information about your company. Why? Because these are public channels and your competitors can steal that and use it against you.
Another important thing to put into your social media policy is a “do not speak on behalf of the company” clause. For example, I have a personal Facebook profile and if I went and posted something crazy via social media, I need to make sure that I’m not representing my company. Your employees need to do the same, so put that in writing.
Along the same lines, you’ll want to address anonymous posts. Your employees, of course, love your company, so it’s really tempting for them to anonymously address or “correct” negative customer reviews. This can be a PR nightmare if this employee gets caught, so always make sure that your employees are identifying themselves as a representative of your company.
Last, but not least, why have a policy if you’re not going to enforce it? Within your policy, make sure you’re outlining your enforcement guidelines. What are the consequences of breaking that policy? Your employees need to know.
Hopefully these tips are really helpful in creating the perfect social media policy. You’ll be surprised how helpful have this type of policy really is.
If you have any questions we’re always happy to help.
From me to you, happy selling!