There’s no denying social media has become a dominant form of communication in our society. As a result, businesses are continuing to embrace its potential as a key part of marketing campaigns. The ability to deliver messaging, garner active engagement, and meaningfully connect with almost all demographics makes social media such a powerful tool.
Nevertheless, without structure, your attempts to utilize social media to build and maintain customer relationships can devolve into chaos. It is, therefore, vital to adopt a solid social media policy that keeps your approach to these tools consistent, positive, and effective.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to understand how to create and implement a social media policy. So, let’s review some of the practical aspects you need to take.
Maintain Risk Awareness
As with any other aspect of your business, your social media use is subject to an increasing range of risks. Some of these will be related to how individuals interact with your accounts. Others will be related to the potential to disrupt your business activities. A strong social media policy can help mitigate these risks, but you need to be constantly vigilant of them.
One of your first steps in creating your social media policy is to fully assess the risks to your company. It can be worth pursuing this on a departmental basis. This is because social platforms can be a tool or a feature in different ways for different parts of the organization. Gather the heads of departments across your organization and discuss how social media factors into their operations and the potential issues it could cause.
The areas for consideration should include cybersecurity, as malicious code can infect company networks via infected messages. Loss of productivity may also be a concern regarding staff checking their own accounts on company time. Your marketing department could view inconsistent content messaging as a risk to brand impact.
Once you’ve gained a full understanding of the risks to your business, you can start to build strong policies designed to mitigate these. However, you should remember this isn’t a static issue. The risks can change, so you must review these regularly and make changes accordingly.
Prioritize Clarity
Your social media accounts are among your most important assets. After all, one report found 83% of Filipino internet users have active social media accounts, which is well above the global average. Your social media accounts are likely to be the most visible face of your business. When creating a social media policy that supports a positive connection, you need to produce documentation with clear guidelines at the forefront.
This should include:
– Clarity of Use
Be clear about how social media factors into business activities. Communicate its importance both from commercial and personal perspectives. Outline the circumstances in which social media accounts — both private and business — can be used. You should also provide clarity on when it is acceptable to access company accounts on personal devices and vice versa.
– Clarity of Roles
If all your staff have access to the organization’s social media accounts, your messaging can very quickly get muddled. Be clear about which roles in the business are cleared to utilize your socials. Furthermore, create a clear hierarchy for approval about interactions in specific circumstances. This could include responding to customer complaints or dealing with sensitive subjects.
– Clarity of Voice
Even if yours is a small business, having a consistent brand voice is important. It helps to set expectations for consumers and can be a key to building trust. As such, your social media policy needs to contain clarity about the voicing used in all posts. You should still remember, though, that there is a fine line between staying on brand and your social posts lacking an authentic personality. You still need to give your staff room to connect meaningfully with your consumers.
Provide Regular Training
A social media policy is a useful document for your business. However, the creation process can’t stop at producing a list of standards and behavior. There may be aspects your employees don’t fully understand. Indeed, there is a chance your staff may simply read it once but not put it into action. As such, a vital aspect of making social media policy is training your staff on its application.
Start with communicating the reasons for each aspect of your social media policy. Staff buy-in can be a significant factor in making sure they follow the rules you lay out. Don’t make it seem as though you’re simply dictating the policies to them. Explain your reasoning and highlight the risks. You should also be clear about how these policies help to protect them and boost their experience in the workplace. This can be particularly relevant for cyberbullying and protecting their personal devices from viruses.
Your training should also include practical demonstrations of how the policy applies. Show them examples of circumstances relating to various areas of policy. For instance, what messages including phishing links look like or types of customer complaint comments. Have a group discussion about the appropriate behavior in line with the social media policy. You can also produce e-learning exercises where staff are confronted with such examples and should respond accordingly.
Make this type of training part of regular development processes. As their working practices and their roles change, their relationship to the social media policy is also likely to alter. Help your staff to feel supported in this area and they can use your social platforms in the most positive ways.
Conclusion
Social media is an essential communications platform in almost all industries. Using it successfully requires you to build a robust set of policies surrounding its use. Review the risks for your business and structure your approach to addressing them.
Make sure your policy documents prioritize clarity in all areas of social media use. Importantly, make sure your staff is trained on the effective application of your standards. With a consistent application of these policies, your social platforms can be a powerful tool for your success.
Leave a Reply