A social media policy template is an essential tool that specifies how an organization and its employees should use social media professionally and personally. It protects your business’ reputation by preventing to post any potentially harmful content.
What is a Social Media Policy?
A social media policy provides guidelines and requirements for the types of content employees can post online. It covers your brand’s official channels and dictates how employees use social media.
Moreover, social media policy should be easy to understand as it applies to everyone from the CEO to summer interns. The policy sets rules for posting about the company on personal social media accounts.
When to use a social media policy?
You must have a social policy in place while assigning tasks to employees to advance your brand. It must specify who is responsible for posting about your company, its products, and services. This policy should also come in handy when your company requires legal protection or while suffering from bad online reviews or postings. In addition, it helps you to advance your business and protects you from potential harm.
Why should you have a social media policy for employees?
Here are the reasons for having a social media policy for employees;
Improve your brand identity and reputation
A detailed social media employee policy helps companies maintain a good reputation by elaborating the following;
- The company’s brand identity.
- When discussing the business, the language employees should use.
- How employees should respond to comments or blog posts
- Whether employees need to direct inquiries to the public relations or marketing department
Protects business from legal and regulatory challenges
You can protect your business from the violation of rules and regulations when you have a well-crafted and enforced social media policy.
Better communication
A social media policy for employees encourages better communication between company employees without putting the brand’s image or message at risk. Furthermore, it can increase unity among staff members by establishing connections between them online. It also makes sure that digital interactions don’t have negative consequences.
Prevent a security breach
No one can phish and hack your accounts when you have a social media policy combined with proper security protocols. When you include security guidelines in your policy, it makes sure that employee passwords are changed frequently. Also, it sets rules regarding the usage of social media on company equipment.
Promotes equality
Having a well-drafted social media policy makes sure that every employee is treated fairly regarding the type of material they are allowed to post online. For instance, if questionable comments or statements are made online then all employees will be reprimanded accordingly with no room for favoritism.
How do you write a social media policy for an employee?
You should use a numbered system while crafting your Social Media Policy. This makes the policy easy to follow and easy to refer to while training the employees. A well-made social media policy should include the following sections;
Purpose
In this section, you have to specify when employees must follow the policy and how they will manage company accounts.
Instructions regarding the usage of social media on behalf of the company
This section provides instructions on determining who runs the company’s social media account and sets several specific rules about the following activities;
- Use proper branding
- Keep personal and company social media accounts separate
- Only post verifiable information
Instructions for personal social media accounts
The main purpose of this section is to protect your company from harm in case people post something negative about it on social media. This section includes the following details;
- Proprietary information
- Negative sentiments about the company
- The company’s right to take disciplinary action
Ownership of social media accounts
This part makes sure that your company has ownership of all contacts and their information obtained from social media accounts created on behalf of the company.
Respect and privacy rights
Here, you have to state that when posting about the company or anyone related to it, the employees must follow the social media platforms’ rules and have to be respectful. It is also important for employees to follow state and federal laws about subjects. These may include pornography, discrimination, and building a hostile work environment.
Transparency and disclosures
If the employees are being paid or receiving free products or services for posting on social media, they should pass on others’ work as their own, be honest, and provide proper credit.
Comment moderation
Specify in this section that employees have to keep track of comments on their posts and also include deleting forbidden ones.
Additional policy
This is an open-ended section that allows you to include any particular details about your company or its services.
Implementing a social media policy:
Consider the following steps to implement a social media policy;
- First, download a social media policy template online.
- In the next step, you have to get input from various departments. The signatures of the marketing and legal teams are important in the policy. But, to make sure nothing is overlooked, you should talk to each department’s directors.
- Ensure that your employees can readily access your social media policy. You should also share it on the employee dashboard or web portal along with including it in your employee handbook.
- Announce to your employees that you have a social media policy. This way, they know that they are bound to the rules of the social media policy.
- Reviewing your social media policy from time to time is important. You may have to change your social media policy on the basis of the capabilities of various social media platforms. Share your updated policy with your employees as well.
- Make it clear at the end to whom your employees can reach out if they have any queries regarding what they can and cannot post.
Faq (Frequently Asked Questions)
Your social media policy should include the following details;
1- Introduction
2- Purpose statement
3- Scope
4- Corporate use guidelines
5- Personal use guidelines
6- Disciplinary action
Yes, it is legal but you have to ensure that it does not violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The NLRA has provisions that apply to your document. These provisions are regarding communication among employees. Additionally, it is recommended to use a professionally made template if you want to maintain good relationships with your employees and comply with federal regulations.
There are various methods that you can use to share your company’s social media policy. You may share it with everyone in the company via mail, post it on the employee dashboard, and add a copy of the policy to the employee handbook.
You should format your social media policy in a straightforward manner so that everyone can easily understand it. It should cover the following;
1- The rules and responsibilities of employees
2- Security plans
3- For a PR crisis, a contingency plan with particular roles and procedures
4- Guidelines for employees’ personal social media accounts
