Imagine someone hands their kids the keys to their car with no driver's license and no curfew and then later on wonders why things go badly. From a social media perspective, this is happening in many organizations today. A lot of people are given free reign with the most powerful word-of-mouth engine that has ever existed and there's no accountability – at least not until something goes terribly wrong.
Many organizations are launching Twitter accounts, Facebook pages and blogs, yet they have no framework or rules of engagement to make sure what their team is doing has a positive impact on their brand. Most of us have an employee manual, but very few of us have a social media policy. Even if you're not active in social media as a company, your staff will be, and in many cases they name the business they work for on their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. Others may have a blog where they post opinion pieces or just simply share with world what they ate for lunch.
If someone on your team posts something offensive and we take notice their immediate defence is "I didn't know I couldn't" or "no-one told me…" etc. And it can be a surprisingly successful defence. There have been several cases in Canada and the U.S. where employees have successfully sued their employer after being fired because they were dismissed for a tweet or Facebook comment that was offensive and didn't represent the brand. The key reason the suits were successful was there was no explicit policy outlining best practices, highlighting worst practices and letting people know what was expected of them professionally.
On the flip side I had one client employee state that they weren't using LinkedIn or Twitter for business development because they were unsure of what they could online and didn't want to be fired or get into hot water.
Having a social media policy in place achieves three important goals:
- It protects the customer and insures they get accurate information and that their privacy and security are safeguarded.
- It protects your brand but also encourages effective and proactive social media use.
- It protects your staff from what may be a career limiting behavior.
Some of the key issues that your policy should address include but are not limited to:
- Adherence to governing laws in your industry (securities law, banking acts, client privacy issues etc.)
- Key best practices that should be followed when using online social communications tools. Some of these would be: How do we handle criticism? What is a reasonable response time? When working with bloggers how transparent will you both be about the relationship?
- Ownership of social media accounts created by staff that uses your brand name. This is vital as staff leave and often no one has the password for that Twitter account they created or worse they leave and use the account at their next job.
It's really important to note that your policy should not be designed to hamstring people and reduce their business orientated social media use. It should be balanced and provide a framework and a series of checks and balances that allow staff to use social media effectively and proactively.
Social media is a powerful tool that can build your brand, attract customers and help you meet your business goals. It can also, if used incorrectly, have devastating effects on your business. A social media policy will help ensure staff are on message, your brand is seen in a positive light and that your customers are engaged effectively. So before you post that next Tweet or launch your company Facebook page, create a social media policy and have everyone sign off on it.
