Building a Social Fortress— Crafting an Ironclad Social Media Policy to Safeguard Your Business

Love it or hate it, social media is a big part of our lives. As a business owner or manager, it’s important to understand how to protect your organization on social media.

While you probably use social media to promote your business, and events, educate, and entertain your audience, do you know how to ensure your organization is protected from errant postings from angry employees or dealing with a PR blowback?

That’s where a social media policy comes into play. A social media policy for your organization creates clear guidelines on how it should be managed. Here are a few things to make sure you can address in your social media policy:

• Posting responsibilities: Setting appropriate roles and responsibilities for social media management ensures a consistent message but also mitigates the risk of a disgruntled employee taking over posting and ruining your organization’s reputation.

• Log-in management and admin roles: Let’s face it, your employees probably aren’t going to stay with you forever, and when the individual managing social media leaves, it’s important to understand how and when log-in information is transferred to ensure the continuity of your social media accounts.

• Responsiblity for answering questions and comments: Social media is anything but a vacuum, it’s important that your followers feel engaged with it. Without clear roles on who is supposed to be answering comments and questions, there’s a strong chance that it will go unanswered…which you don’t want.

• Dealing with PR issues: We all know that having a plan in an emergency is important. Well, I’m here to tell you PR issues are their own kind of emergency. Whether it’s a bad review, an ugly post, or even a disgruntled employee (more on that later) it’s important to know who is allowed to comment and handle the issue. Otherwise, you could have a BIGGER mess on your hands.

• Employee Issues: Dealing with unhappy employees posting on social media is difficult. There is a fine line between protecting your organization and violating an employee’s rights. As a result, it’s important to give employees a channel (outside social media) in which to bring up issues with the appropriate parties within the organization. Be sure you provide some guidance on your expectations on this for your employees so they feel encouraged to NOT air their grievances on social media.

Looking for more help in crafting a sound social media policy for your organization? Check us out on Linked In and Facebook.