Do you need a social media policy? Many clients use social media in their businesses. It helps them engage with their customers, find new prospects, and build their brand cost-effectively. But, there are risks associated with social media that you need to guard against. Even if you try to avoid these risks by choosing not to have a social media presence, people can create one by saying things about you online. How your customers, prospects, and employees behave on social media can quickly take control of your business. You need a set of rules to stop this by making sure that you control how they behave on social media without infringing their rights. We provide various policies that you need to manage social media in your organisation.
Why does social media pose risks?
Social media poses significant risks because:
- you can’t avoid it; and
- it’s everywhere.
You can’t avoid it because whether you decide to engage with social media or not, people will still probably talk about you on it.
It’s everywhere because people have smartphones and laptops, and all sorts of things are actually social media – even if you think that they aren’t.
Social media is a broad term that covers any existing or future digital tool or other kind of technology that allows one person to publish the same message to many people in a public or semi-public forum at the same time using the Internet or a similar communications network. It includes:
- social networking services – such as Facebook;
- micro-blogging services – such as Twitter or Tumblr;
- professional networking services – such as Linkedin;
- video and photo sharing services – such as YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram, or Flickr;
- blogs – such as corporate or personal blogs;
- forums and discussion boards – such as Reddit; and
- wiki websites – such as Wikipedia.
It even includes:
- instant messaging applications – such as Whatsapp, WeChat, or iMessage when used to send group messages; and
- any other electronic communications – such as email or SMS when used to send the same message to multiple recipients.
What are the benefits of social media policies?
Social media policies have many benefits, including helping you to:
- avoid liability – for what people say on social media;
- maintain relationships – by preventing bad experiences and managing expectations;
- protect your reputation – by preventing people from publishing objectionable things in your social media communities;
- keep conversations relevant – to your purpose and objectives;
- manage promotional competitions – by preventing outcries and objections;
- manage communities – by allowing moderation and recourse;
- manage employee conduct – by controlling what they do on social media in the course and scope of their employment;
- comply – with the rules of various social media platforms;
- maintain productivity – in a workplace beset by the distractions of social media;
- safeguard privacy – by creating a culture of privacy in your social media communities; and
- respond to incidents properly – by having a plan of action for handling them.
You can read more about the benefits of social media policies here.
What is a social media policy?
A social media policy is a written document that provides you with a high-level plan of action when it comes to managing your customers and leads or employees and contractors use of social media.
Social media policies that we offer include:
- Social Media Community Rules – an external social media policy dealing with your customers’ and prospects use of social media communities that you control;
- Internal Social Media Policy – an internal social media policy dealing with your employees’ and contractors’ use of social media insofar as it relates to your organisation;
- Incident Response Policy – a social media incident response policy to regulate your response to a social media incident by an employee, contractor, customer, or prospect.
Interested?
If you are interested, please complete the form on the right or email us now. We will contact you to find out more about your requirements.