How to Create a Social Media Policy for Your Company

Whether you prefer Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, social media platforms are versatile tools that can be used to accomplish tasks and meet goals. However, they won’t do the work for you. When it comes to growing your business, you get out of it what you put in. 

With that being said, the first step in effectively using these platforms is creating a social media policy for your company. This will provide a guideline to ensure that information is being shared effectively and efficiently.

If you’re not sure how to create this kind of policy, here’s where you can start: 

Encourage your employees to get involved 

This step is particularly fruitful if your company is active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn expresses your brand’s message more directly than other social media platforms. By featuring your employees, it’ll be easy to show how they’re reflecting your brand’s values, too. 

In your social media policy, communicate how valuable individual employee participation is to the company as a whole. When you all work together, you can extend your reach to new clients, opportunities, and levels of success. 

Start small by asking them to describe their daily experiences with the company. This can be as simple as a succinct description of an interesting new project or service. Their honest and straightforward perspective from the inside may encourage others to take a deeper look at the company. This can also lead to attracting top talent by helping them learn more about your culture from actual employees rather than a corporate narrative.

If you have regular clients, have employees ask if they’d be willing to share a story about their experience with the company. With their permission, share these stories on social media as real-world examples of what you have to offer. 

Employees can also use this platform to celebrate each other and collective success stories. This will not only show current and potential clients that you operate with a sense of community, but it will also build comradery within. 

Ask employees to work together to find articles and blogs within your industry that they can discuss with others on the platform. Whether the posts are internal or external, they should be compelling and easy to follow. This will make people want to reach out to discuss them. Create a conversation and watch it grow. 

Set clear limits 

Now that you’ve discussed the best material to share, it’s important to clearly outline anything that should be avoided on the platform, too. It may seem obvious that a corporate social media page is not the place for disrespectful or inappropriate content but it should still be listed as a hard and fast rule. 

Many people are used to using personal social media accounts, which are typically approached in a much different way. Things that are shared or said on a personal account may not be taken the same way on a company page. All communications and posts must be respectful, appropriate, and void of damaging information. 

Sum up your brand’s message and values to project out into the world. From this summary, provide a company description that employees can use in their profiles. This will ensure a relevant, consistent, and accurate presentation across the company. Your employees are responsible, in part, for the company’s reputation. 

The fine print 

?No policy is complete without it (just remember not to make it too fine). With all of the do’s and don'ts that go into social media use, there are background details that may get forgotten. Before your policy is complete, it’s important to outline how to handle difficult situations. 

Your policy should include a list of who is responsible for what within times of crisis. This will help avoid everything crashing to a halt when something goes wrong.   

Designate one person or a whole team to handle communications with anyone hostile toward the company. Social media posts shouldn’t be met with arguments or defensive replies, but directed to customer service or another appropriate contact.  

Finally, be sure to research any legal requirements that are specific to your industry. Include these in the policy alongside your brand’s values to ensure that both are adhered to. 

Make room for details 

What you post and how you interact on these platforms is important, but a lot of other little details will come into play here, too. For example, have you considered how often you should post? The best profiles are regularly reviewed, updated, and interacted with.

The small details can sometimes be as important as the big ones. To make the most of social media, it’s important to be vocal. Discuss within your company what your goal is for sharing. Quality and consistency are critical in terms of overall results.

Hashtags, on LinkedIn in particular, can be used to bring your posts to the top of a search. They essentially act as keywords, giving readers a quick glimpse of the topic you’re covering. Visibility is key. 

Consider the tone you want to convey. A friendly, conversational tone is often found to be warm and welcoming, but it’s not the only option. Decide within your company and then make it clear within the policy. In any case, be kind and avoid ambiguous language that may be misinterpreted. 

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Kim has attracted an audience of over 235,000 professionals from around the globe on LinkedIn and is the CEO of Linkability, Inc. She is a dynamic Entrepreneur, Global Business Communications authority, and three-time business founder. Linkability is a strategy and consulting firm that provides world-class Intrepreneurs, Entrepreneurs, and organizations with consulting, services, and products that helps to grow robust networks and drive tangible results in sales, marketing, and thought leadership positioning.

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