The assignment of certain duties to a temporary or student employee must be approved in advance by the Department of Marketing Communications. To request access to a social media account, please fill out the “Request to add an administrator to a social media account” form on the Office of Marketing and Communications website. How restrictive your company’s social media policy should be depends on the industry in which you operate. If you think your employees have access to inside information about secret products and services your company may be developing, then the policy might need to be more restrictive. On the other hand, there are some industries where you might be able to give your employees a bit more freedom. Intel’s guidelines are designed to empower employees to engage in social media while protecting the company’s interests and to encourage the use of these platforms as a force for goodness and positivity.
Again, the Hootsuite content library is a great help here since you can create a catalog of pre-approved images for your social team to draw from. You likely want to avoid sharing posts from your competitors, for example. We’ve mostly focused so far on creating consistency in your written language. While your employees will certainly have different accents and ways of speaking in your videos, your brand name and products need to be pronounced consistently. Again, there’s no right or wrong answer until you define your brand style in your style guide.
On the other hand, unchecked social media use can lead to negative consequences, including reputational damage, leaks of confidential information, and public relations disasters. As such, employers must proactively address how social media should be used to protect both the company’s interests and the individual rights of employees. Social media, in today’s interconnected world, encompasses a variety of platforms that allow individuals and organizations to share content, engage in conversations, and connect globally.
A social media policy helps protect your company’s online reputation and legal interests by providing clear guidelines for employee conduct online. This article explains why it’s vital and walks you through creating and implementing an effective policy. Encourage employees to follow the company’s official social media accounts for a great starting place to engage with company content. They can share news, events and stories to get a good feel for company social media practices. Social media guidelines are different from your company’s social media policy. However, it’s a good idea to keep all of these documents in one place for easy access and reference.
Account Ownership
You are responsible for keeping this information safe and staying compliant with privacy laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law in the EU. Consider an employee who frequently posts on Instagram during work hours, which is causing distractions and affecting their productivity. While this behavior might seem harmless, it can affect team performance and disrupt the workplace environment.
Because social media emphasizes immediacy, access and personal sharing it is particularly important to minimize harm for your audience, your sources, your colleagues and yourself. Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information. Social media helps journalists find sources, engage audiences and develop story ideas as well as make personal and professional connections. To ensure the highest standards, students in Cronkite News must abide by the following standards for social media use, which reflect the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics core principles.
Even though they might be sharing it on their own account, they could be legally responsible for the information they share. Finally, your social media policy can also be implemented into a larger training program, letting your employees know how to use social media properly. Even though there are plenty of social media platforms, posts, and profile options, your employees must know how to use social media properly. A social media policy can be a strong foundation for a training program that can help you guide your employees on using social media properly. Purpose and scope are the ‘why’ and ‘who’ behind the social media policy—why you have these social media guidelines and who needs to follow them.
All Your Company Documents Available In One Place
To ensure that your team and stakeholders use social media effectively and ethically, you need to create clear and consistent social media guidelines. Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of your social media style guide and make adjustments as needed to ensure its relevance and efficacy over time. Solicit feedback from team members, stakeholders, and audience members to identify areas for improvement and incorporate learnings into future iterations of the guide. Identify and gather the key visual elements that contribute to your brand’s identity, such as logos, colors, typography, and imagery. Determine how these elements should be used consistently across different social media platforms to maintain brand recognition and coherence.
Over time I’ve found myself doing more and more foundational work for organizations looking to dip their toes into social media. One of the key elements of this work, in my opinion, is creating a social media policy that fits well with the organization’s goals, culture and risk tolerance. Your social media policy also helps control messaging and protect your brand from escalation or amplification that might make a crisis worse. A social media policy is useful both for preventing crises and reacting to them.
Provide training sessions or workshops to educate team members on key aspects such as brand identity, visual branding, tone of voice, content strategy, engagement guidelines, and crisis management. Provide training and education to team members or the social media manager responsible for managing your brand’s social media accounts. Offer resources such as instructional videos, tutorials, and reference materials to support ongoing learning and skill development. A social media account serves as the digital face of the library and should maintain the same level of customer service provided in the physical library. In order to provide a guide for staff and protect the library when interacting with users online, the library should outline appropriate staff behavior and responsibilities in its social media policy.
It also operates as a community hashtag, adding up to over 95,000 tagged posts. For instance, Dove’s brand identity is about breaking stereotypes and inspiring people to feel comfortable in their skin. From their human-focused visuals to the uplifting tone of their posts and hashtags, the messaging on all their social profiles reflects this belief. Whether its their Facebook banner or Instagram posts, their messaging is consistent. Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn have built-in metrics that page administrators can access, and Twitter provides metrics for the past 28 days at any given time. University News/Announcements/CrisisTake care not to post University information that has not yet been announced on the main University accounts.
Consider what sets your brand apart from competitors and how you want to be perceived by your target audience. This foundational step will inform all subsequent decisions in creating your social media style guide and social media strategy. In the ever-evolving world of social media, the most successful brands on social media share a common trait of meticulously building a strong brand identity. A key part of this strategy lies in creating clear rules for their online presence. Only authorized employees are allowed to access and post under our company’s social media accounts.
A strong Social Media Policy should not only prevent misuse but also empower safe and confident employee participation. If engagement is high and positive, it’s a good sign your policy is working. Your employees are the ones who use social media every day—both for work and personally. Invite their input to ensure the policy is realistic, understandable, and relevant. A feedback loop also helps you identify confusing language or blind spots that need clarification.
Encourage employees to stop and think before posting, especially when angry. Rather, these guidelines are here to protect the employees and the company. Companies shouldn’t prohibit employees from using social media and talking about their employment. Giving the right guidelines serves as a helpful reminder for employees to be considerate, inclusive and optimistic both inside and outside of work. Social media guidelines outline how a company’s employees should present themselves online.
In many cases, a social media site may be the first place someone learns about UIS. These guidelines establish the rules and provide guidance on best practices for creating, posting, moderating and managing social media accounts on behalf of UIS. In conclusion, social media brand guidelines serve as the compass guiding brands through the dynamic digital landscape, fostering consistency, professionalism, and authenticity in online communication. A well-structured social media policy defines what constitutes personal social media use and what falls under the scope of professional representation. For example, employees should understand that posts made on their personal accounts, especially those on public or semi-public platforms like Twitter or Instagram, can be linked back to the company. It’s essential to remind employees that while they may have the right to express their opinions online, these expressions should not contradict the company’s values or damage its reputation.
Maintaining good relationships with your employees and complying with federal regulations are two more important reasons you should use a professionally made template. This section also makes employees aware that they must follow state and federal laws about subjects such as pornography, discrimination, and creating a hostile work environment. When crafting your Social Media Policy, use a numbered system that makes the policy easy to follow and easy to refer to during employee training or when they need to refer to its various sections.