What is a social media policy? This document helps to safeguard your brand’s reputation while also encouraging employees to responsibly share the company’s message. To use your social media policy as an employee advocacy tool, the document should outline best practices for sharing company content on social as well as commenting on online. An employee advocacy tool, like Hootsuite’s Amplify, makes it easy for your employees to share company messaging with pre-approved social media content. What your social media policy should include Before we dive into the specific sections, we suggest breaking your social media policy into two areas: Social media policy for the company’s official accounts. Social media policy for employees. Confidentiality: Defines what company information should not be shared on social media. Employee disclaimers: Require employees to include a disclaimer when publicly commenting on content related to your business that identifies them as an employee. Corporate social media policy examples Adidas Group Social Media Guidelines: A concise two-page guide that clearly communicates the key points with a conversational tone. Best Buy Social Media Policy: This one-page document does a good job of clearly defining its expectations for online conduct.
The line between companies and their employees on social media is steadily blurring. Organizations today need a social media policy that at once helps keep the brand’s reputation intact while also encourages employee participation online.
In this guide, we’ll layout the benefits of having a social media policy and give you all the information you need to create your own. We’ll also offer up a few good examples of policies from recognizable brands that you can draw inspiration from.
Bonus: Get the step-by-step social media strategy guide with pro tips on how to grow your social media presence with Hootsuite.
What is a social media policy?
A social media policy outlines how an organization and its employees should conduct themselves online. This document helps to safeguard your brand’s reputation while also encouraging employees to responsibly share the company’s message.
Because social media moves fast, this policy should be considered a living document—ongoing updates will be necessary. But rest easy, it doesn’t need to be a 26-page opus (take a look at this simple two-pager from Adidas). The goal here is to provide employees with straightforward guidelines that are easy to follow.
Benefits of a social media policy
Whether your company is already well-established on social, or just beginning to build its presence online, all organizations should have a social media policy. Here are a few ways your business can benefit from establishing a social media policy.
Helps to protect your company’s reputation
By clearly explaining to your employees how best to represent the company online—including what they can and cannot share—you will mitigate threats to your brand reputation. To further help in this regard, a good social media policy will also explain what actions need to be taken in the event of a mistake is made or a company social handle comes under attack (by trolls or hackers).
Defends against legal trouble and security risks
Social media policies can help safeguard your organization against potential legal troubles and security risks by outlining potential threats and ways to avoid them. Your policy should also explain what an employee must do if they should accidentally put the company’s reputation at risk, or if they fall prey to a malicious attack.
Empowers employees to share company messaging
Social media policies can also be enormously helpful when it comes to brand amplification. How? They tap into your biggest advocacy group: your employees. And company messaging is often considered more credible when it comes from actual people.
With clear guidelines, companies can help their employees understand how to use social media to promote the brand. To use your social media policy as an employee advocacy tool, the document should outline best practices for sharing company content on social as well as commenting on online.
An employee advocacy tool, like Hootsuite’s Amplify, makes it easy for your employees to share company messaging with pre-approved social media content. This reduces risks to your company and ensures everything is accurate and on-brand.
Creates consistency across channels
Use your social media policy to outline expectations surrounding brand voice and tone. Having a strong brand voice is beneficial to your business as it increases awareness, showcases personality, and helps users connect with your business.
If you have public facing employees, you also need to make sure they are aware of any brand standards regarding the appearance and tone of their social media accounts. For example, you may want your employee’s Twitter handles to include a reference to your brand.
At Hootsuite, we encourage employees who interact with the public on behalf of the company to create a Twitter handle using this naming convention: @Hoot[individual’s name]. This makes it easy for customers to identify Hootsuite employees and engage with them.
This part of your social media policy should also address proper use of images, video, and other media. If your business calls for images being shared on social media to remain consistent with brand voice, you need to outline these requirements in your policy.
What your social media policy should include
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