A social media policy is a set of standards relating to conduct on social media platforms. It consists of guidelines and principles that employees are obliged to adopt when participating on social media with the objective of protecting the interests of the business.
With the advent of social media, a recurring conflict that has emerged is employees sharing personal life experiences on social media platforms that are inappropriate and unsuitable to the business environment.
A social media policy is a set of standards relating to conduct on social media platforms. It consists of guidelines and principles that employees are obliged to adopt when participating on social media with the objective of protecting the interests of the business. With the advent of social media, a recurring conflict that has emerged is employees sharing personal life experiences on social media platforms that are inappropriate and unsuitable to the business environment.
A social media policy works to regulate the content that employees post with regard to your business and other employees. As a result, whether your business has ten or fifty employees a basic social media policy is beneficial. The following are some compelling reasons why your business needs to adopt a social media policy.
As we have seen time and time again the use of inappropriate language, negative or insensitive comments, or other similar faux pas on social media can place your business in a bad light. Loss of reputation may result in decline in profits and in some cases, being sued in a court of law.
An illustration of this is an incident at Domino’s Pizza in 2009. Two Dominos employees thought it would be amusing to post a video on YouTube demonstrating violation of health codes while preparing food, such as passing gas and smearing nasal mucus on sandwiches, in a Domino’s Pizza kitchen. This not only affected Domino’s Pizza reputation but the aftermath saw its sales reportedly slipping that year.
Therefore the introduction of a social media policy into your business would have the benefit of protecting your reputation. This would be achieved by taking the guesswork out of what is appropriate and not, for employees to post about your business on the social platforms. It would emphasize professionalism all the times and help maintain a positive perception about your business’s culture and values.
Due to rise in activity on social media, employees spend increasingly more time on sharing and communicating Often consumed with online presence, profiles and updating posts, even during working hours. The result is loss of work time and productivity for businesses.
By introducing a social media policy you can limit the amount of time employees spend on social media for personal use. In some cases most businesses have even gone so far as to prohibit the use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter altogether during working hours.
Social media policy does more than just averting your problems by imposing “restrictions”. As guiding principles it provides direction to employees and may help the business achieve its goals. For example, the social media policy, if drafted correctly, would advise employees on how to word their comments, post and articles to boost brand awareness by directing traffic to your website.
There are clear benefits in adopting social media policies. Even if your company does not have a presence on any social media platforms, you can be assured that your employee and competitors do. Therefore a social media policy needs to be in place to manage any risks.