These days, any publicity, good or bad is instantly transmitted and amplified thanks to social media. If you want to avoid online humiliation that ends up adversely affecting your company, brand image, and your morale then you need to amalgamate an effective social media policy with PR to ensure a positive aura around your organization.
Employees form the backbone of any company, however large or small. Social media sites have provided an outlet for employees to air their thoughts as well as a medium to post images and videos about their professional and personal lives.
However, the ability to air ones views and videos with ease is fraught with danger. Employees can mistakenly or deliberately cause great harm to the reputation of your company or business by airing their personal views online. All your efforts to build up your brand image can come to naught due to the ramblings of a disgruntled employee or a careless manager.
You thus need to formulate an effective social media policy formulated with the help of your HR and PR departments. This policy should clearly outline the way your employees interact on social media and the risks associated with losing control in the online world. You also need to stress on the importance of confidential information about your organization that cannot be shared on social media platforms.
Images or videos of managers frolicking by the pool on their personal vacations or even at a company picnic can quickly result in embarrassment for your company once they are posted on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. The higher the employee is on the corporate ladder, the higher the embarrassment for your company.
A comprehensive social media policy worked out in unison with your HR and PR department should include several features. These include identifying the ultimate goal of that policy as well as concrete and transparent methods to implement the policy. In addition, you need to specify the type of information that can be shared on social media sites as well as designate responsibilities to different employees to provide that information. You also need to specify employees that can respond to queries or speak up on the behalf of your company, business, and brand.
Finally, you need to appoint a team that will monitor all social media postings and interactions, and respond quickly to any crisis caused by an inadvertent slip or unfortunate event.
Luckily, the online world provides a host of tools that can help you devise and implement an effective social media policy. You can try out socialmeida.policytool.net that only needs information about your company to deliver a customized social media policy best suited for you. Addvocate.com is another useful tool that can help you track and even reward employees after encouraging them to air their views based on your chosen policy.
You can also view the social media policies adopted by large organizations such as Apple, Adidas, BBC, Capgemini, Cisco, Microsoft, and many more at socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php.
Initiating and implementing a social media policy with the help of your PR department is an excellent way of ensuring that your employees behave responsibly on social media. Such a policy will also ensure that they are held accountable for any online faux pas caused mistakenly or intentionally. You can also handle any online public relations disaster instantly once you implement an effective social media policy.
