A social media policy is the outline of how a brand and it’s employees should present themselves online, with the main goal of providing employees with an easy to follow, a straightforward guideline. A successful social media policy can: protect your company’s reputation, defend against legal trouble and security risks, create consistency across all channels, and empower employees to share company messaging.
Your social media policy should be broken up into two categories: social media policy for the company’s official accounts and social media policy for employees. Within these two categories, your social media policy should include rules and regulations, roles and responsibilities, potential legal risks, security risks, and accountability.
Seeking input is important for a policy, as it encourages employee participation. Focusing on the big picture rather than the specific details of each channel is helpful considering social media changes all the time. Policies differ depending on the sector, whether that is: corporate, government, healthcare, or higher education.