So, what exactly are social media guidelines?
Well, they're like a rulebook for using social media. Their main goal is to teach your team how to use social platforms responsibly, so they can become natural champions of your brand. It's not about policing people, but more like a handy reference for everyone.
But wait, there's a difference between social media guidelines and social media style guides. Guidelines are all about general rules and best practices, while style guides are more about the visuals and style.
And what about social media protocols?
They're basically about how much time employees can spend on social platforms during work hours. These terms often get mixed up, so it's good to clear that up.
Then there are social media policies, which are all about protecting the company from legal issues related to social media use. They have rules for posting on social media, conduct, and the consequences for breaking them.
But why are social media guidelines so important?
They help companies develop a healthy social media presence by providing guidance and tools for positive engagement. They also protect social media teams from harassment, boost brand awareness, outline the company's social media strategy, and promote healthy social media habits.
When it comes to social media guidelines, it's important to keep things friendly. The main goal is to empower your team, not restrict their creativity.
The document should make it clear that the information provided is pretty important and skipping through it might mean missing key details, like how to share brand content on social media.
It's also essential to emphasize the importance of using a natural tone of voice on social media. We want our posts to sound genuine, and simply copying and pasting the same text could lessen their impact.
Lastly, it's worth repeating that social media guidelines should not be about policing people's online activity, and the document should really highlight this.
When creating your company’s social media guidelines, it's important to keep the content concise and informative.
You should cover two key areas:
1. Your brand’s mission statement (not specific to social media).
2. Your brand’s purpose on each social media platform. For the second point, your guidelines should explain why your brand is present on each platform. This can include inspirational reasons such as striving to make a positive impact, as well as practical reasons such as recruiting, increasing brand visibility, and promoting products or content.
Here are some suggested corporate social media guidelines:
Do's:
- Report any instance of harassment and bullying that you’ve experienced.
- List your employer in your social media bio (optional).
- Express your own opinion, clearly stating that the opinions expressed are your own.
- Share company posts, updates, events, and stories.
- Report any potential social media-related crisis.
Don'ts:
- Engage with trolls and bad actors on your own without consulting higher-ups.
- Engage in flame wars with competitors, customers, followers, or any member of the company’s social media audience.
- Share company secrets, including upcoming features, marketing campaigns in progress, financial information, or any internal matters.
- Comment, engage or get involved in legal matters related to the company.
Stress Equal Representation and Inclusivity
Every employer, brand, and company should promote inclusivity, both internally and externally, on social media. This is a fundamental expectation, and companies that don't do so have no excuse.
However, unintentional mistakes can happen. To prevent this from happening, companies should include inclusivity guidelines:
- Use diverse imagery and icons, including stock imagery, emojis, and branded visuals.
- Swiftly report and remove all comments deemed sexist, racist, ableist, ageist, homophobic, or hateful to any group or person.
- Make text accessible by using plain language and ensuring it is accessible to people learning English as a second language or those with learning disabilities. Professional websites with multilingual translation services can also be explored to make content accessible in different languages.
- Write descriptive image captions for people with visual impairments. Most social media platforms allow the addition of alt texts.
- Use inclusive pronouns (they/them/theirs/folks etc). People should also be encouraged to list their preferred pronouns in their bios if they wish to do so.
- Use title case for hashtags to make them easier to read.
- Include subtitles in video content.
Anti-Harassment Policy
Your social media guidelines should encourage your team to practice kindness and positivity online. However, they should also emphasize that the business does not tolerate any form of online harassment, whether from or against employees. This section should include guidelines and resources that educate on how to deal with trolls or bullies, including aspects such as who to report to, how to react, how to identify trolls and bullies, when to ban, when to block, and so on.
Team members directly responsible for your social accounts should have a separate set of guidelines covering these issues. The reason is simple—how they handle those sensitive situations could reflect badly on your company. Nobody wants to go through a PR crisis because of a mishandled situation.
Facebook has a strict policy on bullying and harassment. You can read their policies in the Facebook Community Standards.
Cybersecurity Protocols
As technology advances and people educate themselves about cybersecurity, hackers become craftier. Incorporating white box pentests into your cybersecurity strategy can help reduce the leakage of sensitive data. While I won't provide a comprehensive cybersecurity checklist, I can suggest a few tips you should include in your guidelines:
- Choose strong and unique passwords for all accounts.
- Two-factor authentication is a must.
- Be mindful of what personal and professional information you share.
- Practice safe and responsible browsing.
- If you're using a VPN, ensure it's a secure network.
- Keep your operating systems updated.
- Dispose of data/equipment safely. This applies if you store data physically.
- Use an email awareness checklist to quickly identify fraudulent emails.
Linkedin outloines their security practices in their security section of their website. Visit security practices on LinkedIn here.
Conclusion:
Social media guidelines are crucial for managing your online presence. In today's world, a single tweet has the potential to go viral and can tarnish your reputation, so having clear social media guidelines is essential. To safeguard your reputation and adhere to these guidelines, consider using SSM Marketing, also known as Shelley's Social Media. Our consultations are free.