Writing a Social Media Policy
A social media policy outlines corporate guidelines and principles for communicating on Facebook and other social websites. Its purpose is to protect the company and the employees.
It goes beyond confidentiality agreements. Is it restrictive? It can be. But it can also mitigate risk in a very open internet today where people talk about not only their personal lives, but their opinions of work.
Here are some tips when writing your own social media policy.
• List what is acceptable.
• List what is not acceptable, including postings that disclose any confidential or proprietary company or partner company information.
• Require that people read it and sign it in front of another employee. This is a serious contract and you need to share with them how serious your company is about its purpose.
• Mention that the policy applies to all social networking sites current and future: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google+, blogs, vlogs, wikis, and so on.
• Require that all employees use a disclaimer when making comments on behalf of the business. The disclaimer should read “… views expressed here are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my company ….”
• Indicate that the company reserves the right to request that specific topics are avoided, withdrawn, and/or removed.
These are not the end all, be all, of a social media policy but it will get you started. We recommend getting an attorney to finalize your policy to ensure it is binding.
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Here is a great resource for sample social media policies: http://socialmediagovernance.com/policies.php