If your employees participate in social media on behalf of your company, then you need to create an employee social media policy that those employees must adhere to. The purpose of an employee social media policy is to ensure the content employees publish and conversations they engage in while representing your company on the social Web accurately reflect your business' brand image at all times. The following five guidelines should be included in every company's employee social media policy so employee social Web participation for a business is set up for success right from the start.
1. Point of contact
Employees who write a blog, post updates to Twitter, and so on across the social Web for a business should know exactly who the internal point-of-contact is for answers to questions and resolutions to problems. This person must be highly accessible, because you never know when a question might arise.
2. Content specifications
An employee social media policy must include specifics related to what employees are not allowed to write about online related to your business. If there are any absolute don'ts, make sure they're clearly defined in your employee social media policy.
3. Flexibility
Employee social media participation should allow flexibility for people to communicate in their own voices and let their personalities shine through (within the guidelines of appropriately representing the business' brand image). Therefore, your employee social media participation policy should be non-threatening and make it clear that if participants stick to the guidelines, they don't have to worry about being fired for something they publish online.4. Appropriate behavior
Your employee social media policy should offer flexibility, but the style and tone that employees use on the social Web on behalf of your company must accurately reflect your brand. In other words, communicate to employees that if something they consider publishing online is not appropriate to say to your boss, mother, or other authoritative figure, then it should not be published at all.5. Monitoring
Make sure employees know that their participation can be flexible within your brand guidelines, but that participation will be monitored to ensure employees adhere to those guidelines. This helps to ensure that employees will participate in a responsible and honest manner.
