Having well-defined social guidelines for your employees/colleagues is essential to prevent them from posting something harmful and encourage them to post content that benefits the company and themselves. For those in the marketing sector, it is pretty natural to master the various tools and know what is appropriate to publish and what is not. However, many people still need to gain complete confidence in social networks. After numerous cases of people being fired for inappropriate photos or tweets, people tend not to talk about work on their channels for fear of making mistakes. It’s a shame. In last month’s article, you saw that employees are the most credible figures in a company: it is no coincidence that many brands include them in their advertising.
Create Social Guidelines For Your Employees
A good starting point is to gather a small group of people who are already familiar with social media and discuss with them how they would approach social media policy. Here’s what it should include:
The Job Title And Job Description
LinkedIn and Facebook allow you to insert the job title, describe it accurately, and link to the company page.
Make sure that:
- The job title coincides with that of the company organization chart
- The description correctly reports the tasks performed
- Does the link lead to the official company page
You will also need to pay attention that it is updated occasionally, even when the employment relationship ends.
Interactions
Encourage employees and colleagues to participate in discussions that affect the company, but make sure that they follow specific guidelines. For example:
The Trolls
Identify the types of customers employees should refrain from interacting with. Teach them how to recognize trolls and unresponsive comments.
The FAQs
Share answers to frequently asked questions with employees as often as you can. Having the solution to problems will encourage employees to enter conversations and familiarize them with the company’s tone of voice and terminology. Make sure they don’t copy and paste but use their own words.
Also Read: How Employees & Businesses Benefit From Digital Time Tracking
Safety
Make your employees/colleagues commit only when they can deliver on a promise or guarantee one thing: don’t create too many illusions first to impress later.
The Tone Of Voice And Accuracy
Their tone of voice should be professional and personal, and when in doubt, be thorough, respectful, and polite. And, of course, with the correct spelling and grammar.
The Company
Identify the key elements that make up corporate values and ask employees/colleagues to pay close attention to them when communicating with customers on social media (and not just social media, of course), even when employees do it on their own and “far away” (at least apparently) from the company’s social accounts. If the company uses a formal tone, it would be suitable for employees not to sound flippant. Conversely, an irreverent, fun, youthful brand should have employees who communicate on social media with a cheerful and bubbly register. This, of course, when they talk about work: don’t harness people’s behavior.
Platforms
As mentioned, not all employees may be familiar with social networks. Therefore, it is a good idea to provide a quick guide explaining the use of the most important social networks with general indications of the most appropriate content for each.
The Company Hashtag
Creating a business hashtag is the most innovative way to use hashtags to your advantage.
A dedicated hashtag allows you to group the contents of your employees/colleagues and re-share them on the company’s official accounts. Furthermore, when someone clicks on the hashtag, they will see lots of content that will give them a more “human” aspect of the company.
The Havas Group, for example, has encouraged employees and contractors to use the hashtag #HavasFromHome during the pandemic: Using the company hashtag is also a way to verify that employees aren’t sharing something that isn’t convenient to post.
Encourage Employees To Share Moments From Their Daily Work
As mentioned in the previous month’s post, people tend to interact more with posts from friends than those from the company: the contents are never strongly branded and show the human side of the business, which is thus less “distant” from people. Having employees who participate in the growth of the corporate culture and who share small fragments of it on social media improves the company’s brand awareness with all the consequent benefits. I’ve created a small guide on how you can encourage this process and how to involve them in your company’s social communication. You can download it by subscribing to my newsletter.
Conclusions On Social Guidelines For Your Employees
Whether your company is active on social media or has yet to be, creating social guidelines for employees is essential. Firstly, it can prevent use that could damage the company somehow. Secondly, it can bring benefits, given that people have greater visibility and credibility towards their friends and acquaintances. Suppose the company still needs to be present on social networks. In that case, you can encourage employees to share “work” content to test people’s interest in your brand and therefore decide whether or not to open official channels.
Also Read: Top 5 Cybersecurity Tips For Employees At Work Place
