The Importance Of Having Social Media Policies - Internet Marketing ...

Overview

The use of social media has grown a lot over the years and for many people around the world it?s really a part of their everyday life. For businesses and SEO?ers too it has become very important as social media marketing helps connect with your customers and build brand awareness.? And, especially during the last year, social media has become increasingly important in the field of search engine optimization as it allows you to build and audience and promote your content which results in traffic and links to your website, which helps improve your rankings in search engines.

So we know social media is important and we?d like to use it, but..how??Turns out?the real implementation of social media marketing in companies?can be difficult, especially for bigger companies where multiple employees are involved and post, comment, and basically manage their company?s social media platforms (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest etc).

To succeed in social media marketing, you need guidelines, policies, a plan to fall back to if things go wrong. Might sound boring or very corporate, but the truth is; it?s very important. Having proper guidelines can avoid legal trouble and make sure you have systems in place to deal with, for example, negative comments or customer?complaints. In this post we?ll look at the how?and why of social media guidelines.

Benefits Of Having Social Media Policies

You might think creating these guidelines is a lot of work, so why would you bother? According to Social Media Examiner, there are 4 major benefits:

• It provides a way to implement your social media strategy and improve your social media performance.
• It gives everyone the information they need to work well together.
• It makes it easier to build your social communities online.
• It makes it possible to respond to emergencies before they get out of hand.

Small versus Big Companies

For smaller businesses it?s probably not as important?to have detailed social media guidelines as for larger corporations. This is mainly because less employees are involved and the scale of the marketing and promotion activities is smaller. Still, having policies in place, even a few simple ones, can help you to stay focused. I know you?re busy, so I?m glad I can say a found?a really good resource that?s free to use. This is a social media guidelines template that?s ready for use and that you can easily customize to suit your vision and needs. It?s a good starting point for both small and larger businesses. Go?here?to download the file.

Guidelines for Your Social Media Team

Bigger companies might have multiple employees managing the social media accounts. It?s wise?then to have guidelines in place. On one hand, the?employees interacting on behalf of your?business must:

• Be knowledgeable of legal terms and what they mean in your business environment, such as defamation, endorsements, intellectual property, and any form of wrongful disclosure
• Be aware of global implications of your online communication
• Avoid inappropriate comments about the competition or others online

On the other hand, they?should also:

• Be?positive
• Add value and be helpful
• Be transparent

In addition to the above, your social media team is?tasked with cultivating relationships and building community on your social media profiles. It can be difficult?to balance all of these criteria, especially for people new to social media. This is where good guidelines can be critical!

Guidelines for Crisis Management

As the web has become much more social, it?s easy for people to share and spread their opinion and thoughts, in positive and negative ways.?Therefore, it?s?important to listen to what?s being said about you or your business on the Internet. This can easily be? accomplished?by setting up Google Alerts for your name, URL, and brand name.

Having alerts set up and your team monitoring your social media accounts will enable you to acts quickly if negative comments arise. You want to deal with these as quickly as possible and in a professional, efficient manner. With the right approach, it?s possible to turn an angry customer into a loyal, positive fan. Well, maybe not always, but in many cases it is.

Prepare your business for any possible crisis you might encounter on social media. For instance, be sure your team has both social media and business expertise. You?ll also need to?assign enough resources to maintain an on-going presence on your social media sites. This will help you to implement the steps you need in crisis management.

Conclusion

Social media is a very useful channel, but can also be difficult to implement effectively. Having a clear policy in place helps you and your employees to have a clear understanding about how social media should be used and be aware of?the do?s and don?ts. It will help you to stay focused and enable you to act quickly and appropriately if negative comments show up.

Source: http://www.netconnexion.com/blog/social-media-policies/

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