Retrieve, Read, and Analyze Your Employers Email and Social Networking Policy/procedure.

So your organization understands the hope of employee advocacy for coming together marketing and sales objectives.

Your next, natural question is: how tin you actuate and leverage employees and their networks to drive marketing outcomes?

Next up is to launch an employee advancement programme. But this is one big attempt. If you're to activate your employees on social media, ensure you have a company-broad social media policy for your employees to follow. Here are some social media policy examples to become you started in the right direction.

What Is a Social Media Policy?

A social media policy is a guidebook or code-of-conduct for employees posting on social media, either as function of their job or in their personal capacity. Considering the social media environment is constantly evolving, you'll demand to regularly update your social media policy.

Why Are Social Media Policies Important?

If you're going to actively manage an employee advancement program, a social media policy is vital.

Firstly, it removes the worry from sharing annihilation on social media. 1 of the biggest reasons for depression employee advancement adoption is rooted in the fearfulness of social media. Employees worry if they say the wrong affair or share the wrong thing, their company or job could be on the line.

Secondly, a social media policy mitigates risk. Organizations worry about PR crises, negative or harmful messaging, or the violation of social media compliance rules. Your social media policy is an constructive way of setting rules and boundaries to prevent such bug.

Withal, a skilful, up-to-appointment social media policy does more than mitigate take chances. It likewise sets your employees up for success, giving them guidance on how and where to share posts, etiquette to follow, incentives for sharing in the first place and tips for creating engaging posts.

What to Include in a Company Social Media Policy

It's important to start with a reminder: your company'south social media policy should empower your employees to engage on social media, not scare them! The main goal is to provide guidelines to brand social media employ easy and enjoyable.

1. Define Social Media

Start by providing a definition of how your company understands social media. You'll want to ensure that anybody in your arrangement is on the same folio when it comes to interpreting what social media and social networking mean.

2. Security and Privacy Rules

You'll want to remind employees of what information is advisable to share and what they should keep confidential. It would also be a skilful idea to list specific examples of what your employees tin and cannot share.

3. Clan Rules

You tin can guide employees on how to identify themselves as representatives of your visitor. For example, y'all tin can ask them to add sure hashtags to their posts. Otherwise, you lot'll want your employees to be as accurate as possible as people trust people more than brands.

4. Copyright and Fair Use

It's a good thought to offer guidance on crediting the piece of work of others and how to do it. This will aid your employees stay within copyright and fair utilize rules simply as well encourage them to observe useful content from other places.

5. Ethical Standards

You should tie this section of your social media policy to your company'south wider lawmaking-of-acquit and ethics policy. You want to ensure your employees understand that their content could easily exist saved (e.m., via screenshots). Y'all should too make certain your staff are aware that whatsoever false data or messaging used against the visitor tin can issue in liability.

vi. Responsible Engagement

Use this part of your social media policy to emphasize the behaviours your employees can and cannot appoint in while on social media. For example, y'all could tell them to refrain from joining sensitive topics, such as politics or religion, or avoid attacking competing companies.

7. Etiquette

Finally, you tin can remind your employees to use social media to communicate and connect with others to build relationships and value.

How to Write a Social Media Policy

To go started on writing a social media policy, you tin can:

1. Get Input From Multiple Departments

Get input and feedback from different departments. You'll need marketing and legal to sign off, simply other groups in the company are stakeholders also. And then, talk to public relations, the executive team, 60 minutes and others.

ii. Make Your Policy Accessible

Yous should make this document hands findable and accessible to the whole team. A expert start would be to append it to your employee handbook and visitor-broad code-of-conduct.

3. Announce It

Be it a new document or an update/revision, yous should brand the whole company aware of information technology. This is a good style to reinvigorate squad social media appointment as well as make your newer employees aware of the document.

4. Review It

The social media space is constantly in flux. You lot'll come across new platforms and, potentially, move away from others. Not only that, but "content" is besides e'er changing — we couldn't accept imagined TikTok content as a thing ten years agone.

Thus, your social media policy should reverberate the environment as it is today. Information technology'southward a good thought to set an annual or bi-annual review of the document to ensure information technology'southward upwards-to-engagement and relevant.

five. Get a Headstart with Our Social Media Policy Template and Checklist

Yous'll get more than guidance on how to build a social media policy with our template and checklist.

social media guidelines for employees

9 Company Social Media Policy Examples Worth Checking Out

i. Intel details what to practise — and what not to do — with social media

Intel'southward social media guidelines — fabricated public on the corporate website — make upward a crystal clear instance of what every social media policy should be. The policy includes words and phrases to avoid, what to do in case of a mistake, key links for employees and more.

Intel rules of engagement social media policy

The guidelines are explicit without getting into the weeds; they are merely as encouraging as they are cautionary. Better yet, the social media guidelines break upward the corporate policy into three distinct parts:

1. Disclose your relationship to Intel

The document instructs employees to employ the hashtag #IamIntel when posting on social media. According to the guidelines, this "lets people know that you are affiliated with Intel." But it likewise goes a long fashion toward strengthening the Intel brand!

two. Protect Intel

"Protecting Intel is part of your job," the guidelines land. "Do not mail service whatever confidential information on whatever social platforms. If the information has not been officially released by Intel, don't hash out information technology." Employees are too directed to contact Intel's social media team when a post is in incertitude.

iii. Utilize common sense when posting

Intel doesn't pull whatever punches here: "When you are online, you are representing Intel: our people, our values. In that location is no room for bigotry, prejudice, misogyny, or hatred in our company or on our associated social media feeds."

ii. All-time Buy simplifies and philosophizes for its social media policy

The All-time Buy social media policy guiding principle is clear: the values and ethics that guide employees in the 'real' world are the same as those that guide employees on social media. Fifty-fifty if the document refers to 'Twittering' instead of 'tweeting', the ideas remain audio.

With its overarching philosophy, Best Buy's policy is relatively uncomplicated, dividing the guidelines into 2 parts: what employees should do and what employees should never disclose.

Items in the 'what you should exercise' camp include:

Disclosing your employee affiliation
Clarifying that statements are your stance, not representative of Best Buy
Being careful about the personal data that you lot share
Post-obit the retail marketing toolkit when posting offers or promotional content

In dissimilarity, employees are instructed to never disembalm operational data and numbers, legal information, customer details and confidential information.

Only the policy tin can be summed upwards in the three phrases at the top: "Be smart. Be respectful. Be human."

3. Ford lays out the xi commandments for social media

Scott Monty was somewhat of a social media pioneer for Ford, back before Facebook hit a billion users and social media became a critical piece of corporate strategy. "Monty has long been a champion of using social media to humanize large organizations by scaling conversations and ultimately edifice and reinforcing brand trust," wrote Shel Israel when Monty left Ford.

Scott Monty

During the superlative of his tenure with Ford, Monty shared the essence of the visitor's internal social media strategy with Fast Company. The platforms may have shifted, but this is still dandy stuff:

Be honest most who you are
Make information technology articulate that the views expressed are yours
You speak for yourself, but your deportment represent those of Ford Motor Visitor
Use your common sense
Play nice
The Internet is a public space
The Internet remembers (i.e., "Whatsoever happens in Vegas…stays on Google.")
An official response may be needed
Respect the privacy of offline conversations
Aforementioned rules and laws apply: new medium, no surprise
When in uncertainty, ask

4. ACFE provides a workable social media policy template

If y'all're looking for a full social media policy template, the Clan of Certified Fraud Examiners — the world's largest anti-fraud system — published a full PDF. The document is ready to be adapted for your own company use.

The template could exist particularly helpful because it is highly situational. Each bullet indicate is specific but likewise points employees to other resources that can guide social media actions. These include the Code of Conduct, employee handbook, HR department, spokespeople and more.

five. Dell boils it all down to a handful of critical pointers

Dell's social media policy is broken down into six distinct elements, ranging from the more specific Code of Bear to more general directives like "Be responsible." Arguably the nigh of import element in the policy is also the first: "Be nice, have fun and connect."

In this section, Dell is clear in its intention with employee social media use: "The connections you'll make on social media will be much more rewarding if you remember to have conversations rather than push agendas. Dell has ever been a leader in using technology to directly connect with our customers. Social media is another platform you can apply to build our brand, just be sure you practice information technology the right way.

This straightforward document stands in stark contrast to something like the social media policy from the US Office of Personnel Management, consummate with appendices, required disclaimers, direct message guidelines and more.

Yous definitely want to be articulate almost your social media policy. But sometimes less is more, and simple is best.

six. Adobe sets boundaries from the start

Adobe references its social media guidelines in its main employee code of comport certificate. This section is brusk, so there is likely a dedicated internal certificate.

However, the neat thing nigh Adobe's approach is that information technology signifies that its social media is a key office of its principal code-of-conduct policies. Information technology also sets articulate boundaries of how employees can or cannot behave themselves. For example, Adobe states that employees practise not represent the company or speak for it unless they are authorized to do and then by Adobe Public Relations.

7. Edmunds guides you visually

Edmunds offers an effective way of presenting your social media policy. You can take a visual approach that conspicuously segments each office of the policy (such every bit confidentiality and discretion).

Overall, Edmunds also opted to go on a relatively succinct certificate (it'south only one page).

8. ESPN

The interesting affair about ESPN is that its public-facing employees (e.chiliad. journalists, reporters and talking heads) correspond the company. So, it follows that ESPN's social media policy is a chip more cautious in its rules than some of our other examples.

If y'all're a news publisher or media company, you may demand a more granular set of rules and then as to maintain the all-time interests of both your brand and employees. ESPN offers a good example of how to write those guidelines in response to many unlike contexts, such as politics and/or social issues, among others.

9. Pfizer

Pfizer operates in waters heavy with regulatory oversight, and so it (like ESPN) maintains a more cautious and granular social media policy. Like Adobe, Pfizer summarizes the main points of its social media guideline in its main code of conduct certificate so that every employee is enlightened.

This summary establishes clear rules well-nigh how an employee can represent themselves and when to disembalm their amalgamation with Pfizer.

Marshal marketing and compliance teams

How can your employees utilize social media while complying with the rules and regulations that govern our organization?

Collaborate closely with your compliance team to understand the latest regulatory compliance policies and stay in the loop for any ongoing changes. In return, you tin can besides share details on the latest changes across social media marketing and your corporate social media strategy so they can identify any potential risks.

Apply these 5 social media policy examples for inspiration to help you craft your company's version. By adjustment both departments, y'all can align on a crystal articulate social media policy that fosters the correct behaviors for employee advancement.