HOW TO WRITE A SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY – 9 STEPS

Find below the 9 steps for writing a successful social media policy. The best Social media policy writing steps. Craft and implement the best social media guidelines with our top steps below. 

Brought to you by Mau, a Senior Social Media Marketing Specialist at eDigital.

HOW TO WRITE A SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY – 9 STEPS

A “Social Media Policy” for employees or a “Social Media Guidelines” is a document written by Marketing, Human Resources or lawyers that provides a standard of acceptable professional and personal online behaviour for employees when talking about the company, its brands, employees, activities and intellectual property.

A social media policy document can be both a public document accessed via the internet on a public company website, privately via a company intranet or physically via reading a printed copy accessed via a tea room or another area within your workspace.

A social media policy should be of easy access by any employee, franchisee and contractor at any given time. This document is the “true” source when someone at your company is not sure what, when, and how they can talk about your company, your employees and its products and services via social media platforms.

HOW TO WRITE A SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY – STEPS

Step 1: Define your goals

It is important that you partner with your HR manager to discuss the most important elements to include in this policy. You want to acknowledge that social media errors can occur to anyone across all levels of your organisation and to ensure all employees feel supported with the new or updated social media policy. You should invite employees to directly communicate with you their ideas for a social media policy. A great tip is to share some past issues and challenges that you happen to you, a senior member or anyone else in your organisation. This exercise will open the door for more discussion with your employees. Employees’ feedback can surely give you valuable feedback and insights into exactly how you can reach the goals you define. 

Step 2: Research

With goals and employees’ feedback in mind, you should get a frame of reference by researching other social media policies of other companies in your industry. From here, you can then dig into what social media experts recommend for supporting employees’ social media usage. This step is especially important if your organisation has never had a comprehensive social media policy/guidelines in place. Even if you already have a social media policy, regular research keeps you up-to-date on the latest trends from social media experts to ensure that your policy’s language, guidelines and any rules and regulations best support your employees. 

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I needed to find a great template for writing the first draft of a new social media policy and found this template extremely useful his template has helped us manage employee conduct on social media and ensure compliance.

Tod C. ✅ Verified user

Step 3: Write the first draft

After the research is completed, you write the first draft of your social media policy. It is still a work in progress at this point. Incorporate your initial ideas in a way that promotes your organisation’s values and alignment with other policies. 

Step 4: Consult a Social Media Policy specialist

If you do not have a social media specialist or expert in your organisation, you will need to hire an expert to offer you some hours of consultation. A social media professional plays an integral role in helping your team refine and implement your social media policy. Sometimes this expert’s involvement can be the most important component in this process. You are welcome to contact one of our Senior social media specialists. To help you, we can provide guidance on appropriate language, open communication techniques and creative solutions for working alongside your employees to support them. We will highlight details you may have never considered which can mean the difference between a policy that will be forgotten and a policy that is truly effective. 

Step 5: Write the second draft

After external consultation with an expert has been completed, we are now ready to write the second draft of your policy, incorporating the top tips and advice given by the social media expert. 

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This template has helped us manage employee conduct on social media and ensure compliance.

Stuart M. ✅ Verified user

Step 6: Get approval from your lawyer/attorney

Once you have your second draft prepared, you are ready to send it to your lawyer/attorney who can provide additional expertise and recommendations to ensure what the policy suggests and promises are legal and aligned with other organisation’s existing policies. A legal advisor can help you revise the language does not break any legalities. The last thing you want is to spend resources creating a policy you can’t legally introduce or enforce. Get feedback from your legal counsel before moving on. 

Step 7: Introduce the new/updated policy and provide training.

Do not risk your employees misunderstanding specific policy recommendations, guidelines or rules. You can create an event or a workshop around it to clarify exactly what this policy means for each team member and how it came to be. You can invite back an external social media expert to run training sessions about your new policy for your employees. You will find, the process will be much smoother with the help of an expert.  You may decide to run two workshops: one exclusively for your senior leadership team and direct support and another one for the rest of the employees. You should include a presentation that covers recognising signs of miscalculated social media posts or even signs of an upcoming social media crisis. You can also include how to ask for help when not sure how to use social media. With the new knowledge and policy in place, your team will feel more prepared and supported. 

Step 8: Follow up

You can include a periodic session (maybe every 6 months) to review any debatable or controversial social media posts or commentary and provide feedback to your team. 

Step 9: Make changes/updates if and when necessary

Your employees will love working for an organisation that is progressive and open to making changes and updates to policies. Policy updates (especially from employees’ feedback) will certainly make employees feel more comfortable and valued. 

GET THIS PREMIUM SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY TEMPLATE!

This is a premium template you won’t find anywhere else. Once payment is completed via Paypal, Paypal will automatically re-direct you to a page where you can find the template. Any issues, you can always contact us.

A social media policy is not a new concept.

Organisations around the world have been introducing social media policies, especially in the last year’ as social media communication has become more popular as not only a way to promote a business but also as a way to communicate with different parties including customers, partners, media, providers and even detractors.  

As a company leader, you have the power to change your team’s attitude and support system around social media usage for the better and at least one of your team members is waiting for you to realise it. 

The time is now! Get our exclusive and premium Social Media template and start writing your first draft. 

Popular this month > Social Media Training for Government Employees

HOW TO USE THIS PREMIUM SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY TEMPLATE

• This social media policy template has been designed for easy editing on Microsoft Word so it is easy for you to modify it as you wish.
• Ensure your final Social Media Policy is saved as a PDF or any other secure file so no one can modify it without your approval.

eDigital also offers Corporate Social Media Training for employees. Contact us.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Made it easy

The template made it easy for our team to provide guidelines and requirements for social media usage. 

Freya P. ✅ Verified user

Ideally, effective social media policies should be fluid and responsive to the fast-paced digital world. But at the very least, taking the time to perform a yearly review can check the validity of your guidelines, save your employees a lot of confusion and help your company avoid potential pitfalls.

This professionally crafted template has been used by top marketers already using some of the best CRM marketing software and Social Media Scheduling tools.

“It’s not the social media platforms that create issues for organisations, it’s the way employees and staff use social media. It’s about managing your team, not the tool” 

Mau – eDigital‘s Digital Marketing & Social Media Specialist and training facilitator

CONCLUSION AND KEY TAKEAWAYS

Crafting a good social media policy can be tricky since it has to include legal considerations, brand guidelines, and your employees’ needs. Keep in mind the goal is not to restrict their sharing to a handful of approved corporate messages. Rather, your guardrails should give them the creative space and encouragement to hit the road for your company. When your employees advocate for your company responsibly, they bring humanity to your brand and help further their professional development at the same time.

Personal use of social media is not private. Appropriate regulation of your employees’ personal social media use is acceptable and enforceable.

Social media policies are an excellent way for businesses to regulate a technology that can harm them.

Mastering your business’ social media policy implementation, content and enforcement will ensure that your business maintains a strong and positive online presence.

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The template helped us kickstart our first Social Media Policy draft in minutes. We did not have to figure out what we should be writing.

Milly Z. ✅ Verified user

NEXT

• Get your Premium Social Media Policy Template today!
• Do not have time to draft your social media policy? eDigital can help you draft the best social media policy for your company. Contact eDigital today!
• eDigital can help you run corporate workshops and sessions with your employees to ensure they understand your social media policy.

Need training on how best to promote your brand? Contact us today! 

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HOW TO WRITE A SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY – STEPS

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