How will you coordinate and collaborate across different platforms, channels, and teams? Assign clear roles and responsibilities to avoid confusion, duplication, or conflict. Incorporate the guidelines from your style guide into your team’s daily workflows. Establish protocols for creating, scheduling, and publishing social media content, ensuring that all content creators and managers adhere to the established guidelines at every step of the process.

Be sure to review it with your legal team to ensure compliance with any local or industry-specific regulations. Have you ever wondered how to navigate the tricky world of social media while working? Whether you’re posting on Facebook, sharing a tweet, or updating your LinkedIn profile, your online actions can have an impact on your job and the company you work for. Social media is a great way to stay connected, share ideas, and express yourself, but it also comes with some responsibility.

Removes Any Confusion About Potential Legal Issues

Fortunately, your board can take steps immediately to prevent social media posts and comments from portraying your nonprofit in a bad light. Plan, schedule, and publish your posts for Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and more with Later’s social media management platform. This may go without saying, but it’s key to create your community guidelines with your community members top of mind. When it comes to building a positive and engaging online community, setting guidelines is key. While a social media policy is designed to guide and inform, there will be times when missteps occur. The procedures for addressing policy violations are the roadmap for how you manage these slip-ups.

Prevent Improper Use Of Company Logo

The template is quite straightforward, and you can modify it according to your needs. With security protocols in place, you minimize the risks of data breaches and other dangerous events. In this part of your policy, you can instruct employees on how to avoid hacker attacks and what to do if something like that happens. Handling negative comments with grace and professionalism not only helps de-escalate the situation but also demonstrates the company’s commitment to transparency and customer satisfaction.

It’s all about being prepared, responsive, and, above all, consistently you. It’s to be the best version of your brand for that specific audience. Think of it like speaking the same language but just adjusting your dialect. We’re talking about an estimated 5.42 billion social media users worldwide, with the average person hopping between nearly seven different networks a month. They expect a different vibe on each one, and your brand has to deliver. If you’re curious, you can find more insights on social media user habits and what that means for businesses.

Here’s how employers and employees can successfully manage generative AI and other AI-powered systems. Social media can allow us to share the positive impact our schools have on our students and communities as a whole. If you have ideas about school events or activities to highlight on NYCPS’ main account, please reach out to our Digital Team ().

To ensure optimal productivity, [company name] allows its employees to access personal social media channels at work for at least [number of hours] per day. We do ask our employees to be responsible with their time and always ensure deadlines and job responsibilities are completed on time. Erika Heald is a content marketing expert and consultant who helps organizations and executives define and execute B2B content marketing strategies that drive business and professional growth. She frequently speaks at marketing industry events on employee brand advocacy, content strategy, customer experience, AI, and social media topics. Erika previously led and grew high-performance content marketing teams at Highwire PR, Anaplan, and Achievers. You can find her on her blogs erikaheald.com and erikasglutenfreekitchen.com or hosting the weekly #ContentChat LinkedIn livestream chat on Mondays at 12 noon Pacific.

Creating Your Own Social Media Policy: A Step-by-step Guide

A clear Social Media Policy outlines how to prevent, manage, and respond to such crises—helping your business stay in control and maintain its reputation. In today’s real-time digital world, one tweet, comment, or post can instantly affect your business—for better or worse. A strong Social Media Policy acts as a protective shield for your brand, ensuring that online activity reflects your values, complies with the law, and builds trust with your audience. Importantly, the Social Media Policy applies not only to official company pages but also to personal accounts when an employee’s content can be linked to the company. For example, an employee venting about work on LinkedIn could raise compliance or PR concerns. Websites and social media accounts should clearly display the contact information of the account manager.

Providing employees with hypothetical examples of what is and isn’t allowed can help them better understand the policy in action. For example, Dell Technologies’ Five Social Media Principles mentions the guidelines are reiterated in onboarding. This section also lists zero-tolerance behavior, rules of thumb and specific steps to protect security, privacy and legal compliance. An excellent way to ensure conflicts are always handled properly from the start is to set up pre-approved responses to common issues in a social media management platform like Sprout Social. These responses show your brand is aware of their concern and will direct them to the right person to resolve the problem.

It can vary depending on the platform, audience, and type of content. If you need training or refresher courses on best practices, please reach out to the Social Media Team at the CUNY Office of Communications and Marketing. Without the right implementation strategy, your work will be for nothing and your policy will just collect dust. These templates are also a good resource if you’re looking to rework an existing policy that may not be cutting it anymore. Stick to plain language that’s easy for your audience to understand, and make a list of jargon-y words to avoid.

How you handle criticism says more about your brand than a thousand positive comments ever could. Your guidelines need a crystal-clear process for managing complaints and dealing with toxic behavior. Think of this part of your brand guide as a playbook for every interaction. It gives your team the confidence to act as true brand ambassadors, turning simple conversations into loyalty-building moments.

Not just because it has great content, but because they added a design element to the guide. It reads more like an infographic than the policies of other companies. In addition to this reminder, I like that Best Buy respectfully addresses hateful comments and posts. People can get caught up with their First Amendment rights, believing it gives them the right to say whatever they want without consequence.

The content employees share on a personal account can affect the brand they work for, too. You might want to ask employees not to share speculative content from unofficial sources about future products and projects, or ask them to refrain from posting competitor content on social pages. Just as your social media policy can help unify your organization’s voice and perception, it can also help expand your reach and increase brand awareness.

The scope of your policy tells the employees to whom the policy refers. Usually, a social media policy will cover all employees, from C-suite executives to regular employees. However, sometimes, it can also include freelancers and part-time employees. With a social media policy, you can prepare employees to respond appropriately and help your company avoid an unnecessary PR disaster. Although activities like commenting or posting online might seem harmless, irresponsible online behavior from your employees’ end can hurt your company’s image.