Social Media Commerce For Dummies

Chapter 3

Creating a Social Media Policy

In This Chapter

Shaping media guidelines for your employees

Determining the topics to include in your policies

When entering the world of new media, the critical starting point is to develop social media policies and guidelines that govern employee behavior on the social web. Consider the web as an open ear to anything and everything you choose to post publicly — comments, news, and advertising included. All posts give a clue to your opinions and business direction, so be sure to select your words carefully.

Common sense (which we all know isn’t always so common when dealing on the Internet) comes into play when executing your outreach. Very little on the Internet disappears, so we live and die by every word we place on the web. This may sound a bit dire, but as my father said, “Never put anything in writing that you wouldn’t want to appear on the front page of the New York Times.”

As of March 2012, 76 percent of companies do not have a clearly defined social media policy. In this chapter, I help you to begin forming yours.

Twelve Guiding Words

Someone whose opinion I respect, Farris Timimi, M.D (Mayo Clinic cardiologist and medical director of Mayo Clinic’s Center for Social Media, @FarrisTimimi), cuts through long-winded policies and sums ...