Developing a social media policy for your business
Social media continues to expand at a rapid rate as more platforms for connecting audiences pop up and compete with the main players. As of August 2011, Facebook has a mind-boggling 750 million followers and Twitter has millions of users - generating more than 200 million 'tweets' and several billion search queries every day. New social media platforms, like Google+, are constantly adding more features and creating new ways of connecting with others.
Effective use of social media generates exposure for your business, increases website traffic and improves your ranking in search engines - potentially generating leads and increasing sales.
Most businesses already use at least one form of social media, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube or blogs. Creating an account for your business only takes a few minutes but knowing what to say and who to target takes some careful planning. Many businesses write an occasional tweet or status update and hope for results, but taking a stab in the dark and hoping something sticks almost never works.
Giving your employees the skills to effectively use social media will make the most of your time spent online.
On this page:
- Planning and organising social media
- Making the most of the time invested
- Personal and company social media
- Developing a social media policy for your business
Planning and organising social media
According to a 2011 report on social media, less than 28% of businesses outsource their social media marketing, preferring to manage it in-house.
Businesses approach social media differently, depending on how many employees are involved. Some allow multiple employees to take part, developing a social media team to write blogs, update pages and keep track of status updates. This can be a good approach provided everyone involved understands what you are trying to achieve.
Businesses who get the most out of social media know how they want to project their brand or image online and then tailor their messages to suit. They plan their messages to ensure they are effective and they train staff to help them balance their social media responsibilities effectively with their other day-to-day tasks.
Try these easy ways to organise your social media:
- Plan regular meetings to discuss social media objectives for the week and relate these back to your overall social media and marketing strategy. Your strategy one week might be trying to encourage 'fan' interaction on Facebook by asking for their thoughts on a topic, and to secure more followers in the next week. Set aside a few minutes to discuss whether the previous week’s strategies were effective and what you need to work on to generate more interest.
- Consider using social media management software such as Hootsuite that integrates Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media into one application and allows for team interaction. This makes it easy to monitor content and compare responses between media platforms. Some social media management software is able to generate reports on how many people have interacted with your posts, letting you see what is working and what isn’t.
- Compare statistics between platforms. Most social media platforms provide useful feedback, such as Facebook's weekly email to let you know how many people have interacted with your page. This is a valuable tool that allows you to compare your weekly performance and feed this back into your social media strategy.
Making the most of the time invested
Updating Facebook, reading and writing comments, tweeting, uploading videos to YouTube, and writing blogs - not to mention keeping an eye on the competition – takes time. To avoid social media consuming your day, dedicate a set amount of time each day to social media to keep it under control.
A good idea is to allocate time for creating content and then allow an extra few minutes later in the day to return and check for responses. Resist the urge to wait around for tweets, likes or comments to appear – it's better to work on something else and check back later. With planning, you should find that social media can be managed less regularly, and consume less productive work time.
With social media, less can mean more for your business. Posting lots of messages can clutter newsfeeds with too much information and cause your audience to lose interest. Spending less time on social media also forces you to focus on the platforms that work best for your business. For example, if you produce running shoes, you might find that a blog about a memorable run might generate more interest and discussion than a tweet and Facebook status update combined.
Don't fall into the trap of trying to use too many different social media networks. The best option is to choose the channel(s) that best suit your business and your target market, and focus your attention there.
Personal and company social media
Before social media was popular, it was easier to separate work life from home life. Customers and clients rarely mixed with companies socially beyond work functions or conferences. Now, people you interact with at work will sometimes want to connect with you personally, and some businesses encourage customers to connect with individual employees on social media platforms to personalise sales and provide after-sales support.
There are some obvious issues with having work or customer contacts as personal friends on social media - particularly if you barely know each other. Also, you could cause offense or lose customers if you choose to ignore requests from work or customer contacts to connect with your personal accounts.
One solution to this problem is to create an account separate from your personal account for interacting with work and customer contacts - for example, 'James Smith at XYZ Business Consultants'. Your contacts are then able to connect with you without being able to access your private life.
Developing a social media policy for your business
A social media policy contains guidelines for employees to help them use social media appropriately and effectively. If your employees understand how to use social media, they will be more confident and maximise the benefits your business can obtain from the time they invest online.
Many companies make their social media policy part of a wider Internet policy used for training or inducting new employees.
Download this free social media policy template to customise for your business. Some sample policies already in use by companies around the world can be found here.
