Why You Need a Company Social Media Policy

If you have more than one person in your company who engages in social media, you need to have a social media policy. Social media has quickly become the easiest way to grown your online presence. Through all popular outlets, you can quickly and effectively develop your online reputation and extend the brand of your business.

But the lines between person and business social media are quite blurry. For example:

• If an employee uses Facebook to converse with friends and family, should they be using it to share information about your company?
• If Twitter is how they tell their buddies where they are and what they are doing, should the same account be used to spread marketing messages?
• And what if they are looking for another job, but their personal accounts are intertwined with your business accounts. How does that look for your marketing image?

A social media policy is critical for any business since your online reputation will be significantly impacted by what is said about your company. Unless you provide guidelines for employees, you cannot really be certain what sort of reputation is being developed.

Saying “Don’t do it!” is not a policy

Social media has become a mainstream way of connecting with customers. To tell your employees that social media is not allowed is not realistic in today’s business world. Chances are employees are already engaging in social media for private use, and your social media policy should at least discuss what can be done during work hours. Also, if employees are already using social media, a policy can help to define what private social media outlets may be used to extend the brand of the company.

What should a social media policy govern?

A company social media policy should answer the following questions:

• Who owns the social media accounts that are used by your company?
• If employees have personal accounts, can they use them to market your company?
• What is the policy for talking about the company on personal social media accounts?
• What confidentiality is required around your company information?
• What copyright issues should be considered?
• What social media arenas does the company participate in?
• What individuals in the company are responsible for social media, and for those who aren’t responsible, what is their input (if any)?
• Who is in charge of reviewing social media output?
• Who is responsible for responding to customer complaints that appear in social media arenas?

Here are some excellent articles we found that can help you craft a social media policy:

• How to Write a Social Media Policy
• 10 Must-Haves For Your Social Media Policy
• Secrets to Writing a Social Media Policy That Actually Means Something

Sample Social Media Policies

If you’re are in the process of creating a social media policy, Social Media Governance keeps a database of corporate social media policies. They have example from many companies, including FedEx, Cisco and Harvard Law School.

Trying to Figure Out Facebook Privacy Settings?

It seems there has been a lot of talk lately about the Facebook privacy settings and how they can impact what information is shared about you. The Facebook privacy policy is one of the most extensive on the web, and it can take an hour or better to wade through what they have a right to do. So while everybody is up in arms, I’m fairly certain you would have been aware of the changes if you had the time or desire to read that document (being facetious here).

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to figure out what to do to secure my private Facebook information. While reading blogs and following information, I have yet to get a clear-cut answer. And then today on Mashable I read about a simple solution: Reclaim Privacy. It’s a simple a plug-in for your web browser that can scan your Facebook account and let you know what privacy settings allow your personal information to be shared.

I installed the plugin in less than 5 seconds (you just drag it to your bookmark toolbar), and in less than a minute I had my report. My personal information could be shared by any of my friends on Facebook. I corrected the setting, and now I got a green light – my privacy is once again secure on Facebook.

I hope you find this helpful. If you are tooling around on Facebook, feel free to become a fan of our Facebook page.

4.30 Blog Carnival: Twitter Buzz

Why You Should Watch What You Say on Twitter

Congress is watching… the Library of Congress that is. According to USA Today, the Library of Congress has announced that it will archive all public tweets on Twitter. Apparently cataloging tweets in the library is not a new process. They have been cataloging tweets they felt were of public interest, such as Obama’s tweet announcing the win of the 2008 election. The decision to archive every tweet came because Twitter actually donated the ENTIRE Twitter archive to the library.

Apparently the Library of Congress has been catalog the Internet for some years, although they do not keep a complete archive of every website published, just those they feel are of historical value. This makes it more important than ever to find out what the Internet says about you, and to have a strategy for monitoring your online presence. It is also vital to think before you type and choose your words carefully.

Read more:

• Library of Congress News
• Twitter Blog
• USA Today

Adding Google Analytics to Your Facebook Page

You’ve got your Facebook Fan page, and you’ve set up the administrators, now is a great time to figure how to best utilize your energy and time in maintaining your page. Installing Google Analytics on your Facebook page can give you some real insight into what kind of marketing works best on this Social Media giant.

What Is Google Analytics?
According to the Google Analytics Website, it is “the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness.” In other words, it is a free service that extracts traffic information from websites and generates readable statistics about the visitors to that website.

How is it Beneficial to Analyze My Facebook Page?
Google Analytics offers you a clean, straight-forward way to see when you’re gaining traffic to your page, and what is drawing peoples’ attention once they get to your page. Maybe after you do a status update, you get 10 more hits, or you find out that when you post too many in a week, you actually get less traffic.

How Do I Do it?
Mahalo.com has a detailed, easy-to-follow guide to setting up Google Analytics on any web page.  This involves setting up an account with Google, and inserting Javascript into your pages. But we’ve also located a great blog post from the Social Media Examiner that gets into using and installing Google Analytics more specifically for your Facebook page. It will give you a step-by-step guide to setting it up as well as using it. You may even want to scroll down and read the user comments for some extra tips and discussions.

Let us know how it works for you! Were you able to easily install Google Anayltics on your page? Once you get used to using it, do you find it helpful in directing your Facebook marketing strategies?