Ford offers a simple, five-point guide that makes participation easy to understand. It covers topics like identifying oneself as a Ford employee, respecting others, protecting confidential information, and adhering to legal requirements. This straightforward approach helps employees quickly grasp their responsibilities on social media. Even the best Social Media Policy won’t work if people don’t know it exists. Introduce it during onboarding and reinforce it through regular training sessions.

Prevent Improper Use Of Company Logo

Don’t just read the document to them; walk them through the why behind the rules. Your guidelines are there to provide a stable foundation for your brand identity, but they have to be flexible enough to bend without breaking when new opportunities pop up. With social media ad spend projected to hit $276.7 billion and U.S. social commerce sales rocketing past $90 billion, every comment is a potential sales touchpoint. Clear rules are essential for turning this massive audience into customers. You can discover more insights on the growth of social commerce to see just how big the opportunity is.

Include recommendations for hashtag placement, frequency, and avoiding overuse or misuse. Explore the visual elements that contribute to your brand’s identity on social media. This includes detailed specifications for your logo usage, color palette, typography, and imagery style. Provide clear guidelines on how to use your logo across different platforms, preferred color combinations, font choices for various types of content, and guidelines for selecting and editing images. Consistent visual branding reinforces brand recognition and fosters trust among your audience.

Roll Out And Implement The Policy For Periodic Reviews

But you may need to bend the rules a bit for specific social campaigns or platforms. You should also define your call-to-action (CTA) placement in captions. For example, some brands opt to put links in the comments on LinkedIn rather than the post itself. These rules apply to your social media post captions and any comments or replies from your brand account. There will always be new platforms to join, and as your brand sets its sites on the latest popular channels, these guidelines will come in handy. Main social media accounts – The University of Alabama social media accounts run by the Division of Strategic Communications.

If a new platform takes off or your company strategy shifts, update your guidelines to stay current and relevant. Create a unique hashtag for the takeover to track engagement and encourage participation. During the takeover, actively monitor the account to ensure everything runs smoothly. Work together to create a content plan that blends their style with your brand voice.

Something like “All opinions expressed are my own” helps make it clear that these are not official viewpoints, like this university strategist and instructor does here. Your Social Media Policy should be written in simple, jargon-free language. Use bullets, subheadings, and short paragraphs to improve readability.

Guidelines For Using Social Media

Engage staff, board members, and volunteers in the policy development process to ensure buy-in and relevance. Encourage an open dialogue where they can share concerns and suggestions to enhance the effectiveness of the policy. Define how compliance with the social media policy for non-profits will be monitored. Check out our visual content strategy guide to define your visual aesthetic on social to boost growth and engagement. Plus, if you offer live trainings, you can quickly answer questions your team might have about the material.

Remember, the online world is always changing, and your guidelines should evolve too. Keep them fresh, keep them relevant, and most importantly, keep them working for you. Whether you’re just starting or looking to revamp your existing guidelines, we’re here to help. They also link out to other related policies at the end of the document so employees can easily find other information they might need. It acknowledges the reality of our world and doesn’t try to implement draconian limits on when employees can check social at work. It does ask that employees be reasonable about their social media usage while in the office, and it says that anything done on social media from a Tufts device may be monitored.