The pressure faced by a brand or a business to have a strong online presence is quite overwhelming considering the cut-throat competition, the impact it has on other people’s thoughts, the buzz it creates and more. Maintaining a social media presence certainly requires discipline; hence, it is always important to follow an active social media policy for your brand or business.
Having a strong online presence on all the social media handles would lead to the brand’s overall revenue growth while also ensuring a solid reputation for it. Although, this in itself comes with certain drawbacks like mismanagement and more, which sometimes result in greater repercussions for the brand.
To stay ahead of the game and build the finest reputation for your brand or business, it is not only important that you impart your time and efforts for building a strong social media presence for your brand but, at the same time, you must look out for its possible shortcomings.
You must try and regulate the types of content posted by your employees and keep a tab that your social media handles are catered towards a specific niche that directly implies what your brand or business signifies or stands for.
Social media policy- forms and examples:
Establish clear rules and guidelines: Following a social media policy should not let the employees
handling the social media platforms feel like they are given an assignment, and they must oblige to the strict rules.
It is important to cater to their needs and make them realise that they can be creative while following the guidelines.
For instance, the brand Clorox received hate through
their social media handles in 2015 when they made a sad racist remark on Apple's
recently released feature of changing the skin color of the emoticons.
Defend your business’s reputation: It is common for any business or brand with an online presence
in the social media handles to receive constant online hate and negativity. This can hamper the mental health of the company
employees who are in charge of handling these social media platforms. Hence, your business certainly needs
to have a strict policy for handling such regular issues.For example, The company of Coca-Cola follows the social media policy of letting their
designated team of experts deal with online hate or negative comments; this ensures that their employees do not have
to deal with such online negativity daily.
Handling of the social media platforms: For establishing a strong online presence on the social media handles,
you must hire the right team of experts to handle your brand's social media accounts. While most people
normally use social media handles actively on a day-to-day basis, not everyone can maintain and follow the
rules and guidelines of the company for social media marketing. For instance: The company of Intel has decided to split their social media policies
into three groups; each of these groups are instructed to maintain their line of work; hence no single group coincides or compromises
with the guidelines of the other.
How to maintain a social media policy?
Social media policies are a set of guidelines to be strictly followed by the
employees in charge of handling the social media platforms of your business
or your establishment. These policies entail them staying within the company
rules and still engaging creatively to build the brand's reputation on social media platforms.
Social media marketing is one of the most crucial ways to build a brand's name and reputation;
it helps in marketing the niche and products of the brand and makes it easier to get the required feedback on the same.
Following are some of the points you must keep in mind while creating a social media policy for your brand:
Please stick to your niche: When it comes to social media marketing, the first and foremost rule to be kept in mind is that the content that your brand puts out online catered to the brand's needs and markets the products well.
Follow the legal guidelines: There have been incidents in the past that brands have faced the repercussions of making subjective remarks on people’s ethnicity, race and even sexuality.
Target your brand towards inclusivity: While it may be the case that your brand caters to a certain target audience, it is important to note that while making such decisions, you are not unintentionally neglecting people’s choices and feelings. Your brand must preach inclusivity in all aspects.
Safeguarding from intrusive hackers: A social media policy must be laid down as per a proper security protocol.
Maintain a team for dealing with online negativity: Commonly, the netizens are quick to point out even the minor disturbances or the minor flaws that any brand or business makes on the internet; hence, It is always a good idea to have a team of experts deal with the negative comments and not let the mental health of your employees get affected.
Final Thoughts:
Maintaining a presence on the social media platforms for your brand can be a very tiring task at times, and it might even take a toll on your mental health but, if you keep up with all the aspects it has to offer, it has the potential to bring out the creative side in you.
Having a proper social media policy for your brand simplifies maintaining an online presence for your business while making it prosper and grow on the internet. It keeps the leash of putting out business-friendly content in your hands while ensuring that you are not getting involved in legal issues.
Suppose you are a brand or a business planning to establish a strong online presence on the internet. In that case, you must set a list of rules and guidelines to be followed by the employees working in your company and explain it thoroughly to avoid any mishandling of the social media platforms.
