SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY FOR A FAMILIAR

ORGANIZATION
Juan Carlos Meza
Professional Communication
Social media has become a part of our daily life and as human beings we have the right to take

advantage of the technology around us, here in the organization we have strong bonds between us

all and because of that we can trust each other and provide help to any member in any kind

required, that is why we want to project to the market we have respect for ourselves and the people

around us including clients and suppliers, we believe that a good communication and an attitude

of service needs be to reflected not only in the way we do business but also in the way interact

with the world using social media, we also believe that as said by the Public Relations Society of

America Employees have a right to use social media and employees' effective use of social media

can strengthen brands (Volmar, 2010), according to this we know that social media is a powerful

tool and used in the right way can help people and organizations to expand and gain strength of

the brand, but all of this need to be done in a correct and intelligent way, this is why we have

developed a social media policy that is going to guide us all and will clear doubts when using any

type of the social media tools which are going to be described next, of course a policy can be illegal

if it restricts activities that are protected for the employees (Payroll Manager's Letter, 2011), that

is why we took the time to develop this policy and we are very satisfied with the results and hope

all the members of the organization will be too.

Social media involves different types of tools but here in the organization we take into account all

the publications made through personal and business blogs, conversations and publications made

or being held through Facebook or twitter, postings of images that relate to the organization or

contain information about it, communication through email and any webpage that is not the one

of the company.
Internet does not forget

Remember that everything you post on the internet is going to remain there forever, you may try

to delete everything but you are always going to leave a trace, also remember that there is always

a way to find the author of things, so before posting something you can regret later remember that

one way or another everything gets back to you.

Always remember to speak for yourself and not for the company

When posting something about the organization whether it is your opinion or a fact remember to

add the legend that what you post are your own thoughts and feelings and they do not necessarily

reflect the ones of the organization, also always be honest and use your real name and tell the truth

about everything you want to talk about.

Be respectful

Never post something that can be discriminatory or hazardous or can cause any type of harm to

other person, remember the values we have here inside the organization and apply them to

everything you do in the web.

Never publish confidential information

Everything related to the company, clients, suppliers, projects, financials, etc. Must remain

confidential and be talked only with members of the organization, you are allowed to use the name

of the organization in sited likes Facebook or LinkedIn but before posting anything take the time

to verify it is only public access information.

Respect the competition

We know you want to be better than our competitors but always talk respectfully about them, do

not post anything that may harm their reputation or talk bad about them, if the competitions is

facing though circumstances do not talk about it or share anything about it because it give the

impression our organization enjoys when others have a bad time.

Be smarter

Never get involved if a fight between you and any person that wants to harm the image of our

organization, if someone attacks us leave the responses to our community manager he is well

prepared to treat this kind of situation, remember that in this type of fights we can lose more than

the one attacking us.

Update your profiles

If for some reason you have to leave the organization remember to remove everything that says

you still work with us, this is also beneficial for you because if an employer sees that information

he may get confused.

Ask for guidance

If you are not entirely sure about something you are going to post feel free to look up for some

help from the community manager or someone that knows about the topic, it is better to ask and

be sure than post and regret later.

Make your postings relevant

If possible try that your postings are really value adders and do not overshare because we

sometimes tend to share everything we see and some things may not look good on your accounts,

always invite your reader to think in a critical way and interact with them with intelligent and

creative conversations.

Nobody is perfect

We know that mistakes can happen and if you posted something that do not meet the requirements

we talked on the previous points relax and talk to someone that can help you solve this problem,

in this case the best option is the community manager, do not try to hide it because remember

internet does not forget and sooner or later it will come back to the organization.

Acts have consequences

As an employee it is required that you read and sign of agreement this social media policy so there

are no excuses to not comply them, in the case you do not fulfil them we are going to be in the

necessity to take corrective actions against you.

Nowadays a social media policy is very important, that is why we took the necessary time to

develop one that could be a guide for all the members of the organization, not having a social

media policy can cause a lot of serious problems because there are no parameters for the employees

to follow, having a guide allows everyone to think before doing something on the Internet and

makes everyone more conscious, a digital crisis can mean the end of a company and sometimes

the image of it can never be cleaned, there are also examples of employees that have revealed
confidential information about the company like the cases of Apple where someone releases

images of new projects, that kind of things can affect the financials of the organization or even

give the competition clues on how to beat the actual projects before there are even released,

Protiviti, a consulting firm realized in 2013 the Internal Audit Capabilities and Needs Survey

Report which threw amazing results, such as that 51 percent of the respondents do not address

social media risk as part of their risk assessment process (Corporate Board, 2013), with this we

see that it is vital for the companies to start taking care of the way their members use the social

media, if not bad consequences can happen that can affect the company in a social, financial or

operational way.

References

Is Your Company's Social Media Policy on the Up and Up?. (2011). Payroll Manager's Letter,

27(18), 5.

Volmar, P. (2010). Creating a social media policy (and why you need one). Public Relations

Tactics, 17(6), 18.

Lack of social media policy and process raise risk for companies. (2013). Corporate Board,

34(200), 29.