Creating Social Media Policy

One of the topics that will be covered at WSPRA's February Social Media: Get on Board Workshop will be developing social media policy.

In Jason Falls article, What Every Company Should Know about Social Media Policy, he points out that only one in three companies has social media policy in place. He suggests that companies consider the following social media policies:

•Employee Code of Conduct for Online Communications



•Employee Code of Conduct for Company Representation in Online Communications


•Employee Blogging Disclosure Policy


•Employee Facebook Usage Policy


•Employee Personal Blog Policy


•Employee Personal Social Network Policy


•Employee Personal Twitter Policy


•Employee LinkedIn Policy


•Corporate Blogging Policy


•Corporate Blog Use Policy


•Corporate Blog Post Approval Process


•Corporate Blog Commenting Policy


•Corporate Facebook Brand Page Usage Policy


•Corporate Facebook Public Comment/Messaging Policy


•Corporate Twitter Account Policy


•Corporate YouTube Policy


•Corporate YouTube Public Comment Policy


•Company Password Policy

While this may seem like policy overkill, Falls writes:

"By having written policies for your employees in personal and company use, your customers or audience in their behavior in interacting with your company and processes in place for handling social media content production and user-generated content handling, you mitigate risk and keep your lawyers happy. In my experience, when policies are in place, the “no”s you are used to hearing from legal and compliance suddenly become “yes”es."

School districts are a rather cautious lot and rightly so. However, good social media policy can take the risk out of community building through social media and instead provide greater support of your mission to educate children.