As an individual, using social media can be a simple way of networking with people, sharing information about your life with people that care, and staying connected with those you love, even if geographically you are not close. For a corporation, the rules are different. If you are running the social media accounts of a blog, company, or ministry that is bigger than just yourself where there are multiple opinions, a vision that is cast out to tens, hundreds, or thousands of people, you need to have a set of rules and guidelines.
So what do you do when someone comes on to your business or ministry’s Facebook page and bad mouths you as a company? They are not vulgar, the comments are directed at your product or service instead of a form of cyberbullying that is pointed at an individual, and there might be some merit to their claims. As an individual, your response might be a simple deleting of the comment, but the rules for business are actually different. Deleting the comment may fuel the fire the person is having about customer service to them whereas public addressing the issue and privately fleshing out the details can show value to that person directly and to everyone else that happens upon it indirectly.
You Need Your Own Policy Today
Because the rules are different, the person running the social media accounts may not fully be immersed in social media rules or the whole culture of the business, and multiple people could be managing the same account, you need to have guidelines and policies that make one unified voice that has a purpose to every action you take online. We have a couple of tips below to show you how to setup a great social media policy and guidelines, but if you want a template to work from, you can get our own social media policy and guidelines for FREE by signing up for our newsletter here. Simply signup and confirm your email.
- What is the whole goal of your company? Express that and make that the forefront reason to any marketing you do, online or not.
- How can social media help? Knowing this will begin to shape your responses and actions online.
- How do you deal with happy and angry customers?
- What kind of content do you want to share?
- What kind of voice do you want to have online?
- Is the end game (return on investment) relationships with customers, sales of something, people in the door, or click throughs to your website?
- How will you handle a crisis situation?
- What is the best media to use?
Social media is a tricky thing when we start thinking about something bigger than ourselves. How do you engage well with a corporate account?
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