Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Instagram Brand: Part Two
In our previous post, we started a highly important topic for any company which promotes its brand on Instagram or any other social media platform as creating the right social media policy. Today, your true IG and IGTV provider in the sphere will go on with the components of a social media policy and speak about implementing it in several super easy steps. Ready? Let’s get down to work:
What You Should Include in Your Instagram Policy
Give Precise Guidance for Your Employees to Behave on Their Personal Instagram Accounts
According to the surveys, only about 30% of Americans have guidance provided by their employer on how they should behave on their social media accounts. Before you pass this passage considering your employees are free to behave the way they wish on their own space (both real and virtual), think twice. Posting threats of violence, hate speech, racial epithets, propaganda based on religion, or harassment on any social media with Instagram in particular, can easily violate both the law and your company’s code of ethics. Your employees must know they will be responsible for their behavior as in real life so online. Even if what they do is not illegal, they should remember that many employers use Instagram and other social media to find out more about their employees (actually around 17% of American employers state they do) and that may either raise or lower their opinion.
Encourage Your Employees to Talk About Your Brand on Their Instagram Accounts
Most probably, your social media team works hard to create a good name for your brand on Instagram and they are drilled to answer the toughest questions that customers may give. And what about the rest of your employees? Do they feel obliged or encouraged to speak about your brand even if they do nothing with your social media team? Will they stay accountable to your brand? Don’t neglect this part but ask them to post disclaimers to confirm their relationship with your company or that what they share about your brand is their pure opinions. Surely, you can omit this point in your social media policy if you aren’t sure your employees will be glad to speak about your brand. For instance, if Adidas has its employees identifying themselves that they speak for themselves and not the Adidas Group, Walmart has asked its employees not to touch any topic about the brand at all.
How You Can Implement Your Social Media Policy
Now, when you precisely know what your brand’s Instagram policy must contain, it’s time to implement it. This is done in five simple steps. Here they are:
- Download a template of a social media policy: you can find plenty of options on the internet for free.
- Find input from stakeholders: most probably your brand’s HR team, public spokespeople, and even power users have some key ideas to round out your peculiar requirements. However, entrust the most important consultation to your legal team.
- Determine where to post your brand’s Instagram policy: you can add it to your employee handbook and every new employee can read it before passing to work. The exiting workers, meanwhile, can access it through your company’s shared drives or intranet.
- Launch the social media policy: once you present a new or revised social media policy at an internal meeting or via an email, leave enough space for discussions and questions.
- Flag to review the policy this time next year: once you commit to an annual review of the social media policy, you will be calm that it is always relevant and useful. Remember that social media platforms and Instagram, in particular, tend to constantly change and develop. What is actual today may appear backward next time this year.
