Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Instagram Brand: Part Two

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:

  1. Download a template of a social media policy: you can find plenty of options on the internet for free.
  2. 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. 
  3. 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.
  4. 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. 
  5. 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. 
Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Instagram Brand: Part One

Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Instagram Brand: Part One

Does your organization use Instagram? If yes then you should have an effective social media policy as over 70% population in the States alone use Instagram and state their employer has no social media policy. Do you wonder what it is or how to scheme one? Satay tuned with InstaBF, a leading Instagram and IGTV provider to find out more.

 

 

What a Social Media Policy Is and Its Benefits

 

By saying a good social media policy we understand a document with guidelines for an organization’s Instagram (or any other social media platform) use. This document should cover the target brand’s official channel, contain a guideline in the best and worst-case scenarios, as well as include information on how the employees should use it as professionally so personally. Since Instagram is constantly evolving, the social media policy should be altered when necessary, must be easy to understand. If you manage to create an up-to-date and straightforward document, the following benefits will be available for you:

  • Your brand’s identity maintenance across all channels available
  • Preventing a security breach and a full-blown PR crisis
  • You can act quickly according to the policy if a crisis arises
  • You will encourage your employees to amplify your brand’s message

 

 

What You Should Include in Your Instagram Policy

 

Here are the points that your social media policy must involve:

 

 

It should define your team’s roles

 

Every employee of your team should know their responsibilities both on a short-term and long-term basis. To make it easy, make up a list with names and email addresses of all your employees so that the whole team gets to know each others’ responsibilities. Assign them the following roles:

  • daily posting and engagement
  • strategy and planning
  • customer service
  • advertising
  • passwords and security
  • monitoring 
  • all types of approvals (financial, legal, etc.)
  • response in the case of a crisis
  • Instagram training for new employees

 

 

Security Protocols Must Be Established

 

Any social media platform including Instagram has many risks. Hence, one section of your social media policy must be devoted to the guidance on identifying all types of risks (password changing, the update of the organizational software, etc.) and the actions that must be undertaken if any occurs.

 

 

Scheme A Plan of Actions for Security and PR Crisis

 

One of the goals a social media policy pursues is preventing the necessity of using a crisis management plan. Despite this, it’s crucial to have both plans schemed and ready to be used. It must involve a contemporary emergency contact list with particular roles (those of PR and legal experts, social media team, etc.). Besides this, an international communication plan along with some guidelines for identifying the scope of the current crisis will help deal with it effectively and quickly. 

 

 

Draw a Scheme of Staying Compliant with the Law

 

Depending on the state or the country, laws differ. However, certain points might be common for all social media policies irrespective of the location. These are:

  • Privacy is key, hence make sure all your employees can handle customer information accurately. 
  • Copyright is forbidden by any country’s law. Therefore, be attentive when using third-party content.
  • Confidentiality is highly crucial. Respect your own company’s internal information so must your employees do. They should be aware of all the consequences they will face once disclosing any data on Instagram that your brand considers private.