As businesses develop social media business plans, it's important to consider what types of policies should be introduced into the plan that allow the business to effectively engage in social media while at the same time respecting company culture and proprietary information. Businesses need to also consider employee participation on social media when developing policies in order to make sure that employees are on the same page as the business. The following tips are useful ones to keep in mind as a business develops its social media plan.
1: Develop an escalation policy for dealing with negative comments. Businesses will inevitably get a negative comment or complaint from a disgruntled customer. However there are also situations where a company will deal with negative comments that go far beyond the complaint a customer might have. In both cases, the company needs to have a policy developed that tells people how to deal with negative comments, and who to escalate comments to. Along with this practice is:
2. Develop Criteria to determine how to respond to negative comments. Not all negative comments are equal nor do they deserve the same response. Developing criteria can help you determine what comments to focus on, as well as how to focus on them. For example if someone states a company sucks, as opposed to someone complaining about a product, the types of response will differ. Knowing what response to apply to a type of comment can be useful for handling negative situations.
3. Don't monitor your employees too closely. It's tempting to monitor employees using social media, but it's also asking for trouble, if they find out, or if you use the information against them. It's better to provide guidelines to employees on how to use social media, while also giving them enough space to use it. Better yet, it's worthwhile to emphasize that while it's nice if the employee talks about work occasionally, there's no expectation employees will do so.
4. Provide actions that people can do, to illustrate how the policy works. When you provide actions that people can do, it helps to illustrate how the policy works. The additional benefit is that knowing what actions need to be taken can be used to streamline time spent on social media sites. A policy is only effective, if people know how to implement it in their daily activities.
What other tips would you suggest for businesses that are developing social media policies?