Hi, I’m Deidra Langstaff of Langstaff Marketing, and I’d like to talk to you a little bit about social media policies.

It’s extremely important that when you are setting up some social media pages or you’re having a Twitter account, your Facebook page, LinkedIn that before you get started, number one, in your company you determine who you’re going to have responsible for those pages. Now, the one thing I always like to tell everyone is it’s not the Marketing Department’s responsibility. They may initiate the project, they may start and actually be the ones who are driving it, but it is everyone’s responsibility in the company to be a part of social media.

But before you can just give free access to your social media pages to everyone in the company, we want them to be in the loop of what we expect. And the best document to do that is the social media policy. You can find those online, there’s lots of different versions. Recently I was looking at the Coca Cola Company and their social media policy, and I thought it was a great one. And you can pick and choose some information that they have and others, and make sure that it applies to your company.

But then what you’re going to want to do is get that document, make sure it’s reviewed by everyone in management, then you will put it out to all of those that are involved in the company. You’ll have a meeting, and deliver it. And talk to people about what you expect them to do, what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable and review it. And you know, although we like to have guidelines and it does help us, we’re adults and we, you know, most of this is common sense.

But once you make people comfortable with the fact that we are looking for the employees to interact on the social media pages… the company social media page, it really gives them permission and it is amazing the amount of good information you’re going to actually start receiving on your website or on your social media pages and the type of interactions you’re going to get from your customers because they know it’s not just one person. They’re getting all sorts of different opinions and views and it makes for something much more interesting to read and be involved in, and it really expands the personality of your brand.

So remember, marketing is everything and everything is marketing.