While social media provides many positives for marketing a company it can also be a source of serious problems. Without a proper social media policy companies can, thanks to unchecked social media engagement, lose clients and even find themselves the subject of lawsuits.
When employees using id’s and usernames associated with their company engage in social media, commenting on blogs or sending tweets, it is important they keep to agreed limits on the extent and nature of their engagement. Using a company twitter account e.g. @customerservicesacme, it is important they do not tweet any defamatory or offensive messages that will reflect badly on the company. Similarly they will do the company no credit getting in to a slanging match on competitors’ blogs.
This very issue is alluded to in this article on Glasgow’s Chamber of Commerce website.
To start work on a policy the following article “Setting up a Social Media Policy for your Company” provides some excellent starters.
