How to create an effective social media guide for your business

No matter what industry you’re in, every modern business should have social media best practices.

The Social Media Guidelines lay out the best social practices for your employees. In some cases, these rules are required by law or for legal protection. But ultimately, the purpose of these guidelines is to provide employees with the information they need to make the right social media decisions for themselves and the company.

This is true even if your company doesn’t have a social media presence yet. Whether you have an official Twitter account or an Instagram profile or not, you’d better trust that your employees are online and chatting wildly.

This article will cover:

Difference between social media policy and social media guidelines
Real examples from other brands
How to use our free social media guide template to create your own set of guides

What are social media recommendations?

Social media guidelines are suggestions for how company employees should present themselves and the company on their personal social media accounts.

Think of social media best practices as a guide to social media best practices for employees.

They should describe how to behave on social networks in a way that is positive and beneficial for both the company and employees and customers. Social recommendations can include etiquette tips, helpful tools, and links to important resources.

It’s important to note that we really don’t recommend banning employees from using social media, or banning them from talking about your company at all. It’s not good to guard or censor the social presence of your team members: talk about the moral killer and say goodbye to any organic ambassador opportunities.

Please note that social media usage policies are different from your company’s social media policy. They also differ from your social media style guide.

The Social Media Policy is a comprehensive document that details how a company and its employees use social media. These policies are designed to protect the brand from legal risks and maintain its reputation on social media. Where social media policies set out rules and consequences for breaking them, social media guidelines are more informative.

Meanwhile, the social media style guide defines the brand voice, brand visuals, and other important marketing elements. It is often used by content creators in organizations to ensure that their posts are branded.

Another difference: social media rules are also different from community rules, which set the rules for public interaction with your account or group.

Want to know more? Take the free Hootsuite Academy course Implementing Social Media Management in Your Organization.

Why is social media guidance important?

Every employee (yes, including Maurice in accounting) is a potential spokesperson for an online brand. Sharing recommendations on social media is your chance to provide the entire team with the tools to help them promote you in a positive, inclusive and respectful way.

Use social media rules to:

Give your employees the opportunity to positively interact with their personal social accounts.
Teach Social Media Best Practices
Encourage employees to follow your official accounts or use official hashtags.
Spread your company’s strategy on social media
Introduce employees to helpful third-party tools and resources, such as the Hootsuite social media dashboard or Hootsuite Academy training.
Protect your employees from social harassment
Protect your company from cybersecurity threats
Clarify what information can be shared and what is a breach of privacy
Boost your brand reputation on social media

While social media best practices are usually designed to be shared with employees, anyone you work with can also benefit from these best practices – such as corporate partners, marketing agencies or influencers.

If you don’t create best practices for how your company is presented or discussed on social media, things can quickly spiral out of control. And, on the other hand, a lack of social media recommendations can also prevent you from benefiting from employee content. An enthusiastic team member, armed with social principles and confident that they are allowed to speak, can be a powerful spokesperson for your brand.

10 social media rules for employees

Here is a summary of the main sections you should include in your social media policies. But of course, while these details are common, go ahead and tailor any part of this to suit your brand: every industry is different after all.

In fact, every company is unique… so you may want to check with your team before committing to any hard and fast rules. Your employees may have specific questions or concerns that it would be helpful to include in your main document.

1. Official accounts

Identify your company’s official social media channels and encourage employees to follow them. This isn’t just a chance to get a few more followers, it’s a great opportunity to show employees how your brand presents itself on social media.

You can also define specific hashtags if they are a major part of your social strategy.

In some cases, companies either allow or require certain employees to maintain brand-related social media accounts. If that’s what your business does, it’s a good place in your social guidelines to explain how a team member can (or can’t) sign in to their own branded account.

2. Disclosure and transparency

If your team members proudly state on their social accounts that they work for your company, it’s a good idea to ask them to clarify that they’re creating social media posts on their behalf and not your brand. Adding information to their social media profile or bio that “All opinions expressed are my own”(or similar) helps to make it clear that this is not an official view.

That being said, if they are going to discuss company-related issues on social media, they are effectively required by law to identify themselves as employees. This is a rule, not a friendly suggestion. In fact, in the United States, the Federal Trade Commission requires identification to take place at the appropriate post. Just mentioning it in your biography is not enough.

An example of a Google employee bio on Twitter

3. Privacy

It never hurts to remind your team that confidential company information is confidential at any time of the day. Whether it is personal information about colleagues, financial disclosures, future products, private communications, research and development data, or other sensitive information, clarify that privacy and confidentiality must be respected on all social media platforms.

4. Cybersecurity

Cyber hacks and threats are no joke. Even if your employees are vigilant about phishing and the like, it never hurts to learn the basics of cybersecurity, especially if you’re collecting customer or customer information.

Cybersecurity first!

Rapid Cyber Security Update 101:

Choose strong passwords
Use different passwords for each social account
Don’t use the same passwords for corporate accounts.
Use two-factor (or multi-factor) authentication to sign in to social networks
Limit the personal and professional information you share
Use personal credentials for personal accounts
Make sure your internet connection is secure
Do not download or click on suspicious content
Activate location services in apps only when needed
Practice Safe Browsing

5. Persecution

The guidelines usually remind staff to be kind on social media. But beyond promoting positivity, businesses should also make it clear that they do not tolerate any form of social media harassment.

On the other hand, it is an opportunity to provide support to your employees if they face harassment. Define your policy on trolls or bullies, whether it be reporting them, ignoring them, blocking or banning them.

Tell people how to report problems they may be experiencing. If support is needed, let employees know how and where they can get it.

Providing a protocol and tools will help your team nip problems in the bud before they escalate into a full blown social media crisis.

6. Inclusiveness

It is important for every employer and brand to promote inclusion on social media and beyond. Encourage your employees to do the same – it’s a way to show that you care about them too.

Recommendations for inclusion may include:

Use inclusive pronouns (they/them/them/people)
Add descriptive captions to images
Be mindful of representation
Don’t make assumptions about gender, race, experience, or abilities
Avoid gender or race emoji
Feel free to share your favorite pronouns
Use capital letters for hashtags (this makes them more legible for screen readers_
Use a variety of images and icons. This includes stock images, emoji, and branded visuals.
Report and delete any comments deemed sexist, racist, ableist, ageist, homophobic, or hateful towards any group or person.
Make the text accessible using plain language and accessible to people learning English as a second language or people with learning disabilities.

Additional resources on inclusion can be found here.

7. Legal aspects

Your social principles may include reminding employees to respect intellectual property, copyrights, trademarks, and other relevant laws. When in doubt, the rule of thumb is relatively simple: if it’s not yours and you don’t have permission, don’t post it. Easy!

8. Do’s and Don’ts

Of course, while you may want to go through the previous sections in detail, making a quick reference list of do’s and don’ts is a chance to make everything as clear as possible.

For example…

DO include the company as an employer in your social media bio (if you wish).
DON’T MEET competitors inappropriately
DO share company messages, events, and stories on social media.
DO NOT DISCLOSE company secrets or the confidential information of your colleagues
EXPRESS your own opinion – just make sure you don’t speak for the company.
DO NOT comment on legal matters relating to the company
DO report harassment you experience or notice
DO NOT interact with trolls, negative coverage or comments

9. Useful resources

You can include links to helpful resources in your guidance document or list them in a separate section. Wherever you put them, it’s a good idea to link to your social media policy, social media style guide, and community guidelines so everyone has this information at hand.

Other links you might want to include might be:

company documents
- corporate code of conduct
- employment contracts
- Privacy Policy
Marketing, Advertising and Sales Regulations from the Government of Canada and the Federal Trade Commission.

If your company offers social media resources, what better way than your social media recommendations to make everyone aware of them? Whether it’s tools, training from Hootsuite, or social media scholarships, you give the people who work for you the opportunity to go all out (feet?) on social media.

10. Contact information and date

Don’t forget to also add information where you can send questions. It can be a specific person, a forum or Slack channel, or an email address.

You must also indicate when your recommendations were last updated.

Examples of recommendations for social networks

Looking for real examples of social media usage rules? We have collected several sources of inspiration.

The Grossmont-Cuyamaca Community College District provides clear and concise advice on best practices. “Free speech must be exercised responsibly,” the page reminds readers. “These guidelines provide a roadmap for constructive, respectful, and productive use of social networking sites.”

Intel goes to great lengths to reassure employees that they are not here to censor or control their online behavior. “We trust you,” the manual says directly and indirectly. From the outset, Intel has made its wishes clear: be sincere, focus on the good, and use common sense.

Stanford University (yes, the same institution that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of) has developed social media policies that are pretty broad but provide users with a lot of resources and context. If your social media recommendations are so detailed, it might be a good idea to discuss the key takeaways with your team at a workshop or seminar to make sure no details are left out.

Bloomberg School of Nursing at the University of Toronto offers a very concise list of recommendations that are easy to digest at a glance. It’s a good reminder that how you develop your guidelines can help with understanding, whether it’s a web page, a PDF, or a brochure.

Remember that your recommendations can be as long or as short as you wish. Sharp News, for example, offers only four recommendations for using social media.

The Olympic Committee has kept its social media recommendations for the Beijing Olympics on one page, albeit a fairly dense one. Based on the “can”and “impossible”, it immediately becomes clear what is acceptable and what is condemned.

Because Nordstrom is a customer service company and privacy is important, its social media policies focus heavily on customer protection. Your own industry will be different, so adjust your recommendations to fit your specific problem areas (or opportunities!).