Every individual knows about different social media platforms for personal use. However, these platforms provide similar and more specialized services to institutions and corporates. Overall, every social media platform provides a medium for its user to control, alter and develop a perception of themselves or, in the case of a company, the brand. Effective social media management enables an enterprise or the social media marketing agency to devise a proper social media guideline for them and their employees. After all, employees affect the company’s reputation through their social media posts, too.
There’s a significant difference between social media policies, guidelines, and strategies. An experienced and expert social media marketer or agency can assist, devise and execute all of them for you in the best possible way. In this article, we will explain why social media guidelines are necessary for your company. We consider how it differs between businesses and we share the standard guidelines to include in your social media marketing management, no matter your company.
Every business has its own unique daily operations, professional philosophy and the target audience. Social media guidelines help marketers and business owners decide on the right strategies that align with business goals. The guidelines provide a framework for choosing the overarching social strategy and perfect campaigns.
What Are Social Media Guidelines?
Social media is a growing and ever-evolving platform. With time, the strategies and components of social media developed and change. This is why social media guidelines came into existence, to provide the broad contours of social media best practice for the enterprise, the professionals working with it and it’s employees. These guidelines cover how a business and its employees should interact on various platforms, the post design, discussions and other online etiquette tips.
The social media guidelines must be shared with every employee to ensure internal feedback is encouraged and everyone is aware of the company’s brand messaging and engagement. Stakeholders also get the opportunity to engage and view other decision-makers’ points regarding social media marketing strategies. The guidelines ensure that the company is safeguarded from cybersecurity risks and provides some awareness to employees for doing the same for their accounts.
Overall, instructions shape the organization’s social media activity, which underpins the brand’s reputation in the market. Everyone knows that there’s a team running behind every enterprise’s social media management. Social media guidelines provide conformity and prevent bias messaging or unclear posting activity.
6 Broad Social Media Guidelines That Can Work For Almost Every Business
1. Have Goal-Oriented Posts and Campaigns
Most posts generally have a simple goal of getting likes and some engagement by spreading a message to the current followers. Campaigns usually have the goal of generating leads for the business and widening the reach of the social media account. Apart from this, the social media marketing team can be motivated by the quarterly goals of increasing followers, engagement, re-shares and more by a fixed percentage.
Instilling innovation and creativity in the posting activity is also a must – you could consider creating live streams, shout-outs, collaborations and more. The success of the social media team can be measured by this metric as well. The relevancy of your posts and campaigns is also a parameter. How well your consumer understands your message, how motivated they are to complete the desired action is paramount in any social campaign you run, so these two factors can be turned into goals too.
2. Planning Relevant Social Media Activities
As we all know, planning is important and it’s crucial to executing a strong social media strategy. Social media marketers must schedule their posts so that no matter what happens, their brand appears active across all their platforms. Standard posts deliver regular messages, but up-to-minute trend-oriented posts keep the followers hooked on your page, breed loyalty and attract new followers. Including new hashtags and trends in your posting activity is inviting and automatically increases engagement.
It is expected your social media marketing team will have next month’s post lineup ready a month prior. The better we plan for the future, the better we analyze the present.
3. Manage Multiple Social Networks
Today there are many social media platforms available for you to leverage. Often, enterprises have different social media pages for different brands or products/services. Each social media account on each network demands a customized strategy. It is evident that in social media marketing for small and medium enterprises, these multiple strategies aren’t much different. However, they have some critical points which are not advisable to ignore.
An enterprise can have the same strategy for LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and any other platforms the brand engages on. The same way, let’s say, they have two already established brands of two different products, then if the budget allows having two different pages, it is a beneficial exercise.
4. Build a Unique Social Media Voice and Tone
Here you need to consider firstly, what vocabulary and phrases do your target audience use? And, secondly what do you want your brand to sound like? The more accurately your social media marketing team can answer these questions, the more effective and attractive their social media marketing strategy to your brand’s followers and customers or prospects. Eventually, after remaining consistent with your brand’s look and feel and messaging your brand will become immediately identifiable.
The voice and tone also need to be developed as per the brand’s product range and category. If your business is a conglomerate your social messaging will have to encompass the nature of your multiple products and services. Your social media posts will likely be more business and management-oriented than product and sales focused. While a healthcare institution may use the caring tone of mature guardian, a fast food joint may even use non-offensive colloquialisms.
5. The Communication Guidelines
A brand can also lose all its power and the respect of its followers with just one negative or offensive message, comment, tweet or reply. It is imperative to maintain respectful and positive traits in your brand’s voice. The way a social team handles the negative trolls, angry customers, notorious comments and negative reviews is the break-even point of social media success and failure. When the negative influencers and individuals are replied to with grace, empathy and sincerity, it positively boosts your brand’s reputation.
All team members shall be aware and prepared for such occasions and be instructed not to lose their temper or become frustrated. On the other hand, general communication must be informative, understanding, light and use elegant vocabulary. Employees who are directly conversing with followers on social media always have an opportunity to generate a lead or to create an angry customer.
6. Competitor Analysis
Just like you (your team or agency), your competitor is also working on their social media accounts and engagement with the target audience. Your competitor can must be included in your primary research for social media trends and you must observe their activities across platforms. Analyzing their presence, campaigns and ongoing social media activities gives you insights into what they’re doing that works and what they’re doing that’s had a negative effect on their brand.
These six pointers are considered standard and general guidelines off which brands should form their social media policies and strategies. These guidelines help you define your process for your team or contracted social media agency and your employees. The guidelines are not rules but suggestions and should be customized to your brand, mission and objectives. Social media marketing is a dynamic and ever-evolving field, being updated with the trends and making the necessary changes in the guidelines once in a while is also recommended.