As a small business owner, when you make the decision to start posting on social media, you need to understand the commitment that is involved. Managing social media is a labor intensive and time consuming task that can take away from your other business tasks. However, in this business environment, it is a necessity. That is why you need to develop a social media policy. Even if you are a small, one-person business, you need a social media policy to share with the employees you do have. You do not want to experience what happened to this British company, His Master’s Voice (HMV).
His Master’s Voice (HMV) was a british record label created in 1901 that had a distinguising logo of a terrier-mix dog named Nipper listening to a gromophone. That logo then became a staple in the music industry, and remains as one to this day.
The brand was in the trial phase of the social media marketing maturity lifecycle. This lifecycle consists of three phases: the trial phase, transition phase, and the strategic phase. The trial phase is the adoption phase that most companies find themselves in when they first start out with using social media. This is a phase with a lot of exploration and expirimentation. There is really no posting strategy as posts are done haphazardly with no general purpose.
With time and experience, companies move along the lifecycle to the transition phase where posting is still random, but a more systematic way of thinking starts to develop.
This leads us into the strategic phase where a company now begins to formally develop a social media marketing plan and how it will integrate into the overall scheme of things. Clear objectives and metrics are also developed in this phase.
His Master’s Voice (HMV) had hired an unpaid intern to setup a Twitter account to establish their presence on the platform. However, when the intern left the company, management did not have any way to access it’s Twitter account and lost track of the unpaid intern that left. How many times has this happened to you as a small business owner?
This story demonstrates the importance of having a social media policy, even for a small business. A social media policy is a document that outlines how a business and its employees should conduct themselves on the web. It not only protects a business’ online reputation and encourages employees to share information about the company, but it also describes your teams roles and protocols such as what happens when an employee leaves the company.
A good social media policy is a plan of action. It is a living document that grows as your small business grows. For example, it can spell out the protocol that all social media accounts created are the property of the company and that includes all passwords. All social media account passwords are to be stored in a Google spreadsheet that employees are given access to so they can update the document as needed.
I can recall countless number of times a small business owner as come to me saying they lost access to their website or social media accounts. So do not approach social media haphazardly. Click the link below to download a free sample copy of our social media policy that we use at Wynmore Media. It also comes with a poster of the employee’s social media bill of rights that you can post in your office. Enjoy!
Free Social Media Policy Template
The Employee’s Social Media Bill of Rights
Time To Meet With Nick
Nick Roy has been involved in marketing and website design since 1999. He has been a business owner since 2008 where he grew his first agency to 7 figures in five years before a bad acquisition brought that to a halt. That combination of success and failure provides Nick with a unique perspective to share with clients on what it takes to succeed as a small business owner. While he currently holds an MBA from Hawaii Pacific University, he is primarily self-taught when it comes to website design and online marketing. He is also an instructor of social media marketing for Wynmore Academy. Click here to set up a time to talk with Nick about your business goals.