Creating a Social Media Policy for Your Practice – Five Essential Tips to Guide You
Social media platforms are excellent for interacting with your clients. However, for businesses such as yours, this interaction should be regulated by social media policies that promote empowerment and trust while also observing legal requirements.
How do you create a social media policy for your legal practice? Here are five tips to get you started.
Bureaucratic policies may not work for your social media policy as social media is incredibly dynamic. As such, the policies should be based on a culture that can adapt to any changes. Ideally, this culture should reflect your practice’s internal organizational culture. Additionally, it should emphasize values such as promptness, transparency, creativity, consistency, and connection.
Since social media is always changing, the culture should also focus on evaluation and learning. These questions should help guide you:
- How should group learning be documented?
- Who are the members of your social media team?
- Which members handle the various problems and challenges?
- How is success evaluated?
- Have two policies.
- Involve and engage with everyone.
- Get the policies reviewed by a lawyer.
- Review your policies occasionally.
You may consider many other factors depending on the internal organizational culture of your practice.
There have been many cases whereby employees have ruined companies’ reputation via their personal social media platforms.
The employees using the practice’s social media platforms should be regulated by the rules and regulations you set. However, they are not bound to these regulations on their personal platforms, and you cannot compel them to do so. However, you can determine what they can and cannot say about the company on their private platforms.
It is also important to note that as long as an employee is associated with your company his/her behavior may affect the company’s reputation. As such, kindly urge them to conduct themselves well off work and on their social media sites to represent the company’s values.
It is not practical to write a social media policy alone unless you plan on managing the practice’s social media sites all by yourself. As such, involve all the relevant people and get them to brainstorm and contribute ideas. In particular, ensure that you work closely with the team managing the sites and keep high-ranking officials informed of any relevant developments.
Laws regulating social media sites are just as dynamic as these sites themselves. As such, get a lawyer who specializes in this field to review the policies and identify any loopholes that may haunt your practice in the future.
The culture on which you base your policies may not change, but certain specifics will soon be outdated as social media platforms evolve. As such, review your policies from time to time and make changes where necessary. Having a strong social media policy in place will help you avoid future issues with your employees and also set the tone for a long lasting relationship. Social Media is supposed to be just that, social.
Do you have a social media policy in place? How often do you update it? Share in the comments below. Do you have a question? or a suggestion please let me know. Until next time friends, stay enchanting….
