Creating social media governance documents are a crucial first step in ensuring your brand stays consistent and on topic on social media. It also helps keep your brand and employees on the same page for both social media sharing and content creation.
A social media governance document is a written policy that is the foundation for any social media sharing or content creation for your company. The goal of these documents is to highlight brand guidelines in order to keep your message or core values consistent across all platforms as well as consistent with employees who may be posting associated posts on company social media.
What should your guides include?
When we start working with a new client, we typically create three key documents: a Social Media Guide, a Style Guide, and a Social Media Policy.
A Social Media Guide is important for providing simple Do’s and Don’ts for your team or employees when they use social media. This document helps guide employees on what to share, what’s expected, and to avoid misunderstandings and problems when your employees are speaking about your company through blogs, social media, etc.
Download the Social Media Guide Template
A Style Guide highlights the importance of establishing a voice and tone for either the company you are working for or your own brand. The purpose of your style guide is to ensure all content put out across your platforms is consistent and within your brand’s style, regardless of who is posting for you. Your style guide can include things such as the tone you are trying to establish in your messaging, colour palettes or specific filters you must use when posting photos, specific hashtags to accompany posts, and more.
If creating content is something you are looking at for your company, brand colours and logo usage guidelines should also be included in your brand’s Style Guide.
Download the Social Media Style Guide Template
A Social Media Policy is used to establish the general usage of the company/brand’s social media networks as well as how certain topics or issues are handled when they arise. This document can cover topics such as confidentiality, impartiality, posting on personal channels and dealing with negativity across your brand’s channels.
Download the Social Media Policy Template
When creating your documents, keep in mind that every company or brand you create a document for will have different specifications. Instead of using generalized wording for all your documents, try to create social media documents that are specific to your needs!
Remember, social media is ever-changing and your style guide may need to be updated over time to better fit trends. It is important to recognize that these are working documents and should be revisited every 6 months or so.
Share the importance of social media governance documents with your team using this infographic: Docs Infographic
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