Page 397 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

Social media policies need to be living documents. As the Internet evolves and
social media platforms change, you need to update your company’s social media
policies to keep pace with that change. Therefore, be sure to revisit your social
media policies on a regular basis to determine that they are up-to-date and reflect
the current needs of your company.

Tips and tricks for social media governance

Moving to effective social media governance is a journey that requires continuous
iteration, planning, re-planning, and structural tweaking. Following are some
tips and tricks that can help you institute stronger social media governance in
your organization quickly:

» Define its purpose.

Social media governance is one of those initiatives that can quickly become
a lot bigger or broader than it’s supposed to be. When it gets larger, it often
gets unwieldy. As a result, when you’re starting to establish social media
governance, begin by defining its purpose, scope, and connection points to
other governance structures in your organization. List the specific channels,
employee groups, and scenarios that will be covered under the governance
model.
» Develop strong processes and practices.
No governance model or policies and guidelines will be effective without
robust processes and practices put in place early on. As soon as you define
the purpose, start thinking about the right processes and practices for your
organization. The right ones are probably different for every organization.
The best way to choose the right ones are to see what types of processes
have been successful for other initiatives in the organization.
» Keep policies and guidelines concise.
As discussed earlier in the chapter, policies and guidelines are extremely
important. However, you can easily get carried away and make them long
and cumbersome. In their first iterations, try to keep your policies and
guidelines as concise and simple as possible. If your employees don’t
understand the simple versions, they will be more intimidated by
something complex and long.
» Establish ongoing training and education.
Establishing governance models, processes, policies, and guidelines are all
important. But they’re only as good as their rate of adoption. That’s why
putting training and education processes in place is extremely important.
Sometimes the training may need to be just a series of webinars or online

CHAPTER 26 Understanding Social Media Governance 381