What Should Your Company’s Twitter Policy Be?
Twitter is an amazing tool for companies to reach out to customers and prospects, and keep followers current on news about its products or services. However, any company using Twitter should consider drafting a formal social media policy and enacting guidelines to make sure its brand always comes across in a positive light and its reputation is protected.
Here are five Twitter policy guidelines you should have documented before your team posts any real-time updates to the popular social media site.
Who in your company should tweet
It’s extremely important to have experienced, properly trained employees reporting information to the public. Just like a good PR manager, it’s imperative that the person or team doing the tweeting have the following qualities:
- Strong written and verbal communication skills. Although internet culture has taken on a decidedly dressed-down approach to communication, it’s not OK to make your company look like a sixth grader is behind the keyboard. Remember that the person tweeting is representing your company’s brand and products. You may even want to write out a list of which terms are acceptable and which ones aren’t.
- Not vague or contradictory. Updates that are misleading or contradictory can harm your reputation on social media. This often happens when projects are just beginning or company leaders haven't yet signed off on big business decisions. Before posting, make sure everything you’re sharing publicly is finalized and approved. This will allow people following your company to have more confidence in your public statements.
- Ability to explain things in a clear, concise manner. It’s important that the person in charge can relay information, whether it be technical or detailed, in an easily understandable and coherent manner. Sometimes it’s easy to assume that everyone following your business is in the same field of work or knows what happened yesterday. Someone with the ability to summarize and speak in simple terms is the person you want posting your messages—especially given the 280-character limit.
- Has the proper background and credentials. It’s a good idea to assign one person to this task to avoid inconsistent postings and to allow them to familiarized themselves with your guidelines. It’s even better if they have a PR background and know all the aspects of your company in order to represent it to the fullest.
What employees are allowed to tweet
After deciding who should do the updating, the next step in developing an official Twitter policy is to set the ground rules of what the person in charge is allowed to tweet. The following should help you decide what is and isn’t OK to post.
- Sensitive company information. This may seem obvious, but as we’ve all witnessed over the years, things tend to leak prematurely from time to time. To avoid incidents like this, any person tweeting should treat every post as if it were a press release and stick to embargo date for the information.
- Avoid slander. It’s important that your company avoids negative comments about other brands, companies, or public figures. These messages could be considered libel and they may come back to haunt you.
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How often your company should tweet
There are Twitter accounts that update on a regular, helpful cadence. And there are also those that tweet far too often. Make sure you don’t overload your audience with random, meaningless updates. A good way to avoid such posts is to stick to relevant and interesting news that aligns with the reasons why people are following your company. If a post has little to do with your business, your followers will have little to do with it.
What Twitter accounts you should follow
Following others is one of the best ways to build your network on Twitter. But knowing whom to follow on Twitter can sometimes be tricky. It’s a good rule of thumb to always learn as much as you can before following or retweeting from another account. The person in charge doesn’t have to perform a complete background check, but they can visit the person's main page or read what comments this person has left for others before following. This is a great way to avoid spammers and malicious activities, or associating your brand with a questionable or controversial account.
Expanding your Twitter policy
Remember, you can apply these rules to nearly any social networking site. Whether one person or a team is overseeing your company's Twitter presence, meet with them regularly to review strategy, analyze metrics, and share company updates that will need to be promoted soon.
By keeping your employees in the loop and drafting ideas that are specifically tailored to the type of business you’re in, there will be fewer errors and more effective messaging to customers. Revisiting the policy periodically will also ensure that your practices stay current with evolving technology and social media best practices.
