Social Media Strategy: Connecting Within The Boundaries Of Your HR Policies

Social Media has fundamentally changed the way people interact with the internet and each other online. With the rate of “new” social media users increasing every single day, it’s impossible to avoid social media in both your personal life and your professional career.

There are so many benefits to using social media; increased networking, growing your influence, and generating leads for your business, but some organizations have a hard time finding the balance between effective social media and staying within their human resource policies.

Business, Not Boundaries

Instead of putting extreme boundaries on the social media use of your employees, try incorporating a few strategic policies instead. You’ll not only increase your business reach, you also spark creativity and ideas in your workforce. Social media can be used in so many areas that it can mean the difference between a winning and losing strategy for your business.

Your sales team, operations, customer service, and even more internal facing teams can all learn to use social media for the betterment of your company, and you don’t have to panic about loosening your grip! In the next few paragraphs we’ll highlight some strategic policies around social media that will help grow your influence while staying inside the bounds of your HR policies.

Hiring the right talent

One of the hardest parts of owning a business is finding the right people to work with and employ. A lot of times when a business is growing quickly, they can have more of a “just fill the seat” mentality, but in the long run, quick hiring decisions usually lead to higher turnover.

By taking the time to make the right hiring decisions, you eliminate a lot of your social media issues right off the bat by identifying employees that represent your company and brand well. It’s a lot easier to loosen your restrictions when you have the right people on board you can trust!

Knowing when to share and when not to share

Educating your employees on the power of social media absolutely needs to be part of your strategy around your HR policies. Whether for good or bad, just making them aware of the amount of influence social media can have on a business does a lot to lower the potential for “off brand” social media posts by employees.

A training program designed around your organizational goals as part of your on-boarding process is a great way to standardize your regulations and policies around the use of social media in your organization.

We’re all adults here (most of the time…)

It can sometimes be hard to resist the urge to tell someone off on social media who’s offended you. Especially because you get all of the impact without having to actually say it to their face. BUT that will do little good as you’re trying to grow your organization and your brand!

When communicating your specific HR policies to employees, be sure to highlight their responsibility to behave in a mature way when representing your company online. Educate them on when to engage and when not to engage with others on social media as well as how to handle any conflict that may come up while managing your company’s social media pages.

Bringing it all together

Policing HR policies can be a time consuming undertaking, especially when it comes to social media. With all of it’s advantages, social media can be used in a wide variety of ways to help grow your organization.

By educating your employees, setting expectations, and communicating responsibility, you can build a solid strategy that encourages creativity within your workforce while maintaining a positive online presence for your business!

Nathan Kittrell is the owner and founder of sales & marketing agency, Scale A Sale. He is also host of the business podcast, Growth Mode on Apple Podcasts. Nathan spends his time helping companies across a variety of industries implement the best technology and growth strategies for their organizations. Thanks to Nathan for sharing his thoughts. The balance that both employers and employees have to strike is sometimes a difficult one when it comes to social media use in the workplace. As Nathan mentions below, sometimes the key is just to be an adult 😉

Thanks, once again, to Nathan for sharing his thoughts and experiences. Having worked in eras both with and without social media, it’s interesting to see how technologies like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have both helped and hurt companies. Have thoughts on Nathan’s guidance? Have experience with a “Facebook firing” or other situation where an employer or employee ran afoul of social media? Be sure to share in a comment! –Sean