by Homerun Nievera, Negosentro.com |
From Facebook to Twitter to LinkedIn, nonprofits are flocking to social media, but not everyone is prepared for the challenges and ramifications of what you post–or how to manage the process. Who is allowed to tweet? Who can comment on your posts? How do you respond if someone says something mean about your organization? How do you make use of what social media offers while protecting your nonprofit and your constituents?
As nonprofits have increasingly turned to social media, policies and guidelines to govern their use of social media have become the new frontier. The open and community-based aspects of social media can be a huge benefit for nonprofits looking to reach out to new audiences and engage their existing base, but sometimes it can seem that no one knows the right way to use each channel, or where the lines are drawn—or even how to find out.
Does your organization have a social media policy? If you have a number of staff and/or volunteers listening and posting on social media – it may be time to develop one.
Luckily, Idealware partnered with Balance Interactive and Darim Online, to create the Nonprofit Social Media Policy Workbook . This resource is “designed to help you, as an organization, ask the important questions about social media” in order to develop a workable policy that fits your organization’s needs.
As the introduction to the Workbook suggests, “[a] good social media policy will provide clear guidelines as to what staff should and shouldn’t do when posting and interacting with the community on a day-to-day basis, freeing them up to think more strategically. It’s also likely to help leadership feel more comfortable with the less–formal nature of social media by letting them establish boundaries for its use.”
This workbook offers great information and asks questions to help you figure out, for example:
- your organization’s social media values and roles
- monitoring policy: how you’ll respond to positive, negative or neutral comments
- policies on privacy, permissions and copyright
- where you’ll draw the line between personal and professional opinions
Creating Your Written Policy Document
To help you move from collecting your thoughts to creating your written policy document, they offer a companion “Social Media Policy Template” that provides sample language from a variety of organizations. This is designed to “help you to define the wording that makes sense for you based on what you filled out in the worksheet, and to think through the various permutations that are possible.”
If you are grappling with social media policy development, I highly recommend that you take a look at this Workbook and companion template.
You can download the free Nonprofit Social Media Policy Workbook – here.
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Homerun Nievera is a serial techpreneur, digital marketer and professional speaker.
Apart from managing tech enterprises, Homerun is the publisher of a blogazine network that delivers niche content to its audience.
He also a Certified Distance Educator from the University of the Philippines and has launched Edusentro.com with the objective of bringing free education to under-served areas everywhere.
As a blogger, Homerun writes across various topics but looks into techpreneruship as his main course.
He seeks to help entrepreneurs build their digital presence and make a difference. Follow Homerun on Twitter @bnievera or like his page on Facebook.
