A platform might quietly take your post down, stop recommending your content, or restrict your monetization options. The most common social media compliance risks include data privacy violations, confidentiality breaches, advertising violations, AI-related risks, and improper archiving. When teams follow the rules, they reduce potential risks, keep customer data safe, and avoid the kinds of mistakes that can snowball quickly. In reality, the “rules” come from many places — government laws, industry regulators, platform policies, and your own internal guidelines. That mix can get complicated fast, especially in regulated industries or enterprise organizations.

Must-have Elements Of A Social Media Style Guide

Reviewing these examples can offer practical insights into structuring your non-profit’s social media policy, ensuring it aligns with your mission, values, and operational needs. Volunteers play a crucial role in non-profits, but they may lack training on social media best practices. A clear policy educates them on acceptable engagement, helping prevent misinformation and unauthorised statements. This article explores the importance of a social media policy for non-profits, key components, and best practices to help your organisation develop an effective framework. In the digital era, social media is a vital communication tool for non-profits.

Do You Have Any Examples Of Social Media Guidelines?

Additionally, any confidential information that could potentially harm the brand had to stay confidential. Ensure employees are aware that the organisation may use AI tools to monitor social media activity. These tools help analyse engagement, but transparency about this monitoring will help build trust and encourage responsible posting. Once you have your guidelines ready, you need to share them with your team and stakeholders. You can use different formats, such as documents, presentations, videos, or infographics, to communicate your guidelines.

Ultimately, a strong Social Media Policy safeguards not just your company—but your team. It gives employees the clarity and confidence they need to represent your brand responsibly online, while reducing the risk of mistakes or misunderstandings. Instead of waiting for an issue to arise, smart companies prepare in advance—with a policy that guides action, tone, and decision-making.

Non-profits often have multiple contributors managing social media, including employees and volunteers. Without standardised social media guidelines, posts may lack coherence in branding, tone, and messaging, leading to confusion among audiences. Putting a social media style guide together can be time-consuming, so how do you ensure your team uses it? You didn’t invest all that time and effort to produce your guide just for it to gather virtual dust in your company’s server. There are also some general legal considerations to remember, like copyright violations, reposting someone else’s image without permission or using AI. For example, inputting data into AI tools could endanger your company’s intellectual property rights.

Your main brand guidelines are like the constitution for your entire brand. They cover absolutely everything—your mission, your logo, your typography, your color palette, how you show up in print ads, on your website, everywhere. Not every comment will be a glowing review, and that’s perfectly fine.

Social media is a great tool for promoting your brand, and your employees are natural advocates. Your social media policy will set out rules for using social media, guidelines for security, and explain the consequences of violating the policy. Without proper training on social media policy, they might share internal achievements or plans, thinking they’re helping to bolster the brand’s image. In reality, they could be disclosing sensitive information, showing precisely why training isn’t just beneficial—it’s essential. Every brand hopes never to face a social media storm, but in case the clouds gather, it’s paramount to have a plan. The procedures for crisis management within a social media policy lay out a structured approach to navigating these turbulent times.

For example, your brand could be firm when taking a stand for something your company believes in. Additionally, at the outset, you should explain to your employees that these guidelines do not limit their creativity but facilitate a smooth flow of ideas and information. A few years ago, an assistant account executive was let go of by an ad agency in California for posting a picture with a new client on Instagram. Her list of 200 followers did not include any clients — however, it did have a few colleagues from the agency. She was excited because it was a high-profile client, and they were celebrating the win with a party.

However, without clear social media guidelines, non-profits may face reputational risks, inconsistent messaging, and compliance issues. A well-crafted social media policy for non-profits ensures that all communications align with the organisation’s mission, branding, and ethical considerations. Every department can (and should) have a hand in shaping your social media style guide.

Prevent Improper Use Of Company Logo

But make sure everyone covered by your guidelines knows how to report issues they may have seen or experienced. In an ideal world, every employee would read and internalize every word of your social policy and social guidelines. Social media guidelines are your chance to help the whole team hype you up positively, inclusively, and respectfully. Solid social guidelines help team members feel confident about sharing their work stories. These examples show that while each organization tailors its Social Media Policy to its unique culture and needs, common themes like respect, transparency, responsibility, and clarity are universal. Drawing from these approaches can help your business build a policy that is both practical and effective.

It typically covers aspects like appropriate behavior, use of company assets, response to negative comments, data privacy, and how to handle confidential information. Diocesan entity heads must retain Administrative Access to their respective Diocesan entity’s website(s) and social media account(s). Diocesan entity heads must ensure that, acting alone or through information technology personnel, they can terminate the Administrative Access of any designated account manager. Diocesan entity heads, information technology personnel, and account managers must ensure that login credentials are secured against unauthorized access, such as by storing them in an encrypted file. To be considered an account manager, this individual must be a level C personnel in the Diocese of Raleigh.

The FDA monitors claims related to food, beverage, and supplement products. The FTC scrutinizes online reviews, endorsements and testimonials, including those from social media influencers. Everyone involved with your organization needs to understand social media compliance. For enterprises, social media compliance means making sure every post, reply, workflow, and account follows the right laws, industry-specific regulations, and internal standards. If you’re responsible for a social media strategy, you should not be restricted from accessing these sites during the work day from a work computer, with the following caveats.

This helps the reader understand the importance of the choice and makes them more likely to remember it. ‘Involved’ could mean you strive to engage in discussion with followers, share content from other people and brands whose values are aligned with yours and you always reply to comments. If you haven’t decided which social media channels to use yet or haven’t decided a purpose for each channel, this handy guide on how to create a social media strategy might be useful. Social media guidelines are also important for enabling and empowering employees to create great content.

The use of TikTok for official NYCPS accounts is strictly prohibited. The guidelines should train your employees on strict measures against harassing someone on social media and what to do in case they are at the receiving end. Include a section guiding your employees on how to handle trolls or bullies. They outline the appropriate positive behavior that is healthy and helpful for the brand, its consumers and its employees. Well, we’re here to shed some light on these kinds of situations so that no one from your corporation has to go through anything like this.

That is why it is helpful to have a company social media policy for employees. The handbook also specifies that employees must follow the social media platforms’ rules and be respectful when posting about the company or anyone related to it, such as clients or other employees. The social media content of a public library or publicly funded academic library can be subject to an open records, or Freedom of Information Act, request. All user’s posts that are removed for any reason whatsoever should be securely retained in accordance with your organization’s retention schedule.