The Social Media Ethical Guide: How to be Ethical Online
Being a part of social media and growing up with the Internet, I have seen the many ways that people have communicated online. However, one thing that everyone should be considering, especially businesses, is establishing social media ethics as a part of their social media policy.
Why is establishing social media ethics important? According to Steve James, a writer for Social Media Today, stated “Social media allows anyone to share basically anything online. Within a business, it is their responsibility to build a positive identity for their brand. If policies are not put into place, employees could be free to share anything to anyone.” Not only can they share anything with anyone, but employees can also hurt the reputation of a brand. By establishing these rules, it helps prevent these situations from happening.
There are many different kinds of social media ethics that can be established within a social media policy, but there are a few basics that I believe are important to include. These are the five ethical guidelines that I believe should be included as a part of a social media policy:
1.Being transparent and authentic to your audience: Being honest with your audience is a great way for your audience to be able to build a trust element between you and your brand. CP Communications states “Social media is all about creating relationships with our target audience, forming bonds, communities and creating a better understanding of each key target. If you don’t stay transparent you risk losing all you have built and your reputation could even be irreparably damaged.”
2. Being open to other ideas and what the world has to say: Besides building a relationship with your audience, it is important to listen to what they have to say. This will help you learn more about what your audience wants from your brand, bring creative new ideas, and bring a different point of view to your brand. However, there may be a few negative responses from the audience that can potentially turn into a social media crisis. One way to combat this is by already having a negative response plan established so it can help with managing these situations faster.
3. Always know where people will talk about your brand: Knowing where people are talking about your brand is important because you never know what people have to say. Also, it is a great way to figure out where most of your audience is spending the majority of their time and where your brand may need to focus on sharing their content. For example, Wendy’s has captivated the majority of their audience through Twitter since they have started roasting people that tweet them and also has been able to keep their audience engaged through that platform.
4. Always be up to date with what is happening in the world: Staying on top of the trends, hashtags, social media platforms, and current news within the world is important. By posting things without being aware of what is happening could potentially hurt your brand. For example, Burger King recently created this post down below that they posted on International Women’s Day that received a lot of negative response from the public. Being aware as to what is happening within the world and double checking a post before it goes out is important for a brand so they don’t receive the backlash that Burger King did.
5. Having a crisis management plan for how to respond to an ethical problem: As I have written about previously, having a crisis management plan already established will help with keeping a brand organized and also how to respond to a negative situation. Previously, I wrote about Cracker Barrel and The Try Guys and compared about how they both responded to a crisis management plan in different ways. Cracker Barrel did not respond to the issue whatsoever while The Try Guys fixed the problem in about two to three days. Seeing how a large and small business had a crisis management plan already established is really helpful for a brand to look and learn from.
