Must-have elements for your airline’s or airport’s social media policy

Now that you’ve had a chance to digest the imperatives of a social media policy from my article last week entitled “Five Imperatives For Your Airline’s Social Media Policy“, we decided to write a follow up post with additional considerations for inclusion. Again, these are must-have elements that make your social media policy very user-friendly.

• Objectives — Talk about the objective of using social media, so employees have a background as to why the company is participating.
• Disclosures — Educate employees about the FTC guidelines (pdf) about endorsements and testimonials, which is explained well in this article.  Basically, they are required to disclose the company’s connection with the product or service.
• Use common sense — You can explain that further in your company’s language, but it’s a good one to include.
• Give and take — Much of social media is about give and take, meaning that you “give” value, and “take” help or value back.  Don’t forget to work both sides of the equation.
• Personal versus work time — Define what is acceptable to do during work hours.  Updating a Facebook status may not be appropriate.  But, updating Twitter with personal updates may be, as it’s working towards building relationships. Whatever your opinion is, it’s important to define so employees have guidelines.
• Company values — Coca-Cola does a great job in their social media policy (pdf) of incorporating their company shared values.  The policy means more to employees when it’s framed in the context of the company’s overall values.
• Disagreeing — It’s OK to disagree with people’s opinions, but make sure you stay appropriate and polite.
• Crisis situations — If a topic of conversation appears to be a crisis, inform the public relations department.

Do you have anything to add?  What else is important to include in a social media policy? Let’s here it in the comments or on Twitter.