This article first appeared in Volunteer Victoria’s E-Link newsletter on March 11, 2011. Sign up for E-Link and keep current with news and information from Volunteer Victoria.
When Volunteer Victoria developed its Social Media Policies a year ago we shared these widely with our member agencies as we realized that few organizations had guidelines in place.
Since that time there has been a virtual explosion in non-profit uptake of social media tools for everything from information sharing to marketing and fundraising. With this rapidly increased use of social networking, we’re frequently being asked again about our policies.
So, this seems like a good time to redistribute these documents. The first is our Social Media Communications Guidelines that lays out what can and what can’t be posted on our Blog, Facebook pages, Twitter, etc.
The second is our Social Media Personnel Policies. We approached policy development from a positive and proactive stance, believing that our staff and volunteers are our best ambassadors and promoters.
As such, we recognized there were new opportunities to share our story. Through their external relationships, our staff and volunteer team have the potential to add value to the work of our organization and enhance our image.
In addition to our own policies and guidelines, we’ve also provided links to a few sites that we thought had useful information on this topic:
– Numerous examples of social media policies from Social Media Governance
– Social Media Policy Elements from Mashable
– A listing of social media policies from 100 organizations by Social Media Today
– Best Practices for Social Media Policy from Society for New Communications Research