“The Castle Group” is prominent Boston PR&Event marketing agency (further – Agency) (The Castle Group, n.d.). As we are PR professionals, our performance depends on using social media for our clients’ benefit. We have a clear understanding of what a powerful instrument is.

The agency fully respects employees’ rights to use any social media channels (including Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, blogs and other online tools emerging every day) for your private purposes. But as your online activities directly contribute to agency’s reputation, this policy intends to provide reasonable guidelines for managing your social media presence on behalf of “The Castle Group” or referencing it. Still, we want to give you freedom and confidence to experiment, so we will try to make it short.

Guidelines for Brand Accounts:

• Be responsible for your actions. We strongly believe in transparency and honesty, so, when speaking about the agency or our services, you should always disclose that you work for the agency. When using brand accounts for the agency’s promotion and marketing, we ask you to be highly competent and specific. We expect you to post only high quality and helpful content that will add value to our agency. We hope you will stick to your area of expertise (Intel, n.d.). Be smart, savvy and creative professional, as always.

• Be polite. We expect you to treat everybody with respect, avoid provoking and insulting people. If you do not agree with somebody’s opinion, you can state this, but withdraw from overheated or getting too personal conversations. Do not post offensive, inappropriate, threatening, or abusive materials. Try not to leave negative comments and always represent the agency in a positive way. Remember, that it is impossible to delete already posted information without a trace. The Internet keeps the permanent record of your posts, so think twice before hitting “Send.”

• Respect copyright. You should cite quotes and sources. If you use another company’s content, make certain they are credited for it in your post, and they approve of you utilizing it. Do not use the copyrighted material without the holders’ permissions. Always observe data protection regulations. If you have any doubts – do not post.

• Stay confidential. Never disclose proprietary or confidential information about clients and the agency, current contracts, new projects, etc. You cannot share information obtained in the process of your work. Respect the rights of your clients and colleagues. Before posting a feedback, a photo, video or any other data about them, get the official permission.

• Correct your mistakes. Nobody is perfect and many internet communities are quick to react, but if you behave properly – they will forgive you whatever you did. The main thing is to correct the mistake quickly, to explain situation and to apologize if necessary. Now you can move on! Just next time try to be more attentive. By the way, this also applies to fact checking of your post, as well as to spell- and grammar-checking.

Guidelines for Personal Accounts:

• Identify yourself. There are no clearer boundaries between personal and brand accounts. All that you post on the Internet can affect the company. If you post something from your private account – make sure that this is your personal opinion, and the agencies’ view can differ. We would prefer you to engage in customer service on the brand account. Still, if you give any advice or post comments related to the agency’s services from your personal account, you should precise that you are the agency’s worker. You are not supposed to share your opinion about the agency on the social media sources.

• Check security. What are your settings on social media platforms? If some private information about you is available for everyone – consider to remove it.

The development of social media is truly a revolution, changing the used ways of work and people’s minds. Under such conditions, many companies start to detail their social media policies, establishing numerous rules and regulations. Though the form of exposition and the serenity differs, the basic requirements are similar. All the companies want their employees to be honest, polite and supportive, adhere to the company’s values, and respect copyright and confidential information.

Before starting to work on the essay, I thought about the most important employees’ qualities for this organization. After all, I included responsibility for the actions, politeness, respecting copyright, confidentiality and for correcting mistakes. All these traits contribute to a positive reputation of “The Castle Group” company. They do not differ much from the other companies’ requirements, as I have not chosen any specific organizations.

Social media policies are important since they help to avoid many unnecessary mistakes. In our time, every employee represents a company, which means that everything in his/her behavior form the agency’s rating and well-being.