After the NFL squashed the dreams of multi-million dollar players tweeting immediately before, during, and after the big game, I think it is important to identify the 5 Vital Components Of A Social Media Policy for Public Safety, Public Health, and First Responder Agencies.

Objective

The first component is the overall goal or objective of what the Agency as a whole wants to achieve in Social Media. The objective can range from raising awareness, to recruitment, to becoming a trusted source of information. Every agency is different, and therefore objectives are individualized as well.

Medium

What Social Media mediums will the Agency participate in or purposely stay away from. Blogging offers a text based medium, photo sharing sites offer image based mediums and video sharing sites offer a video based medium. What will the Agency primarily focus on or will it embrace them all?

Process

The Process of managing a Social Media presence should also be described. Will the responsibility be placed on one person in the organization, or will it be a team effort? The time you spend on the process will often later determine the quality of the content.

Prohibitions

What does the Agency not want it’s providers to do in Social Media? Some prohibitions that you may want to place on them would be the use of camera phones during a call, posting photos of themselves in uniform off-duty, or perhaps including certain details in writing a text narrative of an event. You may also prohibit certain behavior such as rudeness, vulgarity, and defamation.

Permissions

All too often policies focus on Prohibitions and fail to provide Permissions. Your providers, more often than not, will be your strongest supporters and advocates in Social Media. As such, you should encourage them to engage in the medium by giving permissions such as posting photos while performing work duties, writing text narratives of events after the occurrence, and providing a standard declaration of transparency that both identifies them as your provider but also offers that what they create is their own and not necessarily that of the organization.

Do you want more information on creating a Social Media Policy and using Social Media for your Agency? Then you should consider signing up for our PIO Social Media Boot Camp!

About The Author

Dave Konig has authored 141 articles for PIOSocialMediaTraining.com

Dave has been involved in Social Media since 2005 through the current major services and some defunct ones as well. During this time he has been able to hone the craft by testing out the theories of others, creating his own philosophies, and gathering a better understanding of the mediums involved through networking and most importantly actual practice.

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