While all AMP3 PR employees are encouraged to participate in Social Media, we expect everyone who participates in online commentary to understand and to follow these simple but important social media best practice guidelines. These Guidelines cover all social media platforms including but not limited to:
Social Media Guidelines and Best Practices
• Social Networking Sites (Facebook, Myspace, Foursquare, Linkedin)
• Micro-blogging sites (Twitter)
• Blogs (including company and personal blogs as well as comments)
• Video and Photo Sharing Websites (Flickr, YouTube)
• Forums and Dicussion Boards (Google Groups, Yahoo! Groups)
• Online Encyclopedias (Wikipedia, Sidewiki)
Personal Usage: Connecting and networking with friends and colleagues
• Be Responsive: If someone responds to something you’ve said, be responsive and follow-up quickly (e.g., 24 hours). If you say something in error, do not take down the post, simply go back and update it with the correct information.
• Clients and Our Business Are Confidential: Don’t post about clients or potential clients without explicit permission from your client and manager. Our client relationships matter more than anything and we must protect their business.
• Be Yourself: Always be transparent about who you are and who you represent. Use your real name, identify that you work for AMP3 PR and what your role is. Provide your own unique and individual perspective.
• Build a Following: Promote yourself by finding and sharing information that will be interesting to your friends and followers and useful for them to share. We also encourage you to connect with other AMP3 PR employees and affiliates online.
• Know You’re Always “On”: You represent AMP3 PR at all times and you must assume that your social media usage is visible to clients, managers and prospects. Be sure to manage what and with whom you are sharing. Keep in mind that while we all have the occasional work frustration, Facebook and Twitter are not the best venues in which to air them as those comments are available to your clients and coworkers.
• Be Respectful: You can have an edge without being obscene. Please no remarks that are off topic or offensive. Always demonstrate respect for others’ points of view, even when they’re not offering the same in return. Never pick fights and always take the high road. If you are sharing a negative experience or commenting on a brand or individual, please try to do so in a constructive way.
• Full Disclosure: Never talk about a product or organization in social media in exchange for compensation. If you receive a product or service to review for free, you must disclose it in your post or review.
• Always Give Proper Credit: It’s OK to quote or re-Tweet others, but never attempt to pass off someone else’s language, photography, or other information as your own. All copyright, privacy, and other laws that apply offline apply online as well. Be sure to credit your sources when posting a link or information gathered from another source.
• Think Ahead: Be smart about protecting yourself, your privacy, and AMP3 PR’s confidential information. What you publish is widely accessible and will be around for a long time so consider the content carefully. Google has a long memory.
Company Guidelines: Talking about AMP3 PR
• Your Social Media: If you have permission and plan to discuss AMP3 PR related information across your personal social properties, you should disclose on your “About” page or bio that you are an AMP3 PR employee and what your responsibilities include. Please also indicate that your opinions do not represent official positions of AMP3 PR.
• Social Media at Work: Creating an Online/Social Media presence for our clients is a big part of what we do at AMP3 PR so we encourage the use of work related social media during office hours, but please try to keep it work related and don’t let it take focus from your primary responsibilities.
• AMP3 PR Experts: If you are positioning yourself as an AMP3 PR expert on a personal social media account (e.g., not an AMP3 PR blog), please seek prior approval from your manager.
• AMP3 PR Confidentiality: Only disclose publicly available information. Don’t use your personal blog to break news about clients or AMP3 PR.
• Discussing AMP3 PR People: We ask you to remember that sharing personal information about co-workers may affect them inside as well as outside of the office. All standard HR policies apply to interactions between colleagues across the social web.
Client Social Media Etiquette: Representing and Talking about AMP3 PR clients
• Client Transparency: If you have permission to share what a client is doing publicly (e.g., launching a Web site or running a contest), you must be transparent and disclose your relationship. For personal blogs this may include a few sentences fully explaining your relationship to the client.
(These best practices were created in 2008, these guidelines have been changed and updated for 2018. The content and notes below are no longer the official policy of AMP3 and this article is provided as a reference only)