Social media is often considered the “frenemy” of subscription and membership sites — it can increase brand awareness and site traffic, but it can also corrupt your revenue model if too much premium content leaks out.In this week’s Webinar on Subscription Site Insider, Social Media Maven Rachel Yeomans helped Insider members see how they can harness the power of social media platforms without giving away their valuable content. Critical to this mission, however, is having clear and available guidelines for employees.Yeomans cited the Social Media Governance site, which has a database linked to numerous social media policies by major corporations. Naturally, most of these corporations are not in the paid content/online subscription industry, but I’ve pulled out the few who are and conveniently linked to their social media policies:
The following organizations don’t have consumer paywalls (some may have digital subscriptions for syndicated content) but publish social media policies nonetheless:
You can also check out the social media policy template created by About.com, which is generic enough to cover most company concerns and can be amended to meet your specific subscription or membership site’s needs.Keep in mind, you don’t want to be restrictive. You should craft guidelines for productive engagement, not rules or restrictions that discourage employees from engaging at all. U.S. law says that employees own their social media accounts, so they’re doing you a favor by posting about your content or brand.For more specifics on how subscription and membership sites can use social media to their advantage, check out the on-demand video of Yeoman’s presentation on our sister site Subscription Site Insider.
