Most would think combining the two words business and ethics is an oxymoron. With the evolving world that word combination is becoming more and more relevant especially in social media. Working in social media you are on the front lines, the ambassador between the client and business. Often these social media powers are contracted out an out to a social media firm or PR team.
Because more often businesses or outside firms are in front of clients, it’s important that individual businesses create their own personal code of ethics. By creating a code of ethics for your social media team it will maintain your brands clean bill of health but also give you more of a sense of security.
Where do we start to create a code of ethics?
To create an ethical structure you have to begin by assessing four perspectives. These perspectives are, experience, hindsight, intuition and self-esteem.
Experience
Is the value the business carries throughout its lifetime. At some point these values were created when the company was first conceived then built on. It’s important to keep track of these experiences because at the end of the day your experience is about what happens to you.
Hindsight
is what we have learned from the experience of others. Success leaves clues and it’s important to tap into other companies experiences in order to help us make decisions. By researching hit’s and flops of other businesses will ultimately help create a reflective direction when building your code of ethics.
Intuition
Making sure your team communicates well with their intuition. Intuition is basically what your gut tells you. Finding out what is the connecting factor between your company and the people. Having a good sense of intuition also helps us recognize when something has gone against your own moral code. Building up your code around the freedom of understanding intuition as well as adding limitations of conduct and communication based on how you prefer issues to be handled.
Self-Esteem
In social media it helps to know how to encourage the positive growth of self-esteem. If the ambassadors of your social network have a well-balanced self-esteem then they will reflect that with your company’s audience. Making it essential that building up self-esteem is an essential part of your code of ethics will prove positive success in the long run.
It doesn’t take a Dr Phill to understand how somebody will react but it’s easy for us to be caught up in the moment. By inserting your own ethical guidelines will help you stay safe when handing out social media tasks. Keep in mind the four perspectives and the task of building out your code of ethics should come to you easier.