Sunshine 100: Evaluating Social Media Policy and Brand Image

This report presents a memo addressing the implementation of a social media policy for Sunshine 100. It outlines the advantages and disadvantages of social media use within the organization, emphasizing its impact on communication, collaboration, and brand image. The memo suggests a structured social media policy that includes guidelines for official use and employee conduct, roles and responsibilities, and risk management. A communication strategy is proposed, detailing timing, audience, key messages, desired outcomes, and mediums for effective policy implementation. The report concludes by highlighting the importance of a well-defined social media policy for maintaining productivity, preventing data breaches, and safeguarding the company's reputation.

Running Head: MEMO 1
Memo
To: Paul Morgan, CEO, Sunshine 100.
From: The Director, Social Media, Sunshine 100.
Date: 15 January 2019.
Subject: Sunshine 100’s social media policy
Introduction
In today’s time, the increasing use of technology has transformed the business organization
all over the world. Due to increasing use of social media in the organization, it started
possessing several disadvantages also. It has changed the way of communication in the
organization. The purpose of memo is to depict the negative effect of using social media in
the organization. Besides this, advantages and disadvantages of social media are also
presented in the memo. A social media policy for organization is also explained that will be
useful.
Advantages and disadvantages
Social media possess several advantages for the effective working in the organization. The
major positive aspect of social media is that it helps in making the communication process
faster. Organization can connect to several people at one time (Holland, Cooper & Hecker,
2016). Collaboration is also enhanced by properly spreading the information, arranging the
meeting as well as communicating across the globe in one time. All these facilities help in
retaining the employees for long time in organization. Retention can be done by assisting the
employees in connecting with the professionals as well as other team members. Social media
also helps in solving the queries fast besides employer is far away from employee. In addition
to this, it also enables the employee to get quick information related to customer feedback.
This helps in identifying the innovative ideas fast and employees can soon implement those
ideas. It also helps the employees in knowledge sharing and can promote social learning in
the organization. it is true that various problems can occur in the organization many times.
Therefore, through social media employees can communicate quickly and see the emergency
information from their devices. It is also essential to communicate the changes to the external
stakeholder. Therefore, by using the social media, it can keep the stakeholders updated
regarding those changes. The essential element is that, social media helps the employees to

Running Head: MEMO 2
keep them mentally free and happy during the working hours (Leftheriotis & Giannakos,
2014).
It also possesses several disadvantages in the organization. The main drawback is that when
employees start paying more attention on the social media during working hours, it impacts
on the productivity at organization. Many times, employees indulge in their personal work at
the time of working hours. It is required by the organization to enforce some clear policies for
proper functioning of social media at the workplace (Mainiero & Jones, 2013). In recent time,
possibilities of hacking and spamming are also increasing to great extent. This can affect the
organization and people can steal the personal data of the company. Due to social media,
there is possibility of leakage of information to the large number of people from this
communication channel. It might possible that information can spread to the competitors if
social media of the company is not secured. It can also possible that employees may engage
in some of the harassing behaviour toward any of the member by taking the assistance of
social networking sites (Robertson & Kee, 2017).
Social media use and organizations brand image
From the above-mentioned advantages, it also gives various positive impacts on the brand
image of the organization. It helps the organization in giving positive impact of its product
through advertisement (Ngai& Moon, 2015). Through proper use of social media, it can do
effective marketing of its product through the effective and proper use of social media at the
workplace. Using social media, company can also do the communication and convey
message on time. By creating the group, organizations can easily promote its brand and
product internally and outside the organization. Besides this, sometimes employees also make
the wrong use of social media that can negatively affect the brand image of the organization
(Wakefield & Wakefield, 2016).
Contents of social media policy
It is quite beneficial to break the social media policy into parts. One can be made for the
official purpose and other for employees. Before formulating a social media strategy, it must
include the rules and regulations by outlining the expectations for proper conduct of social
media by employees. It should also include the roles and responsibility of each of the member
in organization. It is true that lot of legal risks are associated with the social media.

Running Head: MEMO 3
Therefore, social media policy of organization must outline the clear guidelines regarding
these risks.
Communication strategy
1. Timing- fast basis
2. Audience- staff members, management and senior managers
3. Sender- communication manager
4. Key message- proper use of social media in the organization
5. Desired outcome- implementing effective social media policy in the organization.
6. Medium- e mails and Memo
7. Materials – rules and regulations, roles and responsibility and code of conduct.
8. Frequency – each quarter
In the end, it can be concluded that social media holds an essential part in
communicating effectively at organization. in addition to this, social media policy has
been suggested for better use of social media in the organization.

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References
Holland, P Cooper, B & Hecker, R 2016, ‘Use of social media at work: A new form of
employee voice?’ The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 27, no.
21, pp. 2621-2634.
Leftheriotis, I & Giannakos, M N 2014, ‘Using social media for work: Losing your time or
improving your work?,’ Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 31, pp. 134-142,
https://users.ionio.gr/~mgiannak/CHB2013.pdf
Mainiero, L & Jones, A 2013, ‘Workplace Romance 2.0: Developing a Communication
Ethics Model to Address Potential Sexual Harassment from Inappropriate Social Media
Contacts Between Coworkers’ Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 367-379.
Ngai, EW & Moon, KK 2015, ‘Social media research: Theories, constructs, and conceptual
frameworks,’ International Journal of Information Management, Vol. 35, pp.33-44.
Robertson, BW & Kee, KF 2017, ‘Social media at work: The roles of job satisfaction,
employment status, and Facebook use with co-workers,’ Computers in Human Behavior, Vol.
70, pp. 191-196.
Wakefield, R & Wakefield, K 2016, ‘Social media network behavior: A study of user
passion and affect’ The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Vol. 25, no.2, pp.140-156.