If you have a Facebook fan page and more than one employee at your company, guess what? It’s time for you to have a social media policy!

I won’t use this post to outline every detail of what should be included in your policy. But, at a high level, it should include these topics:

• Who is allowed to post
• Who can post as the company
• What people can post
• Who manages the forum
• What your fans are allowed to post
• What happens when you get an inflammatory post
• How do you handle critical posts
• How do you triage and handle posts that create issues
• Branding guidelines
• Examples of suggested post strategies
• Case studies of what has worked for your company historically
• and so much more…

I’ve written some guides for companies, that include handbooks, case studies and even webcast training sessions.

Yeah, this is serious stuff… but, Facebook is also fun and “light hearted”, so you need to remember to have fun first and foremost.

And finally, there are many resources on the net to help you get started with your policy. There are also many tips on how to handle negative posts or crises. I recommend you read a few, so to get started, here’s a good short one about B2B companies and how they’ve handled Facebook issues, by Jeffery Cohen.