5 Tips on Managing Social Media in Highly-Regulated Industries

Is Your Social Engaging and Compliant?

Let’s start with a “duh” statement, social media is key in any industry. However, how you use your social media is what can make or break how well it does. The recipe for good social media is quite simple. Start with a good following/fan base, a design that is congruent with your company outlook and color scheme, consistent activity and finally intriguing content. There are however many recipes to complete the overall product of social media. The recipe for content.

The recipe for the content of social media, requires just a little bit more planning. Creating content sounds simple, but really there is much more to it than just posting a picture or link to your pages and calling it “good”. Social media doesn’t work without all of its components and all of them working well together. The recipe must have all of the right high-quality ingredients to work. Especially, in those industries that are highly-regulated. Here are 5 tips on creating social media content within such industries.

1. Set goals

There are various channels of social media, each of which has its own style and appeal to different followings. Posts on Twitter should vary from your posts on Facebook because the response rate will be different for each. Each platform should have it’s own set of goals.  Make the goals attainable, 

yet measurable. If you can’t measure the outcome then there is no way to tell if your methods are working.

2. Stay Consistent

Sure, there are so many channels of social media and each channel has a different response rate to the posted content. It may seem easy to be more fun on Twitter, serious on Linked In, and a combination of both on Facebook. However, it is important to remember to keep all the content consistent.  This helps establish the voice of your company. You want to convey the same overall message amongst all the platforms. This doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with your posts but to be sure to keep the message the same. By doing so, it will be less chaotic for the company, as well as its client base, to grasp the main concept that is being projected.

3. Personalize Your Content

Be relatable to your client base. People tend to take a better liking towards things they can relate to and feel comfortable with. This may seem like a difficult task when it comes to a company that promotes inanimate products, how can you be personable about that? “Human-ize” the posts! Provide thought provoking content, relate the product to the many buyer personas, and use messaging strategies that provide meaningful updates.

4. Be compliant

Banking and healthcare industries have access to confidential materials and must be cautious when providing information online in order to stay compliant with federal regulations. As well as the information that their employees may be posting about the company and/or industry.

Each industry has their own industry-specific requirements that they must follow. According to Content Marketing Institute, healthcare marketers outsource more content than their peers. With the fear of HIPAA violations, healthcare providers outsource their content to help prevent any violations.

Industries, such as healthcare or banking, have their own regulations they need to abide by that are separate from each other. There are many factors that need to be considered when posting content, which propose many challenges to those marketing in these fields. One of those challenges not only meeting regulated content requirements, but posts about a product, in healthcare, must also meet  and provide FDA safety requirements. It’s not just one regulation agency to abide but multiple regulation agency requirements.

5. Create a checklist

Making lists are one of the best ways to stay organized. It doesn’t matter what industry, or even if its for personal use. A list will help you keep on top of your game. You can see what you have to do and cross it off, with a great feeling of accomplishment of course, and move on to the next task. Not only can you create a list for the things you need to get get done but the things that need covered. Lists also help keep you on track and on-time. In highly-regulated content markets, such as healthcare, you have to be careful about what is posted and when.  Content in healthcare, can be sensitive, so its best to use caution as well as have the information reviewed before posting.

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