Social media offers a great way to interact with people from your ministry and engage in conversation with your community. If mismanaged, however, social media conversations and posts can actually damage your ministry’s reputation. That’s why it’s important to examine your social media policy and put safeguards in place to protect your ministry. This checklist covers the following questions:
Do you have a written social media policy to guide the people who are
in charge of the ministry’s social media accounts?
Have you selected a trusted group of people – staff members or other
church leaders – and determined the responsibilities when posting
and regularly monitoring the ministry’s social media pages?
Do you have procedures for quickly responding to questions posed to
your organization via social media?
If someone posts comments about a negative experience or a
situation that includes sensitive information, do you have a point
person in your organization who will coordinate resolution of the
issue privately by way of a meeting or phone call?
Have you crafted a social media disclaimer that outlines your
expectations for interactions as well as terms for removing content?
(Obscene, embarrassing, or abusive material, advertising, and spam
will likely fall into this category.)
Do you obtain at least verbal permission or a signed photo release
from each person who is personally identifiable in images posted to
your social media pages?
Do you disable photo tagging on your page and remove location
information from photos to protect the privacy of those who are
photographed?
Do you consistently obtain permission from original sources before
posting content that isn’t the ministry’s original work?
