Social media is just part of our lives now. Our favourite brands, people and just about everything we love is probably on some sort of social channel. So, the church needs to be there too.

Having a social media policy for your church or organization is essential in making sure your staff, volunteers and members know what they should and should not do on social channels. Plus, it can help your organization avoid any legal and/or security issues.

A social media policy simply outlines how an organization, and its staff and volunteers should conduct themselves via the web. In a church, this may include your members as well. It helps protect your organizations’s online reputation and encourages staff volunteers to also get involved in sharing about the church on their online networks.

The challenge is many churches do not know how to best organize a good social media policy and want to ensure people are reading it and not going to be hesitant to join in the online conversation. This means keeping it simple, clear, accessible, and updated as necessary. The goal is to outline some basic conduct so there are no major issues in the future.

1. Brand Consistency – Maintaining consistency of brand voice, tone, and messaging across social channels is crucial. Make sure you are setting your staff and volunteers up for success, giving them guidance on how and where to share posts.  
2. Prevent a PR crisis – A social media policy mitigates risk. Churches and organizations worry about negative or harmful messaging, or the violation of social media compliance rules. A social media policy is an effective way of setting rules and boundaries to prevent these kinds of issues.
3. Knowing your legal responsibilities – It removes the worry from sharing anything on social media. One of the biggest reasons for low social media adoption is rooted in the fear of saying the wrong thing or sharing the wrong thing and putting the church or organization in a bad light.
4. Etiquette – It is important to be clear on how you would like your staff and volunteers to engage and interact with followers online, and for them to know the social etiquette rules that are generally accepted online. Finally, remind your staff and volunteers to use social media to communicate and connect with others to build relationships and add value.
5. Instill Creative Confidence – There are many sources you can find tips for creating engaging posts, but it is always a good idea to have a creative bank of standard posts that can be quickly edited and re-used. Ensure each new staff and assigned volunteers have the tools to create a positive, consistent, and valuable brand message across social channels.

1. Define Social Media – Terms of Reference

Start by providing a definition of how your church understands social media. You’ll want to ensure that everyone in your organization is on the same page when it comes to referencing what social media and social networking mean to your organization. 

2. Roles and Responsibilities

Who manages which social accounts? Who covers which responsibilities on a daily, weekly or as-needed basis? Track the names and email addresses for key roles, so everyone in the organization knows who to contact.

At the very least, this section should establish who can officially speak on behalf of your church or organization on social media…and…who can’t.

3. Security protocols

It is important to maintain good security protocols on your official social channels. 

• How often do your account passwords get changed?
• Who maintains them, and who has access to them?
• Who should employees talk to if they want to escalate a concern?
• What behaviours would warrant a person being blocked on an account?

You should update the list of employees who are authorized to log into your corporate social media accounts on a regular basis depending on how often the access and group changes. It is good protocol to change passwords regularly regardless.

While you should aim to have lots of people who can write content for your corporate social media accounts, you should really only have a few with the ability to post to them.

That’s why the concept of member engagement is so important, where they leverage their own social accounts, share ministry content on their time, and still contribute to the overall messaging of the church without compromising the corporate social handles.

You can guide staff and volunteers on how to identify themselves as representatives of your company. For example, you can ask them to add certain hashtags to their posts. Otherwise, you’ll want them to be as authentic as possible as people trust people more than institutions.

4. A plan of action for a security or PR crisis

Your crisis management plan should include:

• An up-to-date emergency contact list with specific roles: the social media team, legal and PR experts—all the way up to C-level decision-makers
• Guidelines for identifying the scope of the crisis
• An internal communication plan
• An approval process for response

Being prepared in advance will improve your response time and reduce stress for those directly managing the crisis.

5. Copyright and Fair Use

It’s a good idea to offer guidance on crediting the work of others and how to do it. This will help your people to stay within copyright and fair use rules but also encourage them to find useful content from other places.

How to comply with the law:

At the very least, your policy should touch on the following:

• How to comply with copyright law on social media, especially when using third-party content
• How to handle customer information and other private data
• Restrictions or disclaimers required for testimonials or marketing claims
• Confidentiality regarding your organization’s internal information

Know your employees’ legal rights:

• Most employees and volunteers will not willingly tarnish the reputation of their church or organizations, but setting clear expectations now for things like preventing the release of privileged information, stating strong personal opinions, and interacting with reporters and bloggers on social media will go a long way in preventing that.

6. Ethical Standards

You should tie this section of your social media policy to your church or organization’s wider code-of-conduct and ethics policy.

You’ll want to remind staff and volunteers of what information is appropriate to share and what should be kept confidential. It would also be a good idea to be specific about what can and cannot be shared.

7. Responsible Engagement

Use this part of your social media policy to emphasize the behaviours your staff and volunteers can and cannot engage in while on social media.

8. Content library and guidelines

Some important items to include in this section of your policy are:

• Do you have an approved bank of content and how can staff and volunteers can access it?
• Are employees allowed to engage with people mentioning you or your organization on social?
• How should employees respond to negativity about your church or organization on social, and who should they notify?

You want to be able to explain to your employees and volunteers exactly what kind of messages you want them to share and how their efforts will fit into overall strategic goals of the company.

To get started on writing a social media policy, you can:

1. Get Input from Multiple Departments

Get input and feedback from different departments and ministries in the organization. The broader the input during this process, the more likely people will be to accept and use social media, but also understand what the greater goals are.

2. Make Your Policy Known and Accessible

You should make this document easily findable and accessible to the whole team and your members. A good start would be to include it in your employee handbook, company-wide code-of-conduct and post it on your website for your members to access also.

Whether it is a new document or a revision, you should make everyone aware of it. This is a good way to reinvigorate social media engagement as well to alert your newer members aware of the document and policy.

3. Review It

The social media space is constantly changing. Not just platforms but content too.  Who knew we would be putting out 10 second videos on reels and stories today?

So, make sure your social media policy is reflecting your current situation and you review it regularly. It’s a good idea to set an annual or bi-annual review.

Why Does It Matter?