Social media strategy

Managing social media requires planning, resources, and good governance. There is a time commitment, responsibility for creating content, defamation risk assessment and mitigation, listening to what is happening and responding when needed and managing communities and stakeholders should any conversation turn negative.

When developing your social media strategy, consider the following:

• Do you have the resources (time, people, budget) to manage, monitor and moderate?
• Have authorisations, roles and responsibilities been defined?
• Do you have a clear workflow with assigned roles? This can include authorised administrators, content generation, content approval and escalation, reporting and administration.
• Do you understand your audience?
• What will spark converation? (Positive and negative)
• How are you prepared to deal with the conversation if it turns negative?
• How will user feedback be processed and acted upon? Is there an agreed process for escalation?
• How will you respond so users know you are listening to them?
• Do you have a clear structure and strategy for each of your social media platforms, including standards for tone, copy, images, and videos?
• Have you considered a risk assessment and or issues management guide to plan for any risks that may affect your channels?
• Will you have training and ongoing support to enable a psychologically and culturally safe work environment for content moderators?
• Have you considered what evidence you may need to retain from your record’s comment sections to meet public sector record keeping obligations?

If the social media account is used for paid advertising, moderation of the account is up to departments and agencies to determine roles and responsibilities with regards to comment moderation.

Please note, that depending on the target audience and budgeted reach, paid social media campaigns may have greater impacts to consider. This can include factors such as the social media content reaching a new audience – a majority of which have not previously interacted with the Victorian Government/department content. You should consider appropriate moderation staffing levels accordingly.