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:

1. Do you have a written social media policy to guide the people who are

   in charge of the ministry’s social media accounts?
   

2. 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?
   

3. Do you have procedures for quickly responding to questions posed to

   your organization via social media?
   

4. 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?
   

5. 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.)
   

6. 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?
   

7. Do you disable photo tagging on your page and remove location

   information from photos to protect the privacy of those who are

   photographed?
   

8. Do you consistently obtain permission from original sources before

   posting content that isn’t the ministry’s original work?