Social media is a communication channel that requires constant maintenance. In today’s fast-moving and information-hungry digital environment, government administrations operating online generate a dizzying amount of social media content daily.
Ensure that your social media accounts are secure, compliant, accessible to public records requests, and free from legal scrutiny; content managers should complete three vital steps every six months. These checks align with the following three core areas: inventory, access and security, and policies and practices.
Your Social Media Check-Up in Three Steps
Let’s review each of these areas and outline what you need to be looking at when you perform your bi-annual check-up.
1. Social Media Inventory Check
An inventory check-up should involve a review of your social media directory, including checking for incorrect or broken links and ensuring that pages are still accessible. It is also critical to determine if your team has created new pages since you last looked and, if so, to add them to your directory. You should also check for any imposter pages or pages your administration has not authorized and flag them for review and validation.
2. Social Media Access and Security Check
When performing a social media check, you need to consider any access and security concerns that could cause issues with residents, businesses, or other municipal entities. This review should include reviewing staff changes that impact system access and updating any associated roles and access permissions. Also, remind all users to refresh their passwords, roles, and access permissions on third-party applications (e.g., Hootsuite, ArchiveSocial) and check updated network privacy settings.
3. Social Media Policy and Practice Check
As social media continues to transform and change at an unprecedented rate, you must periodically review your social media policies to identify if any changes are needed. If you find items to update, make it a priority to notify your staff and collaborate on the scope of the revisions.
Perform your web page evaluation based on the metrics and key performance indicators that matter most to your administrative leaders so that you can take targeted action to strengthen any areas of weakness. Also, check any links to your website policy to ensure that they are still fully active and that all active social media accounts connect to your archive.
Finally, when reviewing your policies, look at blocked user lists to see if they still make sense.
Staying Secure, Compliant, and Risk-Free
If you do not have a page database, consider getting one started that includes, at minimum, your network type, page name, and a comprehensive list of administrators.
Remember that there are compliance and access considerations you should review more frequently than every six months. These include staff roles and access, new pages created, your network privacy settings, and your overall social media account performance based on defined metrics.
Final Advice
By following the checks outlined above, you can ensure that you are doing everything within your power to keep your social media content secure, compliant, and risk-free. Download our Social Media Review Checklist and use it as your six-month check-up guide.
