Social Media

We advise private and public sector organisations on safe and effective use of social media.

Social Media Policies and Guidelines

We write social media guidelines and policy documents for use by organisations whose staff use social media.

These easy-to-use, plain-English guides highlight the main pitfalls of these media and what to do to avoid them, in an accessible format. They cover use of organisations’ official social media accounts, as well as personal use by staff.

We can review an existing policy to make sure it is effective and up to date, or we can write a new policy from scratch.

We also write T&Cs for online communities. These easily-understood rules assist social media and website managers in dealing with disputes.

Social Media Training

We provide training services which cover a range of issues from risk-management of such media, to maximising impact using them.

Course content includes:

• Knowledge of the key legal issues that arise when using social media.
• Understanding where liabilities occur for staff use of official social media sites, or personal accounts.
• Developing a set of guidelines and policies for their use in your organisation.
• Communicating these policies and guidance to staff.

The above takes the form of day, or part-day courses delivered in-house at your premises or at a training venue.

Crisis Strategy Training

If you are caught in a social media storm, we can help you navigate your way out too, with crisis strategy training to equip you to act if the worst happens. We can show you how to respond appropriately and effectively in order to minimise damage. As mentioned, we can also assist you in devising policies and practices that help avoid the crisis in the first place.

We also provide training in effective use of social media. Which platform works best for you, what audience does it deliver and what content works best there? We can help you draw up and implement a social media strategy that gets results.

Tackling online abuse

COMMUNICATING online, and especially use of social media to do so, has never been more important for many organisations.

It is a quick and effective way of getting information out to audiences and they can assist in the dissemination of your message through sharing to their own followers.

However, there can be a negative side to this engagement and many organisations are rightly concerned about trolling, abuse and harassment of staff that can happen in some circumstances. For the front-line staff involved this can be deeply distressing, leading to stress-related issues.

Understandably, managers look for ways to help in such situations, but it can seem that there is little to be done against faceless avatars who engage in persistent abuse.

This half-day course seeks to explode the myth that there is nothing you can do.

The training looks at the problems of online abuse and how we can tackle them in a methodical and effective way. It also deals with the cycles of abuse that can occur in some online communities and how to break that cycle.

Firstly, it will look at assessing the behaviour to decide what course of action is appropriate. Then the course will take you through the regulatory and legal options open to you and how best to pursue them.

The course will take in:

• Methods to quickly assess online abuse in order to decide what action is appropriate
• The complaints procedures for all the major social media platforms, how they work and how best to escalate a complaint in order to get a response.
• The Malicious Communications Act 1988 and The Communications Act 2003
• Protection from Harassment Act 1997
• Libel
• Privacy
• Hate crimes

The aim of the course is that those attending will leave with a toolkit of actions that can be deployed in cases of online abuse to effectively deal with it. It also builds consistency of action across your organisation so those being targeted feel supported and protected, thus helping to de-stress what can be a very unpleasant experience.

To comply with Covid19 social distancing the course is delivered by Zoom video conference. A recording of the session can be made available to organisations that book the course. Slides and supporting documentation are also provided.