Social Media

What your social media policy should include:

• A definition of social media
• Information on where to find details of those employees and volunteers who conduct social media activities on behalf of your organisation, including who is responsible for posting, monitoring and where necessary removing comments, updates and feedback on your social media sites and keeping your sites consistent and accurate.
• A description of the personal social media activities to which the policy applies, which should generally be limited to those that impact on the business of your organisation, the reputation of your organisation or the employees and volunteers and other people associated with your organisation
• A requirement that all social media comments be professional and respectful, as applies in the case of all other communications
• A prohibition on employees and volunteers from doing anything on social media that: – discriminates against, harasses or bullies other employees, volunteers or others.
• Gives away your organisation’s confidential information or trade secrets or the personal or confidential information of anyone associated with the organisation.
• A reminder of the risks of social media – that anything posted can be seen by many, quickly and is almost impossible to erase
• How compliance with the social media policy will be monitored and the consequences of breaching the policy.
• References to other policies that impact on social media use. The policy should also specify how it relates to your organisation’s other policies, such as your IT and email use, occupational health and safety, privacy and confidentiality policies.

You might want to set up special rules for your Facebook page (called ‘house rules’)

House rules set out terms of use for people that contribute to your page.. Terms you might consider including in your rules are:

• No text, images, videos, sound or other material should be posted unless it’s the contributor’s own creation or the contributor has the right to post that material
• A link to another person should not be posted unless the contributor has obtained the consent of the other person
• No material or comments that are defamatory or offensive, infringe the rights of others (including intellectual property rights), are false, misleading, or deceptive should be posted
• Any postings by contributors may be re-used by your organisation in any other forum without the consent of the contributor
• Your organisation is not responsible for contributors’ posts
• Your organisation has a right to delete any material or posts which it believes, in its absolute discretion, to be: – defamatory or offensive – an infringement of the rights of others, including an infringement of copyright, moral rights – false, misleading or deceptive – confidential information.

Tennis NZ Participant Protection Policy - excerpt from Social Networking section 11A

• Social Networking refers to any website or technology that enables persons to communicate and/or share content via the internet. This includes social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter.
• Persons bound by this policy must conduct themselves appropriately when using social networking sites to share information related to Tennis.
• In particular, social media activity including, but not limited to, postings, blogs, status updates and tweets: (a) must not contain material which is, or has the potential to be, offensive, aggressive, defamatory, threatening, discriminatory, obscene, profane, harassing, embarrassing, intimidating, sexually explicit, bullying, hateful, racist, sexist or otherwise inappropriate; (b) must not contain material which is inaccurate, misleading or fraudulent; (c) must not contain material which is in breach of laws, court orders, undertakings or contracts; (d) should respect and maintain the privacy of others; and (e) should promote Tennis in a positive way.

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