Social Media Hint of the Month
Often, people may think that “being on social media” for the parish, school, office or agency is like putting a flier up on a bulletin board and leaving it. However, even with bulletin boards, you must periodically check to see if anyone wrote on or ripped the fliers. Likewise, someone must monitor the account at least weekly to assure that only appropriate content is visible.
With social media, the point of being “social” is to have interaction. That means when people comment or ask questions on a post, they need a timely reply to stay engaged with your page/account. (It is the newer version of leaving someone a voicemail message and awaiting a response, except for younger people, there is an expectation of a quick reply.)
You must also monitor for any negative comments that do not meet the purpose of your post. If there appears to be a “teachable moment” that responding to the comment might help clear up any confusion or gently correct inaccurate information (this is after all part of the Spiritual Works of Mercy in our faith!) then take it! But there will be times when you may need to hide or delete comments. It can be counter-productive to your social media mission for visitors to see a destructive chain. I do often direct-message the person who commented when possible to explain why the comment was being removed (often as simple as copying and pasting the page “rules.”) Here is how to do so on a few platforms:
— On Facebook, click on the three dots to the right of the comment, then select hide, delete or report (if this is a continuous spammer or offensive content that you think Facebook needs to monitor.)
— On Instagram, slide the message to the left to reveal the trashcan icon to discard the comment.
— On Twitter, click on the three dots to the right of the comment, then scroll down the pop up menu to “hide reply” or “block” as desired.
— On LinkedIn, click on the three dots to the right of the comment, and click on “delete” in the menu.
— On YouTube, click on the three dots to the right of the comment and select “remove” from the menu.
If a person continually posts inappropriate comments, you may need to block them. This seems to happen on the diocesan Facebook and Instagram accounts mostly with “fake accounts” (i.e. those posting about getting your air ducts cleaned or asking for friend requests outside the country.) As your account reaches more and more people, unfortunately, that means the bots and spammers will find you.
If you have a team working on social media, consider dividing up monitoring duties; Person 1 can check posts every Monday, Person 2 can check on Wednesdays and Person 3 can check on Fridays or Saturdays. It need not be an arduous task, but it is important to make sure that our pages/profiles/boards/feeds uphold our Catholic mission and help to present our parish, school, office or agency as a place of Good News!
If you have other ideas for the monthly Helpful Hints, please, let Cindee Case, ccase@youngstowndiocese.org, know.
