The Church of Ireland Diocese of Connor

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Advice for parishes on managing social media

Tuesday November 3rd 2020

The Central Communications Board of the Church of Ireland has produced a template document which may be used by a Select Vestry for drawing up a brief social media policy for its parish. 

This Word document file includes advice on responding to comments on social media, and encourages Select Vestries to:

• Consider their parish’s objectives for using social media;
• Appoint a designated administrator of group of administrators to run social media platforms;
• Decide when social media will be monitored;
• Follow the Church’s social media and digital communications guidelines;
• Visit www.ireland.anglican.org/socialmedia for more resources.

The template is available to download here.

The guidelines recommend that members of the Church:

• Follow good practice in safeguarding;
• Exercise responsibility and courtesy;
• Remember that they are representatives of the Church;
• Consider all social media posts to be public and permanent;
• Remember that normal rules of how to treat others and run organisations well apply online;
• Tell people who they are when posting or commenting online; and
• Ask for advice if in doubt.

Parishes should be particularly wary about any comment or message which is from an unexpected source or is poorly worded. This may have been sent by a scammer who is seeking to take advantage of you and your church. 

Scams can be identified through the following test:

• Seems to be good to be true;
• Contacted out of the blue;
• Asked for personal details;
• Money requested;

The advise is to exercise caution if you receive a message such as this; as with any other organisation, a parish is not obliged to respond to all communications which it receives. 

Visit the Church of Ireland’s information page on scam prevention to find out how to keep yourself and others safe.

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