Likes can fall fast. Is your social media governance ready?

Governance is a very powerful methodology, which has the ability to protect organisations from many of the hazards that they routinely face. However, it can only provide this protection if it reaches throughout the entire organisation.

Over the past twenty years, the influence of governance has grown with increasing awareness that every department and function of an organisation has the duty to deliver value, but each unit also has the ability to create risks and harm.

Social media platforms, defined as channels of communication which allow all users to participate, bring many benefits to organisations, but they have also introduced unique challenges of control for organisations. These risks arise from the speed and reach of social media, the demand from users for frequent content, and the ability of users to interact with posts and ultimately to decide whether a post is successful or not.

To manage these risks, it is necessary for social media to be situated clearly within an organisation’s governance structure.

A recent example will illustrate the importance of social media governance. Earlier this month, one of the UK’s largest charities, Cancer Research UK (CRUK), removed a social media post which had been criticised as “misguided”. The incident attracted comment first in the local press, and then the national charity press.

Each year Jeremy Clarkson puts out a post on X/Twitter in which he offers consolation in a humorous way to A-level students who didn’t get the grades they needed. Somebody within the social media team at Cancer Research UK decided to “piggyback” off Clarkson’s post and insert a rather self-promoting comment about the importance of its mission. The result was predictable. Clarkson’s followers turned on CRUK for inserting themselves into the conversation in such a self-serving way and CRUK decided to delete the tweet.

This incident did no obvious harm to Cancer Research UK, but for those of us in governance it presents a useful reminder that social media presents hazards as well as benefits.

Balancing benefits and risks is one of the core roles of the governance profession. This is what makes governance such an exciting field, because governance operates at the intersection between law, ethics and organisational growth, with a foot in each camp.

So, what does governance look like for social media?

Social media is not common sense, nor is it simply about finding a talented person and putting them in charge. Effective social media relies on the design of a code of operational rules which foresee hazards that arise in the management of social media platforms. However, this rulebook is likely to change on a regular basis, both because new examples of social media “gaffes” are constantly being publicised and because new features are added regularly by each platform.

How could this particular incident have been avoided?

• All posts should be reviewed by someone other than the author. A second opinion will prevent most ill-judged posts.

• Criticism of anyone on social media is a major step and should require senior authorisation.

• Commenting on someone else’s page is always risky because you are essentially intruding into their community.

• Humour is risky as it is open to interpretation.

• Be careful about provoking online conversations because they are unpredictable.

Key governance questions to ask

Below are a few questions derived from the case-study above which may help you to improve the balance between control and creativity for your own social media platforms:

• Do we have clear goals and KPIs for each social media platform?

• Do we have a clear handbook for those staff who are responsible for writing content and supervising the platforms?

• What are our rules for interacting with other organisations and individuals on social media?

• What is our “tone of voice” guidance for each platform?

• What is the approval process for content?

• Is “fact checking” separated from “tone checking”?

• Do we regularly review the performance of each platform?

• What hours do we monitor our platforms? And what about problems which occur “out of hours”?

• How do we respond to negative comments from users? What escalation protocols do we have?

• Do we learn lessons from social media gaffes which make it into the news?