The Importance of A Social Media Comment Policy

The internet has the tendency to bring out an ugly side of people. You don't need to scroll too far through the comments section of any article to find poorly punctuated, nasty comments. Although the Constitution guarantees our right to free speech, you have the right to control what is posted on your company's social media pages. Irrelevant and nasty comments could cast your business in a bad light or distract from content you've put online.
 
While it can be tempting to delete any less-than-glowing comment, we suggest putting a comment policy statement in place on social media platforms. This way you can explain why certain comments have been deleted without the risk of being called discriminatory. 

You can put your policy in Facebook's "about" section. You can also put it on your website and link to it from other social media platforms, such as Twitter or Instagram. If you choose to delete a comment because it falls outside of your defined guidelines, we suggest taking and saving a screenshot of the comment beforehand. Saving it in a special "deleted comments" folder covers all your tracks.
 
For some examples of comment policies, we find the Institute for Local Government has a number of good examples. In general, a good comment policy will prohibit the use of profane or obscene language or content; content that promotes or perpetuates discrimination; confidential or non-public information; infringements on copyrights or trademarks; and solicitations of commerce.