Victorian Government Social Media Operational Guidelines

• Why are these guidelines important?

  These guidelines help provide a best practice guide for Victorian Government departments and agencies to meet the standards set out in the Social Media Operational Policy.

• Social media strategy

  Your social media strategy should consider the time commitment, responsibility for creating content, defamation risk and mitigation, listening and responding to communities and stakeholders.

• Risks and mitigation

  Risk mitigation involves identifying known risks, issues or potential opponents to your planned messages and campaigns, and how you plan to react to these risks or respond to them.

• Social Media Audit

  We recommend completing an annual audit of your accounts to ensure they are meeting their aims.

• Record Keeping

  You should be recording every all records as required by your department, including any contextual metadata.

• Community guidelines and moderation guides

  Community management plays a significant role in managing risk. Effective monitoring and moderation can remove the risk of a conversation with a member of the public getting out of hand.

• Moderation tools

  Consider utilising each social media platforms moderation tools like profanity filters, comment limitations and hiding comments.

• Complaint handling policy

  Official social media accounts need to have an approved complaints handling process with a publicly accessible version.

• Moderation staffing levels

  Content moderators can be exposed to secondary traumatic stress. To help ensure moderators are safe at work, teams must place importance on proactive support

• Support for staff

  It is important to manage the health and wellbeing of staff when moderating. Moderators can be impacted by the continual, and at times negative, nature of social media including the comment sections.

• Appendix A – Risks and Mitigation Actions Template

  The basic template below can be used to document risks and suggested actions.

• Appendix B – Records keeping example

  Examples of social media moderation in practise across the Victorian Public Service.

• Appendix C – Example - Community Guidelines

  Generic examples of community guidelines Victorian Government departments and agencies can use to help develop community guidelines on their own social media platforms.

• Appendix D – Sample Moderation Guide

  A government entity should conduct its own assessment as to whether it requires a specific moderation workflow due to an increased likelihood of defamatory comments on its social media posts.

• Appendix E – About Us Section (Facebook)

  Examples of About Us section for Victorian Government departments and agencies to help develop for their own Facebook account.

Updated 12 September 2025