MMA webinar covers social media best practices for municipalities

An MMA webinar today showcased how to use social media as a tool to communicate and engage with local communities while complying with the unique legal and ethical requirements imposed on municipal officials.

Sean Dugan, the director of communications and special projects in Lexington, opened the session by highlighting the benefits of using social media to increase awareness of community programs, build trust with constituents, and gather feedback.

Brianna Sunryd, the director of communications and civic innovation in Amherst, discussed the importance of developing a social media strategy with clear objectives and the intended audience. She identified the most popular social channels and the general user demographics for each, and reviewed what to consider when selecting a platform to use.

Sunryd explained the importance of having a social media policy to govern the use and maintenance of social media accounts, as well as a terms of use statement for visitors.

Internal policies should address the personal use of social media by appointed and elected officials and include a protocol for launching new social media accounts, Sunryd said. External policies should establish acceptable guidelines for public use and include disclosures regarding the preservation of content for public records law compliance.

Dugan offered high-level tips for social media policies, such as making them available on municipal websites and social accounts and having a clear process for providing access to municipal employees and officials for posting on official municipal accounts. He said it’s important for key municipal leaders to have a listing of login information for all official municipal social accounts.

Attorney Ann Marie Noonan of Valerio, Dominello & Hillman explored best practices related to the broad legal considerations of social media for governing bodies, starting with the public records and open meeting laws. Dugan said it’s a best practice to retain records with the help of social media archiving tools.

Noonan said public officials must be careful not to use municipal social media in ways that may create a conflict of interest or expose legally protected information.

Turning to public responses to municipal social media posts, Noonan discussed the line between legitimate discourse and actionable conduct. Regarding First Amendment implications, she said a terms of use policy can be used to outline the limits on public responses. Municipalities are also advised to monitor posts for violations of the terms of use.

The terms of use should explicitly reserve the municipality’s right to remove comments that are off-topic, threatening, discriminatory, obscene, or that encourage illegal activity. Dugan added that it’s important to consult municipal leadership, and possibly municipal counsel, before deleting a user’s posts or comments.

Noonan and Sunryd reviewed how to assess threats made on social media, knowing when to intervene and how to respond, while preserving objectionable content using screen captures or archiving tools.

North Andover Town Manager Melissa Murphy-Rodrigues moderated 20 minutes of questions and answers. Attendees asked about archiving posts, the use of in-house communications staff, and personal use of social media by appointed and elected officials.

• Best Practices for Using Social Media in Municipal Government presentation (660K PDF)