We hope your school is using social media to celebrate their students!

We have found that over 99% of comments provided are positive. Truly, there is so much good that comes out of an active social media presence for schools! But what about that fewer than 1% of comments that might be negative – or downright inappropriate to be on the school’s pages? The school can just delete those comments or block those people, right?

Oswego, Illinois has recently come under attack by parents who are upset because their comments are being deleted from the school’s Facebook page. It turns out a simple code of conduct statement on their website would have saved the school from the cries of First Amendment violations.

Remember that students and parents are not the only ones who will comment on your posts. You’ll need to post a code of conduct policy where everyone has access to it, and your website becomes a perfect spot for it.

When managing your social media pages, we advise schools to allow the comments made to be live. Facebook has a setting that will block profanity and even certain words from your page. Each time a comment is made, you can receive a notification on your phone, which makes it easy to monitor the ongoing conversations.

Notice a slightly unflattering comment about the school? Your first choice is to respond. Responding to a negative post can be a great opportunity to show how well your district responds to concerns. For example, if a parent complains about a recent decision, the school has a chance to respond with, “Thanks for your feedback. Our superintendent and principals have an open-door policy and we would welcome you to stop in or call us directly to address this matter.”

Since the comments made are identified to a specific user, some schools may even choose to respond with, “We will reach out to you offline so we can discuss this concern with you more in depth.”

The second choice can be to delete the comment, and the third step is to block the user from the page.

In nearly 3,000 posts at this point for six different school districts, we have only had a handful of comments that have been deleted. Having a plan and a policy for such comments will help ensure a positive social media experience for your school.

About Us:

#SocialSchool4EDU’s mission is to celebrate students and connect communities.

Contact Andrea today so she can put her expertise and team to work for your school. From training your team to full-service updates on social media, #SocialSchool4EDU can help you seize the vast opportunities found on social media.