Rules and guidelines

Monitoring accounts, responding and replying

Our social media accounts are monitored during office hours and are not currently monitored twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week unless there is an emergency.

Our main Salford City Council social media pages are run by officers who will try and answer as quickly as possible or direct you to our website.

If your query is serious or involves personal details, please refer to our website to contact us. 

Liking and following

Please don't be offended if we don't 'Like' or 'Follow' you on social media. This doesn't mean we don't like you or are not interested in what you have to say, it's just that the numbers can get too high for us to manage.

We sometimes follow or like people who provide information that is pertinent to our work as a local authority (for example central government accounts, local media, and our partners) or those whose information we can pass on for the benefit of many local people.

Occasionally, we'll also try and lend our support to local and national campaigns.

There will also be times we'll need to like or follow an account in order to take part in conversations.

Sharing and retweeting

We try and share or retweet information that we think will be of interest or of use to Salfordians, however please don't be offended if we don't retweet something you want us to. 

As a trusted organisation, any sharing of information could be seen as endorsement of a particular view, individual or organisation, and it's important that we remain impartial and protect the council's reputation.

Blocking and unfollowing

If we block your account, this will probably be because you've followed or liked the council purely to promote a product or service, or you've contravened the rules of a particular social media space (see Moderation).

If for some reason we unfollow you, it might just be that we're going through a sort out or simply cutting down on numbers: if you see that we've unfollowed you, please don't take this a sign of personal rejection!

Moderation

We reserve the right to remove any contributions that break the rules of any of the following guidelines. Users who breach guidelines can be blocked:

• be civil, tasteful and relevant
• don't post messages that are unlawful, libellous, harassing, bullying, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented or racially offensive
• don't swear or use offensive language
• don't post content copied from elsewhere, for which you do not own the copyright
• don't post the same message, or very similar messages, more than once (also called 'spamming') or ‘troll’ multiple posts with similar messages
• don't publicise your, or anyone else's, personal information, such as contact details
• don't advertise products or services
• don't impersonate someone else
• don't post under anonymous or multiple identities 
• don't post political comments 
• don’t post unverified information from unknown sources as fact or link to such information

Libel

Please take care not to make libellous statements. In law this means a statement that lowers the reputation of a person or organisation in the eyes of a reasonable person. By publishing such a statement we can both get into serious trouble. We will therefore take down any statement that could be deemed to be libellous.

Pre-election period or 'Purdah'

In the six-week run up to an election - local, general or European - councils have to very careful not to do or say anything that could seen in any way to support any political party or candidate. We will continue to publish important service announcements using social media but may have to remove responses if they are overtly party political.

Social media policies

Social media policies and guidelines for officers and councillors, along with a protocol for the use of handheld devices in meetings, were approved at Council on 19 March 2014. You can download all of these at the bottom of this page.

This page was last updated on 31 May 2023