Product Overview

Summary: This Social Media and Online Presence SOP sets out clear, repeatable processes for managing your organisation’s digital channels in a professional, compliant and brand-aligned way. It helps Australian businesses protect their reputation, meet legal and WHS obligations, and ensure every post, comment and campaign is handled consistently across the team.

In Australia’s highly connected environment, your organisation’s social media and online presence can be an asset or a liability. A single poorly considered post, unmanaged comment thread, or inconsistent response to a complaint can quickly escalate into a reputational, legal or WHS issue. This Social Media and Online Presence Standard Operating Procedure provides a structured, step-by-step framework for how your business plans, approves, publishes, monitors and archives all digital activity across platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter), TikTok, Google Business Profile and your website.

The SOP is designed specifically for Australian workplaces and integrates core obligations around privacy, harassment, discrimination, advertising standards and psychosocial risk management under WHS laws. It sets out clear roles and responsibilities, content approval workflows, escalation pathways for negative or high‑risk interactions, and guidance on separating personal and professional use. By implementing this SOP, you create a consistent, defensible approach to digital communication that supports your brand, protects your workers from online abuse, and helps demonstrate due diligence if your organisation is ever challenged by a regulator, client or the public.

Whether you’re a small business formalising your first digital processes or a larger organisation tightening governance around multiple accounts and administrators, this SOP provides practical, ready-to-use procedures, templates and checklists. It helps your team know exactly what to post, what to avoid, how to respond, and when to escalate issues, so your online presence becomes a strategic asset rather than an unmanaged risk.

Key Benefits

• Standardise how social media and online channels are planned, approved, published and monitored across the organisation.
• Reduce reputational, legal and WHS risks arising from inappropriate, inaccurate or non-compliant online content.
• Ensure staff understand clear boundaries between personal and professional use of social media when representing the organisation.
• Strengthen brand consistency by aligning tone of voice, visual identity and messaging across all digital platforms.
• Improve response times and quality of engagement with customers, clients and stakeholders through defined workflows and escalation pathways.

Who is this for?

• Business Owners
• Marketing Managers
• Communications and PR Managers
• Human Resources Managers
• WHS Managers
• Social Media Coordinators
• Digital Marketing Specialists
• Customer Service Team Leaders
• Practice Managers (medical, allied health, professional services)
• Operations Managers

Included Sections

• 1.0 Purpose and Scope
• 2.0 Definitions and Applicable Platforms
• 3.0 Roles and Responsibilities (Management, Marketing, HR, WHS, Staff)
• 4.0 Governance, Approvals and Account Ownership
• 5.0 Brand, Tone of Voice and Content Standards
• 6.0 Content Planning, Scheduling and Campaign Management
• 7.0 Posting Protocols and Use of Images, Video and Third-Party Content
• 8.0 Legal and Compliance Requirements (Privacy, Defamation, Advertising, IP)
• 9.0 Managing Comments, Enquiries, Complaints and Reviews
• 10.0 Escalation Procedures for High-Risk or Sensitive Issues
• 11.0 Managing Online Abuse, Harassment and Psychosocial Risks to Staff
• 12.0 Personal Use of Social Media and Employee Conduct Guidelines
• 13.0 Crisis Communication and Incident Response via Social Media
• 14.0 Monitoring, Analytics, Recordkeeping and Archiving
• 15.0 Training, Induction and Ongoing Competency
• 16.0 Audit, Review and Continuous Improvement of the SOP

Legislation & References

• Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth) and corresponding state and territory WHS Acts
• Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 and state/territory equivalents
• Safe Work Australia – Model Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work
• Australian Human Rights Commission – Guidelines on preventing workplace bullying, harassment and discrimination (as applied to online conduct)
• Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs)
• Australian Consumer Law (Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010) – misleading or deceptive conduct and advertising claims
• AANA Code of Ethics and AANA Code of Advertising and Marketing Communications to Children (where applicable)
• AS ISO 19600 / ISO 37301: Compliance management systems – Guidelines (as guidance for governance of communications)
• AS ISO 31000:2018 Risk management – Guidelines (for digital and reputational risk management)