Social Media Policy

Social Media 

We (Visit County Durham) use social media channels under the destination brand name (this is Durham) 

The channels we currently use are listed below: 

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Google + 

Content

The content on these social media channels is predominantly targeted to visitors outside of the region, with a view to encouraging more people to visit.

The role of the social media channels is to assist with our remit of promoting the county nationally as a place to visit.

The channels are a marketing tool and are managed by Visit County Durham’s marketing department. 

Monitoring of social media accounts

The accounts are monitored during office hours Monday to Friday. We aim to respond to any specific query within 48 hours, but this is not always possible.

If you need to contact us urgently we recommend contacting the office.

Social media moderation

We welcome debate and opinion about the content we post, however, we reserve the right to delete posts that feature any of the following: 

• Offensive material such as swearing, sexism, racism or homophobia
• Posts that libel or defame someone
• Messages that name or identify specific Visit County Durham / Durham County Council employees
• Posts that contain incorrect information that could mislead others
• Posts containing personal information that it would be unwise to share in public
• Posts or comments which seek to publicise campaigns by individuals, groups or organisations
• Spam, advertising or phishing/scam messages
• Copyrighted material from other sites without permission
• Messages of a political nature
• Anything else that may be considered upsetting/misleading or sensitive
• If someone repeatedly posts such material on any of our social media outlets we may block them from posting anything further to protect other users. We may also reserve the right to report those posting inappropriate material to the relevant authorities. 
• If you wish to raise a concern about material on our social media feeds, please contact us.
• For advice on sharing photos safely on Instagram, visit the Instagram: help centre.
• Competition terms and conditions 

Asking us to follow or like you or share one of your messages

We follow and like a small number of people, mostly our partners across the county and other organisations we work with and local media. This allows us to monitor important information that may be of benefit to our potential visitors. To enable us to do this we cannot follow or like a large number of other people as we would risk missing key messages. Therefore please don't be offended if we don't follow or like you back. 

Please note: following or liking someone does not necessarily mean that we support or endorse them or their views. 

We will re-tweet / share content posted by others that we consider valuable / important to visitors (potential visitors or visitors already in destination) or that we feel promotes the destination as a place to visit. 

This will most likely be updates from tourism businesses across the county, residents, photographers and media.   

We may also occasionally support (or be directly involved in) national campaigns or retweet information from partners relating to larger events that we are playing a part in, or using as a hook to promote the destination. 

Please don't be offended if we don't retweet something that you have asked us to. As part of a local authority we are required to be very careful about what we retweet as this could be misconstrued as an endorsement of the person/organisation/event.