Social Media Community Guidelines Template: A Practical Guide for Creators and Agencies

A useful page answers six questions in language a new follower can read on a phone. Which accounts does this page cover? What behavior is welcome? What will you hide or remove? What happens if someone may be in danger, or if a comment is a threat? How should a gifted or paid mention be labeled? Who owns the page, and on what date was it last reviewed?

If those answers live only in a chat thread, you do not have guidelines. You have a memory. Memory fails when the person who usually replies is out, when a second location hires a weekend moderator, or when a creator hands the account to an editor. The page is the memory that can be linked. Screenshots of old replies are not a policy.

Editorial recommendation: write the page before you need it. A rule invented during a pile-on reads like a punishment written after the fact. A rule that was public last month can still be unpopular, and you may still change your mind, but you can point to a date. Pair the public page with the internal moderation workflow so the person on duty is not guessing which sentence applies.

Product observation: PostTempo can schedule the post that points people to the page. It does not host the page, hide comments, or decide appeals. Team approvals are listed on the Agency plan, and Scale includes everything in Agency. Free, Creator, and Pro do not list team approvals in the public catalog. If a client must approve the guidelines wording, confirm on the pricing page that the plan you use records that approval. A scheduler is not a moderation desk.

Worked calculation (fictional): Amira Mensah publishes four times a week and answers comments herself. She spends one afternoon writing a one-screen page and links it from her profile. The time cost is the writing, not a new subscription. No engagement change is implied. The page exists so a Tuesday reply and a Thursday reply use the same rules.

House rules are the additional line you hold on spaces you host. Platform rules are the line the network holds on everyone. Meta's Community Standards describe what is and is not allowed on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Threads. The Transparency Center says the US English version is the primary document. Those standards apply to everyone and to all types of content, including content made with automated tools. Your page can be stricter than that floor. It cannot license behavior the platform forbids.

TikTok publishes Community Principles that guide how it writes and enforces its rules. The principles page, released August 14, 2025 and effective September 13, 2025, names ideas such as preventing harm, supporting free expression, and encouraging kindness and respect. That page also tells readers the Community Guidelines were being updated on September 24, 2026, and it points them to the current guidelines. Treat that as a reason to re-open the live page on the day you publish. Do not freeze a sentence from this article into a brand PDF and call it TikTok's rule.

Sourced fact: a brand line that says you allow something does not obligate a platform to leave the content up. A brand line that says you remove pile-ons can be stricter than a platform that would have left a rude comment standing. Write your page as a house policy. Link the platform's current rules instead of pasting them. Pasted rules go stale, and a stale paste can contradict the network by the next quarter.

Editorial recommendation: keep a source log with three columns. Platform, URL, and the date you opened it. When the URL or the rule changes, update the log and the sentence on your page that points to it. Do not copy enforcement examples you do not understand. If a topic is regulated, contested, or specific to a client's industry, the log should say counsel rather than a made-up exception.

Worked calculation (fictional): Vesper Lane keeps one source log for every client and a short house page per client. The log records that Meta's Community Standards and TikTok's Community Principles were opened while this article's sources were checked. The agency does not claim those pages stayed unchanged after that reading. Each client page shows a checked-on date the client can see.

Scope is the first block on the page because people arrive from different doors. A comment on a short video, a reply on Threads, a review on a Facebook Page, and a note in a private inbox are not the same room. Name the accounts and the surfaces the page covers. Name the surfaces it does not cover. A website contact form, an email inbox, and a contract dispute are usually out of scope even when someone mentions them in a comment.

Also name who is speaking. A creator, a moderator hired by an agency, and a store employee answering as the brand should not pretend to be the same role. The page can say that replies from this account may come from the creator or from a named moderator. It should not imply that a weekend contractor is the founder. If a location page is run by a store and a brand page is run by headquarters, say which page this document governs.

Editorial recommendation: use the account names a reader sees, not internal nicknames. Cedar Row Markets on Instagram, plus the four store Facebook Pages, is a scope. The socials is not a scope. If you add a network later, update the scope line the same day you connect the account. A scope line that omits the new Page trains people to think the new Page has no rules.

Product observation: connecting an account in a scheduler does not publish your guidelines. The account handoff checklist is where the next operator learns which accounts exist and who can sign in. The guidelines page is where the public learns which of those accounts you are willing to host conversation on. Keep both records. Do not put passwords, seat names, or the queue on the public page.

Worked calculation (fictional): Cedar Row Markets has 4 stores. Each store has a Facebook Page. The brand has one Instagram account run by headquarters. The guidelines page lists 5 destinations. A comment on a store Page follows the same core rules as a comment on the brand account. Local hours and stock that is actually on the shelf stay with the store. The count is a scope decision for this fictional company, not a recommended number of locations.

Core rules should fit on one screen before you add examples. A readable set usually covers five ideas. Treat people as people. Stay on the topic of the post if you want a reply from the brand. Do not deceive, spam, or drop the same link on every post. Do not post someone else's private information. Do not use the comments to sell a product unless the page says that sales posts are welcome.

Write behaviors, not moods. Be kind is hard to enforce because two moderators will disagree about tone. A sentence such as we remove comments that insult a person, that encourage a pile-on, or that include a phone number, home address, or account password is something a moderator can match to words on the screen. You can still say you want a practical, friendly room. Put the enforceable line under that sentence.

Sourced orientation: WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.4.6 says that headings and labels describe topic or purpose. The criterion does not force you to add headings, and it does not by itself check whether a heading is marked up in code. That markup question is a different criterion. If you use headings, they should tell a person what the block is about. On a guidelines page, Comments we remove is a heading. Misc is not. This is orientation to a public standard, not a certification of your profile.

Editorial recommendation: read the page aloud once. If you run out of breath before the first rule, cut the welcome paragraph. If a rule needs a specialist to parse, move the long policy to a linked document and keep the comment rule short. The accessibility checklist is the companion when the rules live in an image, a highlight cover, or a pinned video. An image of rules with no text alternative fails the reader who cannot see the image.

Worked calculation (fictional): Amira's first draft is about 900 words of welcome and mood. She cuts the public page to a welcome line, five rules, a sponsored-comment line, and a contact line. She keeps longer examples in a private note. The public page stays short. The private note is not a second public policy, and she does not paste real follower comments into it.

Enforcement is a ladder, not a mood. Pick four rungs and define them before a thread is hot. Hide means the comment stays available to the author and to you, and it is not part of the public conversation you are hosting, when the network gives you that control. Remove means you delete it from the space you control. Restrict means you limit what that account can do on your spaces for a stated reason, again only where the product allows it. Escalate means you stop handling it as a tone problem and move it to the safety, legal, or crisis path.

Write examples that match your ladder, and keep training examples fictional. A hide example might be a repeated off-topic sales link. A remove example might be a comment that posts another person's phone number. An escalate example might be a threat or a report that someone may be in immediate danger. Do not promise a response time you cannot keep. We review reports on business days is honest if that is the staffing you have. We reply within minutes is a different operation and a different budget.

Editorial recommendation: the crisis response plan starts when the event is bigger than one comment. A single rude reply can stay on the moderation ladder. A wave of posts, a safety report, or a demand that you speak for the whole organization belongs on the crisis path. Say that on the guidelines page in one sentence so people know a threat is not something you will debate in the replies. Do not publish instructions for wrongdoing, and do not ask moderators to investigate emergencies themselves.

Product observation: hiding and removing comments happens in the network's own tools. PostTempo's approval workflow, on the plans that include team approvals, is for content you are about to publish. It is not a comment-appeal inbox. If you schedule a post that explains a moderation decision, review that post with the same checklist you use for any other caption. Do not let a moderator freelance a public ruling from a phone note that nobody else can find.

Worked calculation (fictional): Vesper Lane's ladder has four rungs and one owner per client. The weekend moderator may hide an off-topic sales link. Only the account lead may remove a comment that includes personal data. Threats go to the crisis card the same day, including weekends, because the card says so. The split is written. It is not a preference the moderator is expected to feel.

Comments are a common place for a material connection to stay invisible. A creator may answer under their own tutorial when the product was a gift. A follower may drop a discount code because a brand pays them to do it on other people's posts. Your guidelines cannot shrink a legal duty. They can tell your community, and your own team, what you expect to see in the words on the screen.

Sourced fact: the FTC's Disclosures 101 brochure says a material connection includes a personal, family, employment, or financial relationship, and that a financial relationship is not limited to money. Free or discounted products count. The brochure says the person making the endorsement is responsible for the disclosure and should not rely on someone else to add it. If you bought a product yourself and have no relationship with the brand, the brochure says you do not need to announce that absence. The Endorsement Guides FAQ says the guides apply to social media, that an endorsement must reflect the endorser's honest opinion, and that the FAQ is not a safe harbor. The guides were revised in 2023. Read the current brochure and FAQ before you freeze a sentence onto a client page.

Editorial recommendation: put two sentences on the public page. First, anyone who was paid, gifted, or otherwise has a relationship with a product they mention should say so in the comment itself, in words people can see without hunting. Second, this account will hide or remove comments that are undisclosed sales pitches when the team can tell that is what they are. You will not always be able to tell. Say that too. A guideline that claims you detect every paid comment is a claim you cannot prove.

The campaign brief is where a paid collaboration is planned. The UTM naming guide is where the destination link is spelled the same way every time. Neither document is the disclosure. A clean tracking link does not make a gifted mention obvious to a reader. Keep the disclosure in the words the audience sees. If you are the one being paid or gifted, the FTC materials put the disclosure duty on you, not on a scheduler and not on a teammate who might remember later.

Worked calculation (fictional): Amira receives a set of pans from a brand. She adds one line to her guidelines the same week: gifted tools are labeled in the caption and in her own replies. She does not announce a follower change, a sales figure, or a result from the gift. The line is a procedure. It is not a testimonial and it is not evidence that the pans performed in any particular way.

A rule that nobody can find is a private note. Put the page where the argument will happen. Common places are the profile link, a pinned post, a highlight that also has a text alternative, and a short line on posts that tend to draw heat. Pick one canonical URL. If the bio, the pinned post, and the website disagree, you have three policies and no way to say which one won.

Write for a phone. Short headings, short sentences, and the enforcement ladder before the brand story. If you design the rules as a carousel, the accessibility checklist still applies: the words need to exist as text, not only as pixels. Contrast and motion matter if the rules are a video. A pretty cover with type nobody can read is a poster, not a policy.

Editorial recommendation: add the last-reviewed date in plain text, not only inside a design file. A reviewer who was not in the room should be able to see the date without opening a folder. When you change a rule, change the date. Keep the previous wording in your own archive long enough that you can explain what changed. The archive is internal. The date is public. Do not leave the old PDF linked from the bio.

Product observation: you can schedule the reminder post and the link caption from a calendar after the page exists. The content review checklist is the pre-publish pass for that caption. The free best-time planner can suggest a week for the reminder. It does not know which of your comments are heated, and it should not be used as a moderation schedule. The content calendar template is a grid for the reminder, not a substitute for the rules.

Worked calculation (fictional): Cedar Row Markets uses one URL on the brand site. Each store Page links to that URL in the About section and in a pinned post. Four local bios do not each host a different file. When headquarters changes a rule, the four pins are updated in the same week. The count of pins is an operations task for this fictional retailer. It is not a reach metric.

Amira Mensah teaches weeknight cooking to a general audience. She has one Instagram account and one Threads profile. She replies to comments herself on weekdays and leaves a note on Fridays when she will be offline. Before this template, her rule was whatever she felt like enforcing after a long shoot day. She was the only moderator, and she still disagreed with last month's version of herself.

She fills the template in this order. Scope: both accounts, comments and replies, not email and not the website form. Welcome: questions about the recipe and substitutions. Remove: insults aimed at a person, another person's contact details, and the same discount link posted under every recipe. Hide: off-topic sales that are not insults, where the network lets her hide. Escalate: anything that sounds like a threat or a safety emergency, using the platform's report tools and local emergency services where a person may be in danger. She does not invent emergency instructions in a caption. Sponsored line: when a brand gives her an ingredient or a tool, she says so in the caption.

Editorial recommendation: Amira keeps the public page to one screen and a private example sheet for herself. The private sheet has three invented comments she would hide and three she would remove. She does not publish the sample comments, because examples copied from real followers can become a new harm. The samples stay fictional even in the private sheet if she can help it. Real names do not belong in a training slide.

Product observation: Amira schedules recipe posts in her workspace. The guidelines link is a profile field she updates on the network, plus one scheduled reminder when the wording changes. Creator and Pro do not list team approvals in the catalog. She does not need a second approver today. If an editor joins later, that is the moment to re-read the pricing page. It is not the moment to share a password so the editor can look like Amira.

Worked calculation (fictional): the page takes her one afternoon, including the aloud read. She changes one heading from a mood word to Comments we remove. No follower total is attached to the change. The test she actually uses is dull: Friday's offline note and Monday's replies cite the same five rules. If they do not, the page is not done, even if the graphic looks finished.

Vesper Lane is a four-person agency. One client is a single-location home brand. The client wants comments open on product posts and wants a written rule before anyone answers in the brand voice. The page says product questions are welcome, delivery problems go to the support path linked from the page, and nobody answering as the brand will invent a refund, a price, or a legal position in public. That sentence is a scope limit for this fictional client. It is not a template for a regulated industry, and it is not a script you should paste onto a clinic, a lender, or a school without that organization's own counsel.

The agency's job is operational. The drafter writes the six blocks. The client approver accepts the wording. The moderator on duty may hide and remove only inside the accepted wording. A new exception, such as a topic the client wants closed for a week, is a written change to the page, not a chat message that expires when the shift ends. The approval process guide is how that change should be recorded when the team uses recorded approvals. A message that disappears with the shift is not the record.

Editorial recommendation: Vesper Lane does not let each account lead invent a tone guide in the replies. The client's page has one voice rule. Answer the question you can answer, point to the support path when the question is a private order, and do not argue with a person who is only there to insult someone. The comment moderation workflow describes the queue. This page is what the queue is allowed to say in public.

Product observation: team approvals are listed on the Agency plan, and Scale includes everything in Agency. Vesper Lane can send the guidelines caption through that approval when the workspace is on one of those plans. The approval attaches to the post they are publishing. It does not reach into the network and hide a comment by itself. The person on duty still uses the network's tools for hide, remove, and report. If the workspace is on a plan without team approvals, the agency should not pretend a calendar note is a recorded client yes.

Worked calculation (fictional): one client, one page, two approvers, and a moderator who is not allowed to add a sixth rule on a Sunday. A Sunday incident that does not fit the page goes to the crisis card. The agency does not score itself with a response-rate trophy. The measure is whether the Sunday action matches the written rung. No time-saved percentage is claimed.

Cedar Row Markets runs four neighborhood stores and one brand Instagram account. Headquarters writes offers. Store leads answer local questions about hours and what is on the shelf. Before the template, one store lead deleted a critical comment about a late delivery, and another store lead promised a refund the brand does not give in comments. Both leads were trying to help. The pages then disagreed with each other, and a shopper could screenshot both.

The shared page says all four Facebook Pages and the brand Instagram account use the same core rules. Store leads may answer hours, stock that is actually on the shelf, and directions. They may not invent a refund, a legal position, or a claim about a product that headquarters has not approved. Refund questions go to the customer-service path linked on the page. Insults and posted personal data follow the same hide and remove ladder on every Page. A store lead who is unsure escalates to the owner of the guidelines page rather than writing a new rule in the thread.

Editorial recommendation: Cedar Row treats local color as welcome and local policy as a defect. A store can sound like that neighborhood. It cannot publish a different enforcement ladder. The monthly reporting template is where the brand can later note how many comments were escalated, if the team chooses to count them. Those notes are operational counts for this company. They are not an industry benchmark, and this article does not supply a normal rate.

Product observation: multi-location scheduling still needs one owner per post and a clock the audience actually lives in. The multi-timezone SOP covers the clock. This page covers the conversation. A post scheduled for a store opening should not include a guidelines sentence that only headquarters understands. The pinned post on each Page should point at the same URL. If you track that pin, the UTM naming guide is how the four stores avoid four spellings of one campaign.

Worked calculation (fictional): 4 Pages, 1 brand account, 1 URL, and 4 pins updated in the same week as a wording change. Two store leads escalate, and none of them invent a refund in the thread. The figure four belongs to this fictional grocer. It is not a recommended chain size, and it is not a performance result.

Guidelines rot when the owner leaves. Put the owner in the internal record as a role, not only as a personal inbox that will bounce. The public page can say message this account, or it can list a public contact. The internal record says who updates the document, who may add a rung, and where the previous version is stored. A role can be filled by a new person without rewriting the public voice.

Hand the page off the way you hand off an account. The incoming person needs the canonical URL, the source log with the dates you opened platform rules, the enforcement ladder, the list of accounts in scope, and the crisis card. They do not need the previous person's password. The account handoff checklist is the access procedure. This packet is the extra folder that checklist will not invent if you never wrote the rules down.

Editorial recommendation: review the page on a calendar you already keep. A quarterly read is enough for many small teams if nothing painful happened. Review sooner when you add an account, when a platform announces a policy change, when counsel changes a claim you are allowed to make, or when moderators are hiding comments that the page does not mention. A review that changes nothing still updates the last-reviewed date. A review that changes a rule updates the date and the internal archive.

Product observation: the next operator should find the packet without logging into someone else's personal chat. Store it beside the campaign brief and the approval record for the latest public wording. PostTempo can hold a scheduled reminder to review the page. It should not be the only copy of the page. If the workspace is unavailable, the public URL still has to be the right one.

Worked calculation (fictional): Vesper Lane's packet is one folder per client with the live URL, the source log, the accepted wording, and the name of the approver. When an account lead changes, the folder is part of the handoff. Reading it is an afternoon task in this fictional agency, not a billed outcome. If a client contract sets a retention period, counsel sets that period. This guide does not interpret one.

Use this checklist in order. Publishing a witty be-kind graphic before you name the accounts is how teams end up with three policies. The comment moderation workflow can stay open beside you. It is the private side. This list is the public side. Finish the public side before you design the cover.

Beginner path: write the six questions. Name accounts and surfaces in scope and out of scope. Write five behaviors two moderators would match the same way. Define hide, remove, restrict, and escalate, including the crisis handoff. Add the sponsored-comment sentences and read the current FTC materials before you freeze them. Pick one URL. Add headings that say what each block is about, and add real text if the rules are an image. Put the last-reviewed date on the page. Read it aloud. Ask the approver, if you have one, to accept that wording. Only then schedule a pin or a reminder. Tell the next person where the folder is.

Call to action: when the page is real and you want the reminder on a calendar, start a workspace and read the pricing page before you assume a teammate can record an approval. Use the free planner only if you need a timing hypothesis for that reminder. The planner does not read your comments, and it does not write your rules. If you already know the day you will update the profile link, you can skip the planner and update the link today.

Editorial recommendation: link the public page from the moderation note, the crisis card, and the handoff packet. The next person should not have to reconstruct your rules from screenshots in a camera roll. If a sentence in the packet disagrees with the URL, the URL wins until you change it on purpose and update the date.

Product observation: pricing, the approval workflow, and the review checklist are inputs. Your dated page is the policy. A carousel that never states the ladder has not finished this checklist, even if the cover looked complete. Starting a workspace is optional. The page can ship without one.

Methodology: the PostTempo Editorial Team drafted this template after inventorying the blog registry, the SEO pages, the comparison routes, the blog hub, and the sitemap inputs. Existing articles already cover comment moderation, crisis response, content review, accessibility, account handoff, campaign briefs, approvals, monthly reporting, multi-timezone scheduling, and UTM names. None of those pages is the public community guidelines document. We aligned this template to those guides without rewriting their URLs. Public orientation came from Meta's Community Standards, TikTok's Community Principles, the FTC's Disclosures 101 brochure, the FTC's Endorsement Guides FAQ, and WCAG 2.2 success criterion 2.4.6. Scenario names, store counts, and afternoon timing examples are fictional.

What this article does not do: it does not quote every platform rule, and it does not rank networks. It does not provide clauses for employment, health, finance, housing, or the safety of a minor. It does not tell you that hiding a comment will change distribution. It does not claim that a disclosure sentence copied from this page satisfies the law in your facts. The FTC's own FAQ says that business guidance is not a safe harbor.

Professional limits: laws, platform buttons, and the words on an official policy page change. Confirm the current platform page before you publish. Ask counsel before you publish a rule about a regulated claim, a minor, a medical topic, a threat, or a person who may be in danger. Moderators should use the network's report tools and local emergency services where those exist. They should not invent an investigation in the replies. This is a house-page template. It is not legal advice and it is not a moderation certification.

Editorial recommendation: if Meta, TikTok, the FTC, or the W3C page disagrees with a sentence you remember from this article, believe the live official page and write the date you checked it. The source log is part of the template for that reason. A memory of a 2025 or 2026 principles page is not a substitute for the page that is live on decision day.

Product observation: PostTempo can schedule a reminder and, on Agency and Scale, record a teammate's approval of a post. The public catalog is the source for which plan lists team approvals. The product does not moderate the thread. An honest guidelines project can finish on a document and a profile link. Pay for a scheduler when the reminder and the calendar are the job you actually have.