Social Media Policy

We are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. By using our social media channels you agree to our social media policy.

Social media is being used by businesses and individuals as a way of communicating, networking and interacting. It allows Invest NI and nibusinessinfo.co.uk to communicate with the wider business base and engage users based on interests, demographics and content. Used responsibly, social media enhances the work of Invest NI.

Posts on social media on behalf of Invest Northern Ireland will include alerts about the following:

  • Announcements
  • Press releases
  • Invest NI programme calls for applications
  • New content published on our websites
  • Marketing campaigns
  • Departmental initiatives/programmes
  • News or information relating to the Northern Ireland government departments and the wider public sector
  • Engagement with stakeholders
  • Any other issues we consider appropriate

Engaging with Invest NI accounts on social media

If you follow any of our social media accounts, we do not automatically follow back. We will use hashtags and mention other social media accounts where appropriate. Being followed, using hashtags or mentioning other accounts does not imply endorsement of any kind.

We will retweet, like and share social media content where we think it is useful or interesting to our audience but, again, this is not an endorsement. We will update and monitor our social media accounts during normal office hours. Posts may be scheduled in advance. Our social media accounts may occasionally be unavailable. When making announcements, we will communicate first via social media when we think that this is the right approach.

We welcome feedback, ideas and engagement and will try to join the conversation where possible, and where it is right to do so. Where we can, we will point you to additional information already in the public domain.

We’ll do our best to respond to your enquiries, public or private, as soon as possible We are not able to reply individually to all messages we receive on our social media accounts. Emerging themes or helpful suggestions are routinely passed on to colleagues within the relevant Invest Northern Ireland team. To contact our Business support team call 0800 181 4422.

We do not respond to messages of a commercial nature. Potential suppliers must follow our procurement process.

Your privacy

When you ‘like’, ‘share’ or ‘comment’ on one of our posts, you should be aware that this will be publicly available. We may use your contact information/usernames to respond to messages/comments you send to us. If you post publicly on social media, we may share/retweet your post with our followers. Usernames of our followers are publicly available on our social media channels.

We may also receive information about you from third parties such as other social media users if they mention you, tag you or share a photo of you. When we upload content to social media we may also tag, share photos and content.

We may use analytics or third parties to analyse our social media channels for trends, insights and engagement.

You may unsubscribe/unfollow us at any stage.

House rules

We expect our users to offer us the same level of courtesy that we offer them, so we have a short set of 'house rules':

  • All users must comply with the relevant social media platform’s Terms of Use (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube) as well as these house rules
  • You are wholly responsible for any content you post including content that you choose to share
  • On Facebook we will remove, in whole or in part, or ignore posts that we feel are inappropriate
  • We will report and seek to remove any social media profiles that are set up using Invest NI imagery without permission
  • We will remove, block, ban and, if necessary, report users to the associated social media platform who direct message or tag us in posts which we believe:
    • Bully, harass or intimidate any individual or organisation
    • Are unlawful, libellous, defamatory, abusive, threatening, harmful, obscene, profane, sexually oriented or racially offensive
    • Are deceptive or misleading
    • Infringe or violate someone else's rights
    • Violate the law
    • Violate any intellectual property rights
    • Discuss ongoing legal proceedings
    • Are spam (persistent negative and/ or abusive posts in which the aim is to provoke a response)
    • Advertise products or services
    • Are irrelevant or off-topic
    • Are disruptive
    • Are repetitive
  • We will also remove, block, report or ban any user who:
    • Encourages others to post such messages
    • Uses offensive images as their profile picture
    • Has an offensive user name

We do not engage in party politics.

Social media accounts are not a point of contact for media enquiries, which should be directed to the press office in the first instance via the media enquiry form.

We do, however, reserve the right to comment on inaccurate coverage or comment. The usual way of contacting Invest Northern Ireland for official correspondence can be found on our contact us page.

We reserve the right to modify or change these conditions at any time.

Contact our
Business support team
0800 181 4422
or
For information on how we use your personal data including your rights, see our privacy notice.

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