Social Media Policies

My social media guidelines:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FPG-Opj6c9mselSjQv06B9t3xh0JXfklJSomdJceunQ/edit?usp=sharing

I work in the Marketing at for my college and my department is responsible for the college’s social media account. We recently hired a staff member dedicated to social media and our social media presence has expanded from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to Pinterest, Instagram, Tumbler, and Google +. With the expansion of our social media presence, the need for policies and guidelines became obvious. I reviewed our social media guidelines and was very happy to find them to be through and well thought out. I have included several of our guidelines in my own policies, but also looked to other colleges and university to see if anything could be added. The following sites were very helpful to be in my research.

• http://www.hamilton.edu/social/creating
• http://www.k-state.edu/socialmedia/bestpractices.html
• http://www.colorado.edu/social-media-cu/social-media-guidelines

• http://web.vanderbilt.edu/resources/social-media-handbook/

In my document, guideline 13 states that all new social media sites must be approved by the Marketing department. I debated this guideline because it seems to contradict the organic nature of social media. However, as we have discussed in this class, digital footprints are impactful and rouge sites must be mitigated to protect the College image.

It is in the best interest of the College to protect its image and to do so, the social media policies and guidelines must be known throughout the organization. In an effort to communicate with staff and students, the following tactics will be used to information the organization about social media guidelines:

·         Place policies on the public website

·         Place policies in the staff/student portal

·         Send a campus-wide communication via email

·         Included education about the policies in the orientation for new student clubs