Who are these guidelines for?

These guidelines are for staff and faculty members who are involved in the administration of pages and accounts that represent the official, institutional presence of Memorial University of Newfoundland using social media.

Official institutional activity on social media is undertaken by departments, units and faculties that represent Memorial University.

The university is committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech. These guidelines are not intended to police the social media activity of individual staff or faculty.

Concerns or questions may be addressed to Marketing & Communications at 709-325-4656 or maria.carroll@mun.ca.

Background

Memorial University (and the various sub-units within it) is using the many social media channels to varying degrees and effectiveness. These tools can be used for promotion, engagement/interaction, immediate/emergency communications and more. Currently, the most popular tools are Facebook and Twitter. However, there are many other opportunities presented by the various technologies covered by the term social media.

Memorial University encourages faculty and staff to engage in social media if there is an opportunity and reason to do so.

Many other university policies currently govern the use of social media. Thus, social media administrators should be aware of privacy issues, protocols surrounding confidentiality and general conduct, among others.

Any social media activity that purports to be official on behalf of Memorial University, but is suspected to be an imposter, should be reported immediately to Marketing & Communications at 709-325-4656 or maria.carroll@mun.ca.

Guidelines

The following guidelines are meant as signposts to best practices for university units communicating using social media. Engaging in social media activities should be undertaken with a specific audience and goal in mind.

Whether you are an existing or new user, adopting best practices will increase the effectiveness of social media as a marketing and communications tool, and will mitigate the risks and liabilities that attend to organizations that are engaged in social media.

The following social media principles embody the basic keys to effective audience engagement. Some social media channels may be intended for internal audiences, some for external audiences. In either case, these guidelines may generally apply and help to keep it R.E.A.L.:

Responsive - Always monitor your social media channels; delete spam; respond to inquiries. It is important to monitor public postings and respond if necessary.

Engaging - Realize you have mere seconds to engage the reader, so keep your posts brief and bright. Whether it’s text, photos, or video your content must be compelling. Check out other popular social media sites — other sites can stimulate ideas for your own social media efforts. People like to feel they’ve learned something from posts. Effective use of social media doesn’t mean telling people what you ate for dinner. Aim to make your blog, Twitter account or Facebook site useful, informative and enjoyable/enlightening/educational to visit.

Accessibility - Content should be accessible to everyone. Here are some accessibility tips:

• Add image descriptions and closed captioning to videos. There are various ways to do this depending upon the platform.
• Only use emojis at the end of a post.
• Hashtags should be written in #CamelCase not all #lowercase

Authentic - For a social media channel to be “liked” it has to be real. Conversations and commentary cannot be solely one-sided and officious. Always think about the tone of your posting; does it match the audience? Are you providing them with information that they want or need? Who are you trying to engage, and are you enticing them to add a comment and join the dialogue? Try to inspire and motivate action.

Language - Monitor your social media sites for inappropriate activity. Watch out for profanity, libel and any comments that might run counter to the spirit of other university policies (Computing & Communications, Human Resources, Student Code of Conduct, privacy, etc.)

Consultation

Consultation is available from Marketing & Communications for all social media administrators overseeing official university activity.

Please contact Marketing & Communications at 709-325-4656 or maria.carroll@mun.ca.

Co-ordination

In the interests of good co-ordination/management, we encourage social media administrators to register their sites with Marketing & Communications.

Frequency is key to any successful and effective social media application, and for that reason we also require that you work with Marketing & Communications to enable us to update your site in your absence or in the event of a university-wide emergency that requires immediate and widespread communications.

Templates

Marketing & Communications provides a variety of template designs and visual imagery to assist in consistent brand expression. These templates provide guidance for backgrounds on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. as well as reinforce existing university graphic standards.

For information, please contact 709-325-4656 or maria.carroll@mun.ca.

As well, a guide to safe Facebook practices can be found here.