Public Information and College Marketing
Social Media Guidelines

Introduction

ACC supports participation on social networks including, but not limited to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and MySpace, as they provide the college community with an exciting channel to share and exchange thoughts, ideas, news, events, and experiences through discussions, postings, photos, and videos.

Public Information and College Marketing (PICM) has developed the following guidelines to ensure the most effective use of social media for the college’s external marketing and outreach efforts. Individual faculty or student pages are not covered by these guidelines; however, faculty/staff or student groups are advised to follow these guidelines if their social media presence could be construed as college-affiliated.

Note: In regard to faculty, Instructional Resources & Technology has developed social media guidelines for instructional use. Their guidelines can be found here.

Because social media and web communication tools are ever-changing, this will be a working draft and may be adjusted to reflect issues that may arise in the implementation and management of social media pages. Feedback is a key component to ensuring that guidelines represent the best interests of the entire college. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions, please contact us.

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Social Media Guidelines

Official College Presence

The official social media pages for Austin Community College are maintained by PICM. They are:

Individuals or departments wishing to contribute information or make suggestions for the main college pages should contact PICM. Departments or groups that establish an online presence are solely responsible for content.

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Departments and Other ACC Organizations

ACC departments or other college organizations wishing to develop a social media presence should contact PICM before setting up any pages/accounts. This will ensure appropriate steps are taken when developing any social media page/account. In cases where pages already exist, please contact PICM and provide links to the page(s) with the name of the administrator(s) to be added to a database of all college-affiliated social media pages.

Responsible Parties: Online administrators should connect their department or organization page(s) with the official ACC pages. For example, if the department or organization has a Twitter account, it should follow the official ACC Twitter account.

Content Development: All content should relate directly to college business, programs, and/or services. Content placed by administrators should not promote individual opinions or causes that are not directly related to college purposes.

Photos and Videos: Uploaded photos and videos should relate directly to ACC and should not be used as a promotional tool for programs, products, or services outside the college. All photos and videos should adhere to existing college policies, copyright laws, and the terms and conditions of the specific social media tools.

Updating and Adding Content: The page should be maintained and as up-to-date as possible.

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Rights and Responsibilities

ACC respects First Amendment rights and embraces free speech values. Our goal is to encourage free speech on college-affiliated social networking pages, as well as to promote community values and ideals.

In general, users should mostly be censored by the terms and conditions of the specific social media tools they are using; however, administrators should remove any comment or post deemed inappropriate due to harassing or threatening language, slander or profanity. It is the right of the administrator to block posts from users who violate this.

Most social networking sites establish guidelines in regards to language, posting of pictures and videos, and various other topics. Be sure to read the guidelines carefully, follow them strictly, and report users that violate any terms or conditions.

Reporting Concerns

Because social media sites are interactive tools, administrators should monitor pages closely and frequently to supervise user conduct. Any questionable conduct can be reported to PICM. Please contact PICM if you have a concern about content posted by the administrators of ACC’s main social networking pages/accounts.

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Social Media Best Practices

Developing a Strategy

Effective use of social media requires constant attention. It’s best to develop a strategy before you embark on any social media initiative representing a department or ACC organization. The following steps will help you create your strategy.

1. Define Purpose and Goals
What are your goals? How does social media fit with your other communication efforts? While starting a social media endeavor is easy, maintaining a presence requires time, effort, and resources. Make sure you have a clear purpose before you begin. Think about how you are going to measure against your goals over time so you are able to determine your success.

2. Choose a Tool
There are many ways to participate in social media, but you should figure out which tools are best for you. Which will serve best to achieve your goals? Avoid committing to too many social media tools. It’s better not to participate at all than to let a social media tool become poorly maintained. The best approach is to focus on one or two mainstream tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, and engage actively.

3. Consider Existing Options
Is the college there already? If so, can you join forces with existing initiatives? Joint efforts are easier to sustain and also are more influential.

4. Commit Resources
How much time can you commit to social media efforts? How will you keep it active? And, do you have the resources? Assess the resource costs needed, and make sure you have the resources to commit to the initiative. It’s better to do nothing than to establish an ambitious social media presence and engage only half-heartedly. Also, think about how long you can commit to your social media tools: will you leave the site up indefinitely, or is it a limited time project? What is your exit strategy?

5. Assign Responsibilities
Who will “own” your social media presence? Who will perform regular updates, and who will be contributors? Although you may have multiple contributors from your department or program, one person should own the initiative and one person should be responsible for day-to-day operations, monitoring interaction, responding to users, and adding new content. Assemble a team composed of a site owner, site editor, and contributors.

6. Track Usage
One advantage of social media is that you can track its use. How often will you gather metrics, and which metrics are most important? Who will gather the metrics, how will they be reported, and to whom? Establish a process to track usage, and use metrics to measure your success in achieving your goals.

Managing Content

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Maintaining Transparency

Honesty and transparency are key components of social media interactions. Do not adopt a false persona online. When engaging in a dialogue on behalf of ACC, disclose your affiliation and role up front. Be mindful that all your contributions are public, and participate as you would in any other public setting.

Many of us make personal use of social media, such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, as private individuals rather than as spokespersons of the college. However, we may be identifiable as belonging to the college community: e.g., because of our “austincc.edu” email address or as members of the “ACC District” network on Facebook. While these guidelines are for those participating on social media sites on behalf of ACC, the guidance is sound for the personal context as well.

Setting the right tone
The tone of conversation on social media sites varies, but overall it tends to be informal and conversational, personal rather than institutional. When engaging in discussions on behalf of ACC, join into the flow of conversation and offer your viewpoint as one of many.

Moderating interaction
Social media sites allow users to post comments, photos, responses, and other content on pages. As administrator of these sites, consider removing posts or comments if they are:

  • Exceptions to freedom of speech. Remove posts that are defamatory or obscene, cause panic, use fighting or threatening words, or incite to crime.
  • Limited purpose violations. For sites with a limited purpose identified on the site, remove posts that are clearly unrelated to the subject of the page.
  • Violations of the social media site’s terms of use or terms of conduct (e.g., Facebook Terms of Use, YouTube Community Guidelines). Remove posts that are in violation of the terms of use of the site host. Make sure you understand the terms of use of the host site so you can enforce them.

When hosting a social media site, give users notice of these guidelines by linking to them.

Responding to negativity
Inevitably there will be posts that are negative and even offensive but do not warrant removal. In this case, respond as follows:

  • Respond immediately to correct misinformation;
  • Allow time for others to respond; and
  • When appropriate, decide who should respond and craft a correct response (with fact checking and involvement as needed).

Correcting mistakes
Due to the informal, conversational mode of discourse, it is likely that you will make mistakes and potentially cause offense or misunderstanding. If you find yourself in a defensive position, post a retraction, correction, and/or apology as appropriate.

Uploading content
Make sure you have the necessary rights before uploading content to your social media site. If you allow users to upload content to your social media site, you need to actively monitor uploads and respond to suitability and copyright concerns.

Tracking and Maintenance


Leveraging links: In addition to offering opportunities to engage with users where they are, social media sites also provide opportunities to bring people to ACC. Use links to drive up traffic to the ACC site. For example, tweet about a news story and link to the full description in the ACC Newsroom. Also, provide links to your social media sites on your department or organization site so that visitors know where to find and follow your social media presence.

Tracking usage: Track traffic from social media sites using site tracking tools. See what types of links get the most traffic and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Site removal
Be sure you know the length of your commitment before you launch a site. For a limited duration site, note the duration clearly on the site. For other sites, the department or organization responsible for the site has the discretion to take down the site or remove features of the site. In some circumstances, take down could mean giving over control of the site to the use.

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