Why Have a Social Media Policy?
I knew this was coming. An assignment to create a social media policy. I’ve danced around this topic before – not in a grad class but when I worked in a marketing and communications department not so long ago. And the topic has followed me to my new position as an instructional designer. Why should an ID be concerned with social media policy? Because the technology cuts through so many parts of a community college and what goes on in and out of the classroom. Plus I teach online marketing and social media, I use social media in my courses and I am fairly active on social media myself – mostly professionally. So I should know what I can and cannot do as an employee at my institution, as an instructor in my classes and as a student in my graduate program. I get to see all sides of this.
We do have a social media policy at the college- or more like a set of guidelines (like a pirate’s code?), but after reading and discussing some of the resources I’ve seen this week, well… we need something more definitive in my opinion. Our current guidelines come from our marketing department and they are a good set of things to do to be successful in your social media attempts, and how to stay safe and polite, and ways not to get the college into trouble. But they don’t carry much context and really don’t cover student use of social media. For a very long time, the college didn’t have a handle on what departments were posting in the name of the college, and didn’t think much about social media until they started using Facebook and Twitter themselves as a recruiting and engagement strategy for students.
I did some research a few years ago to help the marketing department put together the original guidelines – they have really stayed at the level of guidelines with no one group stepping up to take on the making of true policy. But it might be time to revisit and revise the standards of social media use at the college. Of the several community college sites I visited, I found some common themes among their stated policies:
- they had clear definitions of what social media was
- they had policies for student use as well as institutional use
- policies equally addressed student and employee conduct as well as compliance with state regulations on posting and sharing of sensitive information
- helpful guidelines were in place not to discourage use of social media, but to encourage responsible use of it. There was a general recognition that social media was a powerful communication tool that could be used in many contexts within a college environment.
If this were to be presented formally, I would first talk to the Marketing and Communications department. That is where the original guidelines came from and are the likely candidates to eventually take a more formal proposal to the college community as a whole. We have a shared governance, council structure in place at the college for the creation of policies and procedures so the next step would likely be with the college Cabinet Council. That group meets regularly to review and update institutional level policies such as this so I’m confident they would be involved in the review and revision of a social media policy.
You can follow this link to read it my shared Google doc:
Proposed Social Media Policy for a Community College
Twitter
Google
Diigo
August 1, 2015 @ 9:36 am
Renee,
As always, I love the visuals you use. I should try and incorporate more pictures in my postings as well. 🙂
I enjoyed reading the background on the policies at your college, we had a similar experience. Until this assignment I never quite realized that there was guidelines that I should be following when I posted anything on the schools social media sites, so this has really opened my eyes. I will need to have a conversation with my AD soon!
Your policies were amazing, you wrote a complete policy that could be implemented tomorrow! Both our colleges seem to have marketing involved in the social media process which completely makes sense.
I loved that you defined social media, in mine I just included examples such as Facebook, etc but I should have gone this extra step to add definitions. Excellent job!!
You seemed to cover every area extremely well with excellent examples and made it very clear from the get go, what everything is referring to. I think you made an excellent point by including the fact that people could make assumptions about the college based on your posts. So true! That is something we think about often at my college and I am more worried about boring content more than inappropriate content, but worried none the less. Doing this assignment did make me wonder how many people have gotten fired over very such things.
The disclaimer was an excellent addition that helps me see something that our college might want to incorporate on our sites.
Overall excellent! I loved reading it, very professional and thought out!
August 1, 2015 @ 3:33 pm
Renee, as Jennifer mentioned your posts never cease to amaze me with the quality of product you produce. Not only are your proposed social media guidelines on point, they are very thorough which I appreciate. I often believe that we can either go over board in being too wordy or not clear enough in what we are trying to convey. However, you are concise and yet thorough all at the same time.
I particularly like your definition of social media. This is something I thought about in developing my own policies, but didn’t think to act on building a solid definition for readers. “Social media” can be interpreted in a multitude of ways. Some might believe it is strictly the use of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and other popular tools. Others might view it with more broad strokes including any platform that connect people online. Your definition hits both and provides a solid foundation for your viewers. Expectations thus become clear and easy to follow.
I found it wise that you pointed out the need for instructors to abide by Washington public records law, and also that educators at Pierce are ambassadors of the school. Many people believe even their social media accounts are their territory and thus it is isn’t important to be careful. However, this is wrong. Even when people are building their personal online image they need to know that they maintain association with their job title and thus needs to be cautious. The same goes for behavior outside of work. It needs to be appropriate (with the understanding that an individual is an ambassador) and even their personal life is a reflection of their employer whether they like it or not.
I especially like your section on issue of inappropriate content. People tend to flirt with the line of “appropriateness” and don’t see things as black and white. Everyone has a personalized definition of appropriateness, so your defining it on the school’s behalf is powerful.