Social Media

• List your primary goals for establishing a communication channel between you and your audience and how to best achieve those objectives.

• Decide who you are trying to connect with online.

• Consider if you plan to create your own content or pull it from other sources (e.g. event information, deadline reminders or photos).

• Identify your platform options and consider which choice would be best for reaching your target audience.

• Remember that all institutional social media accounts need to have at least one dedicated staff member acting as an administrator to maintain the content and oversee the inquiries and comments by your audience.

• Develop a game plan for interacting with your audience through interesting and engaging content and by responding to comments they leave on your site. It is a good idea to be active, timely and transparent with your responses.
• Prepare a plan for moderating inappropriate or negative audience actions. Comments containing vulgarity, attacks on any individual or group, and/or spam should not be engaged with or tolerated.

• Identify which metrics will best assess your social media success (e.g. follower counts, increased traffic or engagements) and determine how you will measure and report that to your team.
• Set up a distinct hashtag that identifies your event or organization. Using these consistently throughout your social posts will give you a simple way to monitor the conversation you have created.

Header, profile or other statement images displayed on your social media accounts need to follow the Purdue University Northwest Brand Standards Guide. For assistance meeting a specific platform’s requirements, contact the Office of Marketing and Communications.

The Office of Marketing and Communications has access to a wide assortment of campus life and academic photography, as well as faculty portraits, which may be requested for use.

Offer comments, react to interesting posts, or share relevant audience stories to successfully engage with your audience. Do not engage in arguments or tolerate inappropriate comments. Comments containing vulgarity, attacks on any individual or group, and/or spam should not be engaged with or tolerated.

Administrators should monitor comments posted to each social media presence and respond appropriately, including the removal of any content that is deemed threatening, obscene, a violation of intellectual property rights, a violation of privacy or copyright laws, or otherwise injurious or illegal.

In accordance with the Electronic Information, Communication and Technology Accessibility Standard, all electronic multimedia resources used by the university for instruction, communication, marketing, promotion or other academic or business purposes must be Accessible.

Video must be closed-captioned and audio-described and audio resources must be transcribed.

Knowledge of whom at the university to contact when issues or crises arise is equally important to maintaining a social media presence. Offensive or threatening posts should be noted before deleting by copying them into email or creating a screen capture and then sharing them with the campus authority as well as members of your crisis communications team to determine the actions necessary for the university.

Do not engage in arguments, but reaffirm that social media is a place for each user’s views to be recognized. Comments or posts that utilize copyrighted material, such as videos or music, should be removed and noted. Comments or posts directly threatening others or actions against the university should be reported to the appropriate staff as well as to the campus police.