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Social media

What is social media?

'Social media' is an umbrella term to describe online spaces where you can connect with other people and produce and share content.

Compared to 'traditional' media formats, social media is characterised by rapid and frequent publishing by anyone in channels that include blogs, microblogs such as Twitter, wikis (websites where anyone can revise content), social networks like Facebook and Google+, and photo and video sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr.

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Social media guidelines

Conduct

Social media is becoming increasingly prevalent in communications campaigns, so it's important to plan how you use these channels and follow some common-sense principles.

When using social media as a staff member or student, you are a public representative of the University, and should conduct yourself accordingly. We recommend following these guidelines as the minimum requirements for social media participation by staff and students representing the University.

When you place content or comments on any website as a representative of the University, you should present an appropriate, professional and consistent public face. Your content should be guided by common sense, but it should also:

Our logo

Please request permission before using the University's logo, and ensure any use of the logo is in accordance with the logo use guidelines.

Notification

Please notify the University's Web Manager of any new web presence (including social media). This will help the University to maintain an overview of our activity in these areas.

Links

Where possible and appropriate, please link back to the University's website and to the University's corporate presence in the relevant channel, such as our main Facebook page).

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Five tips for successful social media

  • To increase the likelihood of responses, frame your posts as questions.
  • Provide links in your posts back to relevant University websites where it is appropriate.
  • Respond to enquiries in a timely manner. Remember, expectations regarding responses online are that they should be faster than in other communication channels.
  • Make sure your delivery style suits the medium: for example, multiple daily posts on Twitter are the norm, however on Facebook they give the impression of spamming your page with one-way broadcast messages.
  • On Facebook in particular, try to limit the use of your official profile avatar by encouraging staff to answer enquiries directly using their own profiles.

Social media is constantly evolving, so it is worth keeping an eye on emerging trends and developments. See the feature pane (right) for some external resources we've found particularly useful.

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University social media presences

The University has a number of corporate social media presences. In general the central or corporate presences are administered by Marketing and Communications. We aim to ensure consistency and appropriateness of content, and to avoid undue duplication of effort. We welcome new content submissions and ideas for these sites.

Please keep Marketing and Communications informed of any new activity (new pages, promotional messages etc) that you plan. This enables us to integrate the University's presence on and across the different platforms, and helps us ensure that our activity follows the appropriate best practice.

Please note: it is easy to 'spam' in Facebook and other communities unintentionally. We would strongly advise discussion with Marketing and Communications before engaging in any promotional activity on this and other social networking sites.

Here are some of our corporate social media presences:

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If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the University's Web Manager.