Social Media Guidelines

Guidelines

Social media is a communications tool that can be used for many purposes.

At Berry College, our institutional accounts exist to:

  • Be Berry's authentic voice to the public
  • Support brand awareness and reputation building
  • Create opportunities for constituent engagement
  • Showcase the college
  • Provide a central point of communication in a crisis

You can find current institutional, departmental and organizational accounts at the Berry Social Media Directory.

We’ve laid out our current guidelines for creating and operating a Berry College-affiliated social media account below. If any questions arise please contact Hannah Stuart in the Office of Marketing and Communication.

NOTES ABOUT THE BERRY IDENTITY AND STYLE

The Berry identity must be consistent in presentation across all channels. Specifically, the crestmark/logo is not to be altered. Most often in social the stacked crestmark is the logo that will be used. See page 18 of the branding document for any further questions or reach out to the Office of Marketing and Communication with graphics needs.

GUIDELINES FOR SETTING UP A DEPARTMENTAL OR ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIAL ACCOUNT

Before you decide to create a new account, consider the following questions:

  • Is a new channel necessary? Could working with an existing channel sufficiently achieve the desired goals?
  • Would a group on Facebook (or, for student-focused areas, a Discord channel) be a better fit than a departmental or organizational account? 
  • Do I have the time and resources to commit to a social media account?

To set up a new social media account:
Contact Hannah Stuart via email (hstuart@berry.edu) in the Office of Marketing and Communication after doing the following:

  • Write out your mission and purpose statements and include those with your email.
  • Designate a Fac/Staff administrator for each account and include their contact information.
  • Include desired platform(s), suggested handle(s) and desired profile image. 
  • Departmental accounts are required to follow branding guidelines found in the brand document. Student organizations have more flexibility.

The following security precautions are required:

  • Each department or organization social media account at Berry should have a Fac/Staff administrator over the account so that Berry doesn’t lose access. This information must be registered with the Office of Marketing and Communication.
  • For Facebook, remove students who have graduated. For other platforms, when students who have access graduate, change the account passwords.

CONSIDERATIONS

  • Commit to monitoring your social accounts daily—you want to know what’s going on with your audience.
  • Be familiar with the terms of service and policies of the platforms you use and be sure to follow them.
  • Post engaging content. What engaging means for your account depends on your audience.
  • Post consistently—this could be every day, every other day, etc., but stick to your schedule.
  • Don’t post simply to post—though posting consistently is important, remember that you don’t always have to enter a conversation or post something simply to be posting. Sometimes it’s better not to post at all.
  • Engage with your audience via likes/comments—part of creating a community is cultivating that sense of connection and conversation!
  • PROOFREAD before posting, including fact-checking. If someone corrects you about their personal information (say a name is spelled wrong etc.), say thank you and make the edit.
  • Do not publish confidential or false information.
  • Remember that social media posts are public and may be viewed by anyone, anywhere in the world. Posts can be copied, recorded, screenshot and shared, and can be found by search engines for years after being published.
  • Monitor analytics to track growth and adjust your strategy accordingly—you’d be amazed what information you can glean from the numbers, including posting times and types of content. Hannah Stuart will be happy to help if you have questions.
  • Support other Berry pages and accounts (follow, share, like!)

ACCESSIBILITY

At Berry, we require social media content from all official accounts to follow accessibility best practices. By making your content accessible to the broadest range of people, you ensure that the widest range of your audience can enjoy the content you’ve worked so hard to create.

Some key best practices for accessible social media content include:

  • Including alt text (image descriptions), especially any flattened text, for all images in social posts.
  • Using hashtags in moderation and placing them at the end of posts when possible.
  • Using Camel Case/Pascal Case/Title Case (capitalizing each individual word) in hashtags (ex: #WeAllRow, #BerryStories, etc.) where platforms allow — TikTok does not always support Camel Case in its hashtags, for example
  • Using emoji in moderation, not using them as bullet points and placing them at the end of posts when possible.
  • Captioning all videos that include dialogue or other important audio.
  • Avoiding using flashing lights or strobe effects in videos.

Need a quick way to determine if your content is accessible? Use this handy checklist from Accessible Social: https://www.accessible-social.com/checklist

Learn more about social media accessibility at https://www.accessible-social.com/

DEALING WITH NEGATIVE COMMENTS AND TROLLS

We welcome open conversation with all connected to or wanting to learn more about Berry and wish to ensure all conversations remain open, yet respectful. In the majority of cases, we do not delete posts. If necessary, you can hide posts or comments. Hiding leaves the comment available for the person who wrote it to see, but no one else; deleting removes it entirely and may cause a more negative reaction than not acknowledging the comment at all.

Please keep in mind the following best practices.

Types of posts that may be deleted:

  • Hate speech
  • Vulgar language
  • Sexually crude remarks
  • Personal attacks of any sort
  • Comments that may endanger the health or safety of others
  • Spam comments (persistently off-topic, promoting commercial sites or products, political comments, etc. that have no relevance to the post topic)

For repeated offenders, accounts may be blocked or banned after a warning.

You should not arbitrarily censor or delete comments. Reference the reasons above for deleting or banning, and consider responding to answer the commenter’s question or to clarify the original post. Often the community will regulate a negative comment or post by sharing their own experiences.

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