Category: Academic Impressions

As my co-presenter Teresa V. Parrot and I continue working on the content for our upcoming Academic Impressions webcast, Starting A Social Media Policy, a recurring question arises:

Should universities have social media policies or social media guidelines?

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this subject. If your institution has a written social media document, is it a policy or a guidelines document? Which approach is preferable for your institution? Why? What are the advantages or drawbacks?

If you have strong opinions on this subject, please weigh in below. I’d love to steal your ideas.

Also, if you have a social media policy and would like to share the link, please also post it below. Thanks to those of you who shared your policies in the comments section of my earlier blog post on this subject.

From the gratuitous self-promotion department:

In June, I’ll be co-presenting an Academic Impressions webcast on how to create a social media policy. My co-presenter will be Teresa V. Parrot of Widmeyer Communications (@tvparrot on Twitter).

We’ve been talking about this topic for a few months and agreed that colleges and universities could use some guidance in developing social media policies (or guidelines, as we like to call ours,since our campus culture — like many others — has an aversion to anything stamped as “policy”). In this session, Teresa and I plan to go beyond the nuts and bolts of creating the policy to also cover the nuances of selling your administration on the policy and building buy-in.

Since we’ve got several weeks before we present, I’m hoping to tap into the hive mind of the Internet. I’d be interested in hearing from you about what you see as the most important elements a social media policy should include. Also, if you have a social media policy for your university that you’d be willing to share for this webcast, please let me know, either in the comments here, on Twitter or via email (at andrew DOT careaga AT gmail DOT com).