Getting Started
About
Before setting up a new social media group or site you should notify the Communications Team, who will be able to offer guidance and ensure that your group is listed as one of our official social media presences.
Please see the sections below for more information on planning a new account and deciding whether a separate group or site would be more or less effective than working with the central University channels.
Currently, Facebook is one of the most highly used social media sites in the world, and is a great channel for promoting and building a community for your area, particularly amongst students.
The following steps will help you get started on Facebook. Please remember that these are just the basics – if you want to make your Facebook Page a success, there are literally thousands of invaluable guides, how-tos and top tips on the web that can help you develop your Facebook strategy.
Contact the Communications Team
Contact the Communications Team to discuss what your requirements and aims are. We can help you decide if a Facebook page is right for your area.
Build your plan
Put together a plan for the type of content you will post, how often you can post, what you want your Facebook page to achieve and how you will build your followers (see Should You Use Social Media?).
Set up a professional persona
Create a new ‘personal’ user account to be the administrator of your Brunel Facebook page – this prevents any risk of accidentally mixing your personal Facebook presence with your professional one. We suggest calling yourself ‘Firstname + Brunel’ (eg Rachel Brunel), so it’s clear to your audience that you are representing Brunel professionally.
Read Facebook’s Page guide
The Facebook pages guide will walk you through basic and intermediate steps of starting up your page.
Edit your page details and profile picture/cover photo
Ensure that your Page name and 'About' description clearly states your area’s connection to Brunel University, and upload an approved logo profile picture in line with Brunel's Social Media Policy.You may also wish to choose a cover photo from a selection provided by the Communications Team.
Like other Brunel pages
Remember to ‘like’ other relevant Brunel University Facebook pages – in particular the official Brunel University Facebook page, Brunel International and the Union of Brunel Students (see Brunel University social media presences for the index). This will allow you to stay up-to-date with key conversations going on amongst students and staff across the University
Customise
Some of the most successful Facebook pages have customised content on them (see Coca Cola’s for an advanced example of this: www.facebook.com/cocacola). This type of customisation requires the use of a small plug-in and can range from being quite straightforward to very complex. If you think your page would benefit from customisation, please get in touch with the Communications Team.
Twitter is a ‘microblogging’ platform that allows its users to ‘tweet’ and share short messages of up to 140 characters in length. Twitter is great for sharing news and events, creating conversation, and keeping audiences updated with breaking news.
The following steps will help you get started on Twitter, but these are just the basics – if you want to make your Twitter presence a success, there are literally thousands of invaluable guides, how-tos and top tips on the web that will give you confidence in your Twitter strategy.
Contact the Communications Team
Contact the Communications Team to discuss your requirements and aims. The team can help you decide if Twitter will help promote your area.
Build your plan
Put together a plan for the type of content you will tweet, how often you can tweet, what you want Twitter to achieve and how you will build your followers (see Should You Use Social Media?).
Get set up
Read Twitter’s guides to getting started and signing up. These will walk you through the basic and intermediate steps of setting up your feed.
Edit your page details
Ensure that your Page name and bio clearly states your area’s connection to Brunel University, and upload an approved logo profile picture in line with Brunel's Social Media Policy.
Think very carefully about your Twitter name before completing the sign-up process. While it’s possible to change it after you’ve set up your account, it can be very confusing to your audience. Remember: names are limited to 15 characters, so you will need to ensure your ‘Bio’ is very clear about who you are and what your connection is to Brunel University.
Follow other Brunel people
Remember to ‘like’ other relevant Brunel University Twitter accounts – in particular the official Brunel University Twitter feed, Brunel International and the Union of Brunel Students (see Brunel University social media presences for the index). You can then share content tweeted by them, and potentially get your content retweeted to a larger number of followers.
Understand what makes Twitter tick
To make the most of Twitter, you’ll need to get to grips with how to take advantage of RTs, hashtags, link shorteners, etc. Again, the Twitter Help Centre will help you to work out what these are and how to use them successfully.
Edit your links
If you are linking to a news item or piece of information somewhere else on the web, you may need to edit the description to help encourage click-throughs to the content. Front-load your description with key words and/or important information, and distil the description into as few words as possible without interfering with the meaning.
Shorten your links
Consider using a service like http://bitly.com or http://tiny.cc/ to shorten long links that would otherwise take up valuable tweet space. If you sign up for these services, you can also use the shortened urls to track how many people clicked on your links in the first place – a valuable way of measuring the success of your content.
LinkedIn is a professional networking platform which allows users to connect to current colleagues and contacts and identify new ones, to exchange knowledge, best practice, ideas and opportunities. Once you have set up an account, you can create a professional profile, search for and interact with experts, follow companies that interest you, join interest groups, look for career opportunities and find business or professional partners.
The University encourages the use of LinkedIn for the following purposes:
• networking and building partnerships between staff, students, alumni, and external partners and stakeholders;
• communicating relevant University news, events and information.
Brunel has two main LinkedIn presences: a company page and an official alumni group.
Brunel University company page
The University’s official company page is managed by the Communications Team. Interested LinkedIn users can search for and ‘follow’ Brunel to receive notification of news and events posted on the page, and can browse lists of other users to find colleagues or professionals in their fields.
The Official Brunel University Alumni Group
The Official Brunel University Alumni Group is managed by the Development and Alumni Relations Office. The group is limited to former students who must apply to join, and aims to encourage networking between alumni and Brunel staff and advertise postgraduate and professional development courses, events and employability initiatives.
The Alumni Group can set up subgroups for Schools and departments. If you would like to set up a subgroup, email the Alumni team including an outline of how you would use the subgroup and why it is necessary as an addition to the larger alumni group.
Subgroups should not be further divided as this reduces the scope of networking and communications opportunities.
Can I create a separate group for my area?
The University recommends that separate groups are not created, as this fragments our audience and dilutes networking and communications opportunities. However, it may be appropriate to create a group for some specific, stand-alone purposes – to discuss circumstances in which this may be appropriate, please contact the Alumni team.
‘Official’ groups run from outside Brunel
You may find that a self-styled ‘official’ group already exists for your School or department, managed by a former student or other user with no formal connection to Brunel. In these cases, please contact the Communications team for advice on regaining control of the ‘official’ site.
YouTube
Brunel University has a single YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/bruneluniversity through which content is hosted that promotes Brunel University, its courses or services. The Communications Team welcomes submissions to the channel from across the University.
Videos that are informative rather than promotional can be hosted by Brunel University Media Services. This material can then be embedded in web pages, presentations and elsewhere, or shared as a link.
Examples of videos that might be suitable for hosting on YouTube include:
- Content showcasing facilities or achievements in particular areas
- Student diaries or tips for new students
- Virtual tours of campus facilities
- Q&A sessions with staff
- Promotional campaigns
- Highlights or compilations of clips from events such as conferences or lectures
Examples of videos that might be suitable for hosting by Brunel Media Services include:
- Instructions, information videos and ‘how to’ guides
- Full recordings of events such as lectures or seminars
The Communications Team reserves the right to refuse a video for hosing on the Brunel University channel if it is not of a high enough quality, is not substantially relevant, or does not promote the University or an aspect of its provision.
Separate School/department YouTube channels
If you produce or are thinking of producing video content for YouTube, there are a number of benefits to be gained from submitting your videos to the official channel rather than creating an individual channel for your area. In particular, you will receive increased views (the Brunel channel has had nearly 20,000 views and over 230,000 individual video views) and central support in disseminating the material.
If you produce a series of videos on the same subject, you may wish to consider requesting that a playlist be created within the Brunel University channel.
If you intend to produce a large number of videos and/or the content is of interest only to a very specific audience, you may wish to set up an individual channel for your area. Individual Schools and departments are welcome to set up their own specific YouTube channels, however the University requires that these channels should only contain content that is relevant to the area with they are concerned in order to avoid confusion and duplication. The Communications Team may take selected videos for inclusion on the main University channel, and welcome suggestions to this effect.
How to submit a video for YouTube
Please use the online form at www.brunel.ac.uk/youtube to submit a video for consideration to the Brunel University channel.
- Contact the Communications Team to check whether your content is a good fit for the Brunel channel (the Communications Team reserve the right to reject content if it is not of an appropriate topic, or if the video is of a low quality).
- Fill in the online submission form at www.brunel.ac.uk/youtube.
- Email the video to communications@brunel.ac.uk (you may wish to use the Brunel Dropoff service to do this: https://dropoff.brunel.ac.uk), or send a copy on CD/DVD. Send the highest resolution copy you have (HD/minimum of 720p preferably). Supported video formats are detailed on YouTube.
- The Communications Team will review and upload your content and provide you with links to the finished video (and any relevant playlists).
Video hosting by Brunel Media Services
For information on video production by Media Services please contact terence.tiernan@brunel.ac.uk or neil.graveney@brunel.ac.uk.
If you produce the video yourself, or it is produced by a third party (such as by students or an external company), you will need to send a hosting request to digital.media@brunel.ac.uk along with a copyright form. Details of how to do this are available on the intranet at https://moss.brunel.ac.uk/SiteDirectory/computercentre/mediaservices/Pages/Multimedia.aspx under ‘Policy for Video Streaming Files’.
Copying videos from YouTube
If you would like to request that material be copied from YouTube by Brunel Media Services, for example to include in a presentation or project, please ensure that it has been copyright cleared by the Copyright Officer before contacting Media Services.
Flickr
Brunel’s Flickr account is a very effective tool for sharing multimedia content (photos, video) with a wide internal and external audience. We recommend that staff and students maximise exposure of the University's photo and video content by submitting it to the central Brunel channel.
All staff can submit photos for inclusion in the photostream; however, to ensure a high level of quality and engagement with our audiences, the Communications Team reserves the right to refuse any content that is not of a high enough quality, is not relevant enough, and/or lacks visual impact.
How to submit content
- Contact the Communications Team with your request and to send your content (you may wish to use the Brunel Dropoff service to do this: https://dropoff.brunel.ac.uk). Alternatively, you can send the files by CD/DVD. Please provide the highest resolution files you have. JPGs, GIFs and PNGs are all acceptable file types.
- As well as your image files, include a document with the following details:
Titles What should your set of photos (album) be called? And what should each individual photo be called? Titles should be meaningful and clear, as people may find your content in isolation from the album it belongs to.
Descriptions Both the album and each individual photo can have a description (either the same description or individual ones). While you don’t need to have lengthy descriptions, a short line or two explaining what’s happening and who is in the photo is best practice.
Tags These are keywords which help search engines find your content. All Brunel images on Flickr are tagged with general tags like ‘Brunel’, University’ and ‘Students’, but please also suggest keywords that specifically reflect your images.
- Let the Communications Team know if you would like any of your photos to be freely downloadable. By default, all Brunel photostream images are copyrighted, but this can be altered if necessary.
- The Communications Team will review and upload your images and provide you with links to the album.
Titles What should your set of photos (album) be called? And what should each individual photo be called? Titles should be meaningful and clear, as people may find your content in isolation from the album it belongs to.
Descriptions Both the album and each individual photo can have a description (either the same description or individual ones). While you don’t need to have lengthy descriptions, a short line or two explaining what’s happening and who is in the photo is best practice.
Tags These are keywords which help search engines find your content. All Brunel images on Flickr are tagged with general tags like ‘Brunel’, University’ and ‘Students’, but please also suggest keywords that specifically reflect your images.
