Guidelines
Defining social media
Broadly, social media refers to any form of media that encourages online social interaction between users and content creators. Current leading examples of social media include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube, and tools such as wikis and blogs. However, the social media landscape can and does change rapidly: what is popular today may drop significantly in popularity the following year, and new tools may arise just as quickly.
With this in mind, your use of social media should be responsive, open to adaptation and prepared for the potential need to adopt new social media presences or cease involvement in underused social media sites.
How Brunel University is using social media
Brunel University has embraced the use of social media as an important and valuable part of its communications and marketing activities. Not only does social media allow us to share our news, events, activities and important information with our immediate audiences and with the wider world, but it also allows us to listen, respond and build relationships with our community.
The social, conversational element is central to our use of social media, and our approach favours genuine and informal communications and relationship-building over overt marketing methods.
As well as serving our internal audiences well, this approach is likely to be an effective advertisement for the University. Research has shown that many students use social media to build up a picture of what university life is like (as part of their course decision-making process), and that they consider universities who are using social media to be modern, accessible and easier to approach, as well as being ‘on their level’.
In addition, social media helps us to understand what students are saying about us. Word of mouth is a key decision maker for prospective students and, through social media, we can find out how we are perceived. This can help Brunel in its other marketing and communications activities.
Brunel’s primary social media channels
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/bruneluniversity
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/bruneluni
- Flickr: www.flickr.com/bruneluniversity
- YouTube: www.youtube.com/bruneluniversity
- LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/brunel-university
Each of the University’s primary channels prominently show the Brunel logo, as well as other forms of Brunel branding, to communicate to our audiences that content found in these areas is official Brunel University information.
The Union of Brunel Students activity on social media is managed by the Students’ Union and is not covered by the University’s social media policy and guidelines.
Encouraged practice
The University broadly encourages the following uses of social media.
Teaching and learning support
Please read the policy on 'Using social media for learning and teaching purposes' under the ‘Policy’ tab. Social media offers the potential to support and advance learning opportunities. However, before adopting social media in this way, please contact the University’s Learning Technology Team to check whether existing or similar functionality already exists: ltt@brunel.ac.uk. The University's VLE supports learning and teaching and offers many advanced learning opportunities.
Collaboration
Social media can assist your area with both internal (eg inter-departmental) and external collaboration, and create new ways for people and organisations to communicate and work together. However, users should be aware of potential privacy issues.
External Relations and PR
Social media can help the University communicate with prospective and existing students and staff, as well as other external stakeholders, as part of its marketing and communications strategy.
Recruitment
Effective and well-managed use of social media can help promote the University and thus has the potential to boost the University’s recruitment activities.
Alumni relations
Social media is useful for keeping in contact and developing relationships with graduates. If you are considering how social media can help with alumni relations, please contact the University’s Alumni Officer, who is responsible for these activities:
Vicky Noden
Email victoria.noden@brunel.ac.uk
Should you use social media?
The growth of social media over the last few years has created many new and powerful opportunities for universities to communicate with their audiences, and for their audiences to communicate more easily with each other.
But before you decide whether to set up a presence on social media, or if you have recently established your social media presence, you need to carefully consider your purpose and resource, and develop an appropriate strategy to match your goals. The following covers the key points you should consider.
Know social media
First, get to know how social media works, and works well. Familiarise yourself with, for example, how Twitter works and how organisations promote themselves on Facebook, before considering how and why you should start using it. Other universities are a great source of inspiration, but looking at commercial organisations is also valuable.
Administration
Who will manage your presence, and how much time can they devote to it? Will your team have time to respond to queries, and who will take responsibility in case of administrator absences? Administrators should also be enthusiastic about social media and have a broad understanding of how it functions and what it offers (or be keen to learn), and be able to respond to queries within a reasonable timeframe (approx 24 hours).
Your goals
Do you want to improve internal communications, promote your area, or increase attendance at your events? Define what your main goal(s) are and how social media will help you achieve this (as part of your wider communications plan).
Your audience
Spending time thinking about your primary audiences will help you choose the right social media channel(s) for your goals and maximise your success.
Which channels?
Consider carefully which channels will be most effective for you – not all channels work for all purposes. Bear in mind your audience demographic and how your content will suit each channel’s medium.
What is success?
Define how you will measure the success of your channel(s) – better communication? Increased web traffic? Increased event attendance? Decide how and when to evaluate your activity to ensure that your time is being spent effectively.
Content
Identify the type and frequency of content you want to post and consider whether there will be enough content to maintain a healthy level of activity on your site. Also consider what your audience is likely to want to hear from you and how you can meet this demand.
Your peers
Do any other universities or organisations have a similar social media presence to the one you are planning? Monitor and evaluate what they do and how they function effectively.
Name and design
Spend time thinking about an appropriate name for your presence that is simple, clear, and reflects what you do and your connection to Brunel University. The name should also have longevity – altering your name in the future can cause confusion and, in some cases, may not even be possible.
Evaluation
As well as setting aside time for full evaluation of your site/group, on-going evaluation should be part of your daily social media activity. Consider what content is most valuable to your audience and what garners the biggest response and adjust your approach accordingly.
Best practice and etiquette
Be respectful
Anything you post on your site/group reflects directly on both the institution and on your particular area. Be professional and respectful at all times and do not engage in arguments or extensive debates with anyone who is critical of the institution. While it can be appropriate to put right any incorrect assertions made by commenters, or provide extra detail to counteract any criticism, try to do so in a way that will be construed as friendly, rather than combative or oversensitive.
Timeliness is everything
Because social media allows us to share information almost instantly, audiences often expect information to appear straight away. While that’s not always going to be feasible, you should be prepared to provide relevant information in response to new developments, announcements or emergencies, and to do so in a timely manner. A short amount of accurate information delivered at the time of need can often be more valuable than a lengthy report the day after.
However, if you think answering a question might take a while, making the commenter aware that you have seen and are dealing with their question is better than silence.
You may also wish to manage expectations. Where possible, make it clear when the people interacting on your social media platforms can expect a response. If you reply to one student at 1am in the morning then they will all expect it.
Tone of voice
Developing a tone of voice that is friendly and relatively informal is essential – you are engaging in a social forum, so behaving in a social manner is going to be far more effective than talking in a dry, verbose or overly formal way. You should also adopt a consistent voice across sites, if you are using more than one channel to represent your area.
However, using slang, ‘text speak’, or using sentence fragments is generally not appropriate either. Poor spelling, punctuation and grammar reflect poorly on you and the University, so take time to write and check your posts – for both clarity of message and for errors – before publishing them.
Listen
Being a consumer of social media content is essential to your ability to be a successful producer of social media content. ‘Listen’ to online conversations on your preferred tools – such as blogs, Twitter or Facebook – to maintain a clear and current understanding of what is relevant and of interest to the community, as well as to pick up tips and ideas for content from other people on social media.
Your content will live forever
Think before you post and remember that anything you share on social media is not private. It can and will be shared, stored and spread globally. Don’t post anything online that could reflect negatively on Brunel University or that you wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing on the front page of a newspaper or the BBC website.
Don’t let social media absorb all of your time
A lot of time can be spent on social media without any gain. Limit the amount of time you spend attending to your site/group to just what is needed to post and respond to content, evaluate traffic data, review related sites, and monitor comments. You may find it effective to schedule points during the day to post on and monitor your accounts.
Social Media tools such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck can be used to ‘schedule’ posts and updates throughout a time period, which can be useful if you have limited time to make updates.
Getting your audience’s attention
Your posts are potentially competing for attention alongside hundreds of other posts, so you need to put some thought into what you post if you want to get the reader’s attention.
Consider the words you use and the order you use them. For example, if you just repeat a headline from a news story you want to link to you will most likely find that few of your followers will bother to click through to the actual story. Instead, pull out an interesting detail from the story to entice them to click on your link, front-load your post with the most important/interesting information, or draw out whatever is likely to be of most interest to your audience. (See the 'Getting started' tab under Twitter for examples.)
Posing a question is often an effective way of piquing a reader’s interest. Humour is also acceptable, but avoid saying anything that might be construed as sarcastic or risks offence. Get a colleague or two to check a post if you’re unsure.
Photos and video are a very effective means of capturing attention and generating conversation, as well as encouraging people to share your content. This type of content should either be relevant to your audience’s interests, visually interesting or conveys something important about your area. Please note, however, that particular care should be taken when posting photographs and videos to ensure that consent has been attained, as the immediacy of media such as Facebook and Twitter can make it easy to forget these processes. If you are posting photos which come from a source other than the University’s photography team, you should also ensure that you have the appropriate rights to do so, and credit people appropriately where necessary (however, you won’t need to credit Brunel photographers). If you are in any doubt about whether you have the correct permissions, please contact the Communications Team.
In addition, it is not appropriate to make exaggerated claims or excessively use capital letters or exclamation marks to draw the reader’s attention. The latter two can be overbearing and irritating if used too often.
Posting links to relevant information from other non-Brunel sources can also be very effective at raising engagement, so long as they are demonstrably useful to Brunel’s audiences. However, remember to keep it relevant: linking to videos of cute kittens or funny stories is most likely not going to be appropriate.
Don’t spam your followers
Keep an eye on the frequency of your posts. Too few and your site/group won’t be effective, but post too many and you risk annoying your followers. As a broad rule of thumb, you should make fewer posts on Facebook (we suggest two to three a day, maximum) than on Twitter (which can handle tens of posts a day – if the content is interesting enough). Also, ensure that all content you post or share is likely to be relevant to a large section of your audience.
Share, share, share
Follow other relevant Brunel University social media sites and repost / share / retweet any messages that are relevant to your own audiences. This is a great way of joining up the various Brunel social media sites and strengthening the sense of community (again, beware of reposting/tweeting irrelevant content – see Getting your audience’s attention).
Followers: it’s about quality, not quantity
Rather than focus on getting as many followers as possible onto your social media sites, it is better to first focus on increased engagement with the followers you do have. Fifty students who are constantly engaged with your page and asking questions are better than 500 who click the like/follow button and never come back.
