Social Media Best Practices

Account administrators/moderators must follow all WCAG 2.0 and 508 Compliance recommendations, including captioning of all videos with correct spelling and grammar as well as other accessibility guidelines including alt tags for graphics. If a video by another group is not transcribed, it should not be shared.

All social media accounts created on behalf of the College must be linked to a department’s email account, never a personal email account.

A minimum of one full-time faculty or staff members (in addition to the Marketing and Communications account) must have administrative/moderator access to the account. In the event that a site requires an individual account, a unique account should be created expressly for this purpose.

Administrator/moderator contact information and account passwords must be on file with Marketing and Communications. For Facebook, the Marketing and Communications account must be added as an administrator. 

No employee or student should be required, asked, or permitted to use a private, personal account for the purposes of creating social media accounts on behalf of the College.

Administrative/moderator access will be terminated upon the employee’s termination, voluntary cessation of employment, or assignment to another job. If for any reason a College department’s social media account is presently linked to an individual person’s email account, that person relinquishes all rights to the account upon graduation, termination, voluntary cessation of employment, or assignment to another job.

Social media accounts created on behalf of Ringling College are the sole property of the College; creators and administrators have no ownership rights whatsoever.

Having a firm understanding of your social community is important when developing a Facebook strategy. Page insights can give administrators an inside look into ways your audiences are engaging with your content.

These guidelines have been established to account for industry-wide best practices and ensure accessibility standards are met across all platforms.

College social media accounts should encourage engagement with and among followers; however, they should reserve the right to remove content that is spam, commercial, obscene, harassing, or derogatory.

Accounts should post a disclaimer similar to this: “Third-party posts directed to this account do not imply endorsement of that content by the College. The Office of Marketing and Communications reserves the right to remove content that is spam, commercial, obscene, harassing, and/or derogatory.”

To maintain a proper representation of the College, College social media accounts may not endorse a religious affiliation or political position representing Ringling College and must remain neutral.

The College has exclusive contracts with some brands, so moderators are encouraged to think twice before endorsing, mentioning, picturing, or linking to competing organizations. This is important, especially when taking photos or running contests with unique prizes.

Facebook

• Post at least 1-2 times per day.
• Tag locations and pages that are being referenced to in the post content.
• Re-share newsworthy posts from other Facebook pages.
• Upload videos directly to your Facebook page.
• Always include closed captioning in videos with audio.
• Create Facebook events for upcoming in-person or virtual events.
• Create photo albums of campus events.
• Use the Facebook publisher tools to schedule posts.
• Regularly update your Facebook cover photo seasonally, or when a big announcement or event arises.
• Pin a recent important post to the top of the Facebook page.
• Reply to other accounts engaging with your account including direct messages.

Instagram

• Aim for 1-3 relevant and timely hashtags in your posts.
• Tag other accounts you’re talking about or are in collaboration with.
• Engage in conversations, tags, and direct messages.

Twitter

• Tweet often, 2-5 times per day.

• Tag other accounts you’re talking about or are in collaboration with.
• Include photos and calls to action to include participation.
• Engage in conversations.
• Reply to other accounts engaging with your account, including direct messages.
• Use relevant emojis sparingly.
• Use Tweetdeck publisher or other publishing tools to schedule posts.

YouTube

• Be intentional about the layout of your channel’s landing page.
• Organize your videos by creating playlists relevant to your content.
• Always add and edit closed captioning.
• All videos must have short and concise titles.
• Include a 3-4 sentence description and call to action with a link to a webpage.
• Set the video language to English.
• Upload a dedicated index image for each video upload.

All College social media accounts must adhere to the approved brand, design, and logo standards of the College to ensure consistency.

They should:

• Reference Ringling College in their title (not Ringling or RCAD).
• The department (or team) responsible for the account must make their department (or team) name clear (via the graphic icon and in the about section) to ensure that users understand that the account is not an official College account. Official College accounts are managed by the Office of Marketing and Communications.
• State that the account is run by students, when applicable.
• Include the official Ringling College social media graphic/icon with entity name, or an approved typesetting as their profile image.
• Usernames should not begin with rcad or any other iteration of the College name, and those that currently exist with this prefix may be asked to change.

Account administrators/moderators may not publish any information that they may have learned through their job, such as closings, cancellations, emergencies, or other non-public information. That information is shared by the Office of Marketing and Communications and registered accounts are encouraged to share/retweet those posts.

Individuals may not portray themselves as acting on behalf of the College. College employees acting in an individual capacity on social media should exercise caution and, when appropriate, clearly communicate he or she is strictly acting in a personal capacity and is not expressing views or opinions in a manner that is representative of the College.

Keep personal views separate from College posts. When posting on behalf of the College, posters must ensure that the contents of your post will further the College’s mission and reflect positively on your department and the College as a whole.

Social media sites provide forums for thoughtful discussion of opposing ideas; if online conversations become volatile or hostile, employees and representatives of the College must remain respectful, professional, and conscious of the College’s primary role as an educational institution.

If a question or comment is directed to one of the College’s social media sites or pages, strive to respond in a timely and appropriate fashion. Supervisors should determine who will be permitted to respond directly to users and whether prior approval is required before issuing a response.

All Ringling College social media accounts must include the following information in the “About” section of the platform.

• “The College reserves the right to remove all user-posted content that is considered obscene, vulgar, or threatening, or is considered spam/advertising.”
• If applicable: “This account is managed by the Ringling College {insert student group name}.”
• A permanent link to www.ringling.edumust be included on all College pages/accounts. 

As a public voice for the College, the content on College social media channels should be informative and interactive with a wide variety of audiences, including current and prospective students, parents, faculty and staff, alumni, and the community.

Content shared should support the College’s strategic efforts.

The content should also be unique to the account’s mission and its established or desired audience. The information presented there should be accurate, and should avoid:

• Implying endorsement of an opinion or entity by the College
• Functioning as an outlet for the personal opinion of one individual
• Linking to sites, “retweeting,” or “liking” pages or posts that contain inappropriate content
• When linking to or “liking” pages or posts, or “retweeting” (RT) or sharing items, these pages or their page titles are reflected in news feeds or the Twitter retweets (RT)

Links: Be wary of posting links to another website, as they could contain viruses or imply the College’s endorsement of the linked site.

Events: Pages, accounts, or event listings for events that are college-wide in nature should only be created by the Office of Marketing and Communications, or with the consent of Marketing and Communications.

Events that have no connection to the College or its academic or strategic priorities should not be promoted on College social media accounts. 

Longevity: Keep in mind that posts may be viewed by anyone, anywhere in the world, and material can be copied and forwarded. In addition, search engines may find posts years after their publication dates. 

Be familiar with the terms of service and policies of the sites and networks with which you interact and ensure that you follow them.

Timing matters when posting on social media. By using Insights and other scheduling platforms, you can determine what days and times are best to post so that your community will see your content.

It is the responsibility of each social media account administrator/moderator to obtain prior permission (i.e. waiver and release) to post, share, or distribute certain identifiable images of individuals as required. Distribution of such photographs or videos in conjunction with a College social media account must be authorized by the Office of Marketing and Communications.

The most successful social media channels have clear message strategies, update content frequently, and know target audiences.

Aim to include:

• Know which social media channels are best – right messages, right audiences
• Consider content in context with the channel (typically brief, visual, call to action)
• Ensure posts are accurate, and grammatically correct. (Follow AP style format)
• Have a dedicated, full-time staff member to manage and monitor social media accounts.
• Consider multimedia (photos, video clips, images) – images get the most traffic
• Create measurement goals and targeted outcomes
• Update content frequently and devise an editorial calendar/publishing schedule
• Be open to the spontaneity of news, current affairs and be creative and fast in posting fresh content (in addition to the regular content calendar)
• Incorporate monitoring tools/analytics study performance results
• Share content from and link to other Ringling College social media accounts
• Consider tone — be approachable as social media tends to be more informal and colloquial
• Bring personality to posts while keeping in mind that the account represents the College
• Be conversational, yet professional
• Be authentic
• Listen to, engage with, and respond to followers