Social Media Policies: Different Approaches and Needs

Social media policies are becoming not only popular in higher education and student affairs, but also a necessity.  Some policies focus on upholding the school brand through various social media avenues. Other policies focus on student social media use as addenda to harassment policies or conduct standards. Recently I have witnessed students using social media avenues to attack other students. Twitter and facebook  are most common, however other avenues such as YouTube have been used for these reasons also.  These are two very different reasons to have social media policies at our institutions but both very applicable.

Some common themes of social media policies include “how to” guides as well as best practices. However, many social media policies are addenda to already in tact PR policies so the same rules apply in terms of logos, text, or any other examples of marketing standards for the institutions. The institution I currently work for is developing a social media policy as it relates to students and is more of an addendum to our harassment policy. In addition to that, they are also developing a Ning or a social network which will incorporate different forms of social media and be able to connect members of the community to all forms of social media related to the college, whether that be an admissions facebook page or student life flickr page. Most best practice sections include sections on branding and etiquette and most are fairly similar.

What are some important sections beyond this people feel should be included in policies? What are important branding and etiquette best practices? Some great resources for this are Depaul University’s policy, Indiana University South Bend’s policy, as well as University of Deleware’s.

Does your institution have a social media policy? Who in your department works with social media?

Haley Lindemood is the Assistant Director of Residence Life at Hanover College in Hanover, Ind.

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