Social Media Guidelines

  1. Social media refers to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
     
  2. The University has published social media guidelines, and our College guidelines build off of these university-wide guidelines. Please follow them when you are posting as a representative of the College, to an official account.
     
  3. The College has an email account (AgSci_socialmedia@oregonstate.edu) for submitting important announcements and stories to feature on the college’s social media platforms. Site coordinators or unit representatives can post these on their unit's social media accounts, in addition to submitting to the College social media accounts.
     
  4. Contact the Web Manager (Gaurav.Mandan@oregonstate.edu) when you plan to create a social media account for a unit in the College, so your sites can be added our social media directory. This allows us to promote all the social networking resources in the College in one place.
     
  5. Overall, we discourage smaller units from setting up social media pages that may be seldom updated. However, larger units, such as centers or departments may want to connect with their uniques audiences. We recommend that page administrators check the page often to respond to questions and posts.
     
  6. Students (graduate or undergraduate) should not be the primary administrators of any social media sites for the College. Even though a unit might have excellent student workers, they graduate and move on. Student workers can be integral in finding stories, responding to comments, and crafting relevant content, but only under supervision.

Social Media Administrators

Responsibilities of page administrators include:

  1. Reviewing and following the University-level guidelines regarding content posted on the site.
     
  2. Alerting individuals that will be featured. Send an email to the individuals pictured letting them know you plan to post them on Facebook, and give them the option to decline.
     
  3. Not posting images that may reflect poorly on the University or that may be of an inflammatory subject.
     
  4. Using the terms "AgSci" or "College of Agricultural Sciences" when referring to the College.
     
  5. Monitoring the page on a daily basis to be certain that questions and posts are responded to in a timely manner.
     
  6. Posting regularly to drive engagement and to make the page a valid communication outlet. Remove inappropriate comments, spam posts, etc. You should have a statement saying we reserve the right to remove improper postings. The Web Manager can help add these statements to your site.

Social Media Strategy

Units considering creating a social media site should consider the following questions:

    • What sort of content will we be sharing? Is it enough to maintain consistency?
    • Who is our audience?
    • Will we be able to use this account year round?
    • How can we work with the general Oregon State accounts and other account coordinators across campus? Can we spread our message without having to create our own accounts?
    • How will our audience grow? Will it grow? How big is it?
    • What platform will serve us best? Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Photos? Links? Videos?

Your answers to these questions should determine if you start or maintain a devoted page on a specific platform and which platform you use to distribute certain content.

Want to get highlighted in the College Social Media platforms?

We are interested in highlighting the best that the College has to offer. This could be:

  • Awesome student internships
  • Student Awards
  • Student spotlighted in a news article
  • Student Blogs
  • Faculty Research
  • Faculty awards and recognition
  • New Faculty spotlights
  • Unit level recognition
  • Unit bragging points
  • Events around campus where AgSci students /staff/faculty are involved
  • Events across the state where the college would be involved

Remember that content with pictures make 80% more impact.

Follow us on Twitter: @OSUAgSci

Like us on Facebook: OSUAgSci

If you have content that the college could use for social media, please send it to agsci_socialmedia@oregonstate.edu