Social media at Berry College plays a vital role in enhancing communication, fostering community, facilitating learning and supporting the mission of the college. All Berry channels are an extension of our Brand identity. Social media supports brand awareness and reputation building for the college. As such, it’s important that we maintain a consistent and authentic voice when communicating to various constituents.
Berry’s approach to posts related to social or political issues is informed by the University of Chicago’s Principles of Institutional Neutrality, articulated in the Kalven Report. These principles stem from the idea that a college’s primary role is to be a forum for intellectual exploration. Official Berry College social media accounts must maintain “an independence from political fashions, passions and pressures,” as the Report reads. This includes not taking official stances on social or political issues.
Berry’s official social media channels, including institutional and departmental, should abide by this standard. Berry is a community that is committed to fostering open discourse, marked by compassion and respect for the dignity of others.
Departmental social media accounts should post about events and topics related to their department, school, division, or office, rather than broad social or political topics or personal ideas. Berry departments and organizations should consult with Berry College Marketing and Communications before posting about campus-wide programming or making statements as or on behalf of the institution.
Types of Accounts
Institutional – Primary accounts that represent the institution as a whole and are managed by the Marketing and Communications office. These accounts exist to:
- Be Berry’s authentic voice to the public
- Support brand awareness and reputation building
- Create opportunities for constituent engagement
- Showcase the college
- Provide a central point of communication during a crisis
Departmental – Accounts that refer to and are managed by a specific department, school, division, program, council, committee, sport or student enterprise. These accounts usually target a more narrowly focused group or audience and must adhere to Berry brand standards. These accounts exist to:
- Further extend brand awareness and reputation building within specific audiences
- Inform these audiences of events, happenings, information and stories at the department level
- Engage with specific groups or audiences
Groups and organizations that are connected to a department, broadly represent the campus community and/or are operated by paid student workers fall under this designation (i.e. SGA, KCAB, Peer Educators).
Organizational – Accounts that refer to and are managed around a specific organization or activity, targeting a more narrowly focused group or audience. Social media accounts for student-run media and publications also fall into this category. These groups are encouraged to use colors and themes that are complimentary to the Berry College brand, but should not use the Berry College logo, or any derivative.
Current institutional, departmental and organizational accounts are listed under the Berry Social Media Directory at berry.edu/social/directory.
Additional Notes About the Berry Identity and Style
The Berry identity must be consistent in presentation across all institutional and departmental channels. Specifically, the crestmark/logo is not to be altered. Most often, social channels should use the stacked crestmark. See page 18 of the branding document for any further questions or reach out to the Office of Marketing and Communication for assistance.
Guidelines for setting up departmental or organizational social accounts
Before you create a new account, consider the following questions:
- Is a new channel necessary? Could working with an existing channel sufficiently achieve the same goals? Have you checked to see if similar channels already exist?
- Would a group on Facebook (or, for student-focused areas, a Discord channel) be a better fit than a departmental or organizational account?
- Do I have the time and resources available to commit to a social media account? NOTE: Stagnate social media channels actually may harm your area or the institution more than they help.
To set up a new social media account:
Contact Hannah Stuart via email (hstuart@berry.edu) in the Office of Marketing and Communication after doing the following:
- Draft a mission and purpose statements and include those with your email
- Designate a Fac/Staff administrator for each account and include their contact information
- Include desired platform(s), suggested handle(s) and a desired profile image
NOTE: Departments are REQUIRED to get pre-approval from Marketing and Communications before setting up any new Berry-associated account.
In addition, the following security precautions should be observed:
- Both departmental and organizational social media accounts should designate a Fac/Staff administrator over the account so that Berry does not lose access. This information must be registered with the Office of Marketing and Communication
- For Facebook, remove access for students who have graduated. For other platforms, change shared account passwords when students graduate or employees leave
Considerations
- Commit to monitoring your social accounts daily — you want to know what’s going on with your audience.
- Be familiar with the terms of service and policies of the platforms you use and follow them.
- Post engaging content. The definition of “engaging” varies by audience.
- Post consistently — this could be every day, every other day, etc., but stick to your schedule.
- Don’t post simply to post — though posting consistently is important, remember that you don’t always have to enter a conversation or post something simply to be posting. Sometimes it’s better not to post at all.
- Engage with your audience via likes/comments — part of creating a community is cultivating that sense of connection and conversation!
- PROOFREAD before posting, including fact-checking. If someone corrects a post (i.e. a name is spelled wrong), say thank you and simply make the edit.
- Do not publish confidential or false information.
- Remember that social media posts are public and may be viewed by anyone, anywhere in the world. Posts can be copied, recorded, and shared, and can be found by search engines for years after being published.
- Monitor analytics to track growth and adjust your strategy accordingly — you’d be amazed what information you can glean from the numbers, including posting times and types of content. Contact Hannah Stuart if assistance is needed.
- Support other Berry pages and accounts (follow, share, like!)
Accessibility
At Berry, we require social media content from all official accounts to follow accessibility best practices. By making your content accessible to the broadest range of people, you ensure that the widest range of your audience can enjoy the content you’ve worked so hard to create.
Some key best practices for accessible social media content include:
- Including alt text (image descriptions), especially any flattened text, for all images in social posts.
- Using hashtags in moderation and placing them at the end of posts when possible.
- Using Camel Case/Pascal Case/Title Case (capitalizing each individual word) in hashtags (ex: #WeAllRow, #BerryStories, etc.) where platforms allow — TikTok does not always support Camel Case in its hashtags, for example
- Using emoji in moderation, not using them as bullet points and placing them at the end of posts when possible.
- Captioning all videos that include dialogue or other important audio.
- Avoiding using flashing lights or strobe effects in videos.
Need a quick way to determine if your content is accessible? Use this handy checklist from Accessible Social: https://www.accessible-social.com/checklist
Learn more about social media accessibility at https://www.accessible-social.com/
Dealing With Negative Comments and Trolls
We welcome open conversation with all connected to or wanting to learn more about Berry and wish to ensure all conversations remain open, yet respectful. In the majority of cases, we do not delete posts. If necessary, you can hide posts or comments. Hiding leaves the comment available for the person who wrote it to see, but no one else; deleting removes it entirely and may cause a more negative reaction than not acknowledging the comment at all.
Please keep in mind the following best practices. Types of posts that may be deleted:
- Hate speech
- Vulgar language
- Sexually crude remarks
- Personal attacks of any sort
- Comments that may endanger the health or safety of others
- Spam comments (persistently off-topic, promoting commercial sites or products, political comments, etc. that have no relevance to the post topic)
For repeat offenders, accounts may be blocked or banned after a warning.
You should not arbitrarily censor or delete comments. Reference the reasons above for deleting or banning and consider responding to answer the commenter’s question or to clarify the original post. Often the community will regulate a negative comment or post by sharing their own experiences.
Please contact Hannah Stuart in the Office of Marketing and Communication with questions about these guidelines.
Hannah Stuart
hstuart@berry.edu
760.238.7963