Content shared must relate directly to your office/division, and/or the College as a whole, and should be strategic in furthering the mission of the College
Content should not reflect your personal opinions and/or views
Content should not include any material that is copyrighted without proper licensing
Content that includes creative works requires permission and must be properly sourced / credited
Content must obey the Terms of Service of any social media on which it appears
Establish your purpose, and use that purpose to create a content plan.
What are your goals of using the platform(s)?
Who are you hoping to communicate with? / Who is your audience?
What information are you hoping to share with your audience?
Any student-created content must be approved by the faculty or staff member who is the account manager
A student employee may post for the account manager; however, the account manager is ultimately responsible for all content published to their channel(s)
Any new hashtags created for events and/or campaigns should be well thought through and vetted by checking its current usage on social media
Visual content (photography, graphics, etc.) must use alt text features, which are available within social media platform(s)
Video-based content must use captions. Captions are available on some social media platforms directly, while others may require use of an external software. For questions about captioning video, please contact Adam Atkinson (atkinsad@lafayette.edu).
Frequency
It is our recommended best practice that all social media accounts should have updated content posted an average ofthree times a week during the academic year
If you cannot maintain this frequency, which is crucial in order to build and properly interact with your audience, you should reconsider if social media is necessary to fill your communications needs, or if another solution may be more helpful
As a note, social media industry standards most often recommend an even greater frequency of posts. For more resources on post frequency and industry standards from social media experts:
If there is no activity on your account for more than one month, we will ask that you resume activity, or your account could be shut down, as inactive accounts with Lafayette College’s name reflect negatively on the College
Monitoring and Moderation
Accounts must be regularly monitored, and engagement should be addressed in a timely manner
Preferred response / engagement time: within 24 hours of receiving a comment/message
Some social media accounts have tools that will automatically flag and/or hide comments with profanity. Lafayette College accounts may use these tools as they see fit
Don’t hide or delete negative comments just because you don’t agree with them. Use your judgment; it may be appropriate to address genuine concerns or criticism. Remember that hiding or deleting comments should be a rarity, only to be used in the most extreme of cases
As a general rule of thumb, comments, mentions, tags, and/or direct messages should not be deleted unless under specific circumstances. See Social Media Community Guidelines for more information.
If deleting is necessary, be sure to take a screenshot of the inappropriate commentary, and make sure you are prepared to speak to its grounds for removal
Threats received via social media
If the nature of the threat is an emergency, call Public Safety (610) 330-4444
Include as much information as possible, including username of the individual involved, a screenshot of the message, who or what is involved, when the message was received, and other pertinent information
In the event of an emergency unrelated to your social media site, any scheduled content should be unscheduled as soon as possible as it may be confusing to the Lafayette community who is looking for official guidance
Official messages during emergencies and other incidents will come from the following social media accounts: