Policies & Procedures

GA2012.2 College Social Media Procedure

Purpose

Social media is a valuable marketing and communication tool for the College. SUNY Broome Community College’s Department of Marketing, Communications and Public Information (MarCom) administrates accounts on various social networking platforms which are the College’s primary and official channels. This procedure articulates standards for social media that are adhered to by MarCom on the College’s official channels, as well as best practices for social media platforms that are affiliated with, but not the direct property of, the College.

Statement of the Procedure

SUNY Broome welcomes contributions to our social media pages in the spirit of sharing information and encouraging engagement among prospective students, current students, alumni, staff, faculty, and the larger community. Content shared on SUNY Broome’s official channels will be appropriate and relevant to these audiences. MarCom makes strategic decisions to ensure that our social media content is engaging and positive.

Comments shared by users do not reflect the opinions or policies of SUNY Broome. SUNY Broome is not responsible for comments made by visitors to the page, and reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to screen, block, suspend, hide, and/or remove content that:

• is significantly off-topic
• is commercial where the primary purpose is to promote, endorse or sell a product or service
• promotes, fosters or perpetuates discrimination
• is profane or obscene
• is spam or includes links to external online sites
• contains falsehoods or is slanderous
• promotes a candidate for election to political office
• threatens, harasses or incites threats and harassment of others
• is or encourages sexual harassment
• is or encourages illegal activity
• includes information that is confidential or may compromise the safety of the public

MarCom’s social media managers will seek to allow public commenting and interaction as much as possible. We will encourage civility, use sound ethical judgment, and maintain confidentiality and protect proprietary information at all times. MarCom will remove users who are abusive to others and/or violate the previously mentioned guidelines.

Social Media Guidelines

Prior to creating an official social media account that is affiliated with the College, approval from MarCom and the appropriate Vice President must be obtained. Only College faculty, staff and employees are authorized to launch and manage new college-affiliated social media pages. A member of the MarCom office must always have administrative access to affiliate social media pages, in the event that a page needs to be modified or removed quickly.

The steps described above are not necessary for private social media groups which are intended for particular programs.

The SUNY Broome brand must be always protected. Improper use of the logo (including not sizing the image file correctly), punctuation and grammar errors, poor image selection, content errors, bad links and any sloppiness will negatively impact the College’s brand.

Managers and creators of college‐affiliated pages should remove pages which are inactive or outdated.

Related Policies (by number)

GA2012 Marketing and Communications Policy

To whom it applies (title or department)

This procedure applies to the College’s faculty and staff, students, and affiliates.