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Florida Southern College’s Marketing Department designs, edits, writes, and produces content across a variety of communications platforms, including the college’s website, and its social media channels. We manage day-to-day social media content and are responsible for maintaining the branding and messaging of the College.

We maintain the College’s overall visual identity, produce video and photography that helps promote and convey ������ý’s story in specific, authentic, and compelling ways.

With social media, Florida Southern engages in conversations with current and prospective students, faculty, and staff, as well as alumni, families, colleagues, fans, and friends, strengthening connections and extending the community found on the ������ý campus.

In addition to maintaining the college’s official social media presence, we provide guidance to College departments, faculty and staff, clubs and organizations to ensure Florida Southern’s branding is preserved.

If you are interested in creating your own social media channel within ������ý’s community, please contact the Office of Marketing and Communication, and follow the guidelines below.

Guidance

Florida Southern supports the use of social media by the campus community to connect with other members of ������ý. These guidelines serve as way to better inform students, faculty, and staff of the opportunities and consequences associated with social networking. These guidelines are not intended to be a comprehensive “how to” guide, nor are they meant to encourage individual offices and programs to create their own social media platforms. Rather, these guidelines are intended to help you evaluate whether doing so will help you meet your goals. Before you launch a social media presence for your department or program, consider whether the College’s main accounts can meet your needs. You should always feel free to turn to the Marketing department for help getting the word out about research, programs, publications, events, etc.

Be selective in the sites you use. Consider which platform best meets the needs of your office/department/program. It’s easier to start with one platform and master it before adding another rather than doing a little bit in a lot of different places. Keep in mind whether you have the staff needed to keep your platforms updated with interesting content.

If you have accounts that will be managed by student workers, be sure to create a master account so that you or someone in your office always has access to it. Students leave and sometimes they take the log-in information with them. Be sure you can still get into your account, even after the student worker has left.

If and when you are ready to establish user profiles across multiple platforms, you should be consistent with your user name/handle/etc. as well as with the contact and profile information supplied in each.

Once you have created the account, make sure to share the log in and password with the Office of Marketing and Communication.

Best Practices for a Successful Social Media Presence

Remember, everything you do online can and will live forever

Remembering that anything you share within social media, even within a closed network, is not private. Content can and will be shared, stored and spread globally. Viewers can take screengrabs. Don’t post anything online you wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing on the front page of the newspaper or on a news website. Also be sure to check your facts and any web links you’re sharing.

When in doubt, ask.

If you aren’t sure if something is appropriate to share via social media, contact the  Office of Marketing and Communication.

Best Practices for Creating Effective Social Media Content

Effective social media content (both original and responses to others) should be informational rather than overtly promotional regardless of the platform used. It should be updated regularly, so be certain you have the staff necessary to keep your social outlets current.