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Social Media Account and Posting Guidelines

Social networks are powerful communications tools that have a significant impact on our institutional reputation. While they present a great way to connect with your audience, they also have the possibility of many unintended consequences. Roanoke College has created the following guidelines to assist you when using social media.

Creating a new social media account for your office

Before creating an account, please be prepared to follow these guidelines:

  • Have a plan: By creating an account for your office or department, you should be prepared to maintain it and keep it updated, as you would with a department website. Departments should consider their audience, their content, goals, and a strategy for keeping information up-to-date. You should plan to post something at least once per week. 
  • Account Access: At least two people in your office or department must be granted administrator privileges for any new social accounts that are created for a Roanoke entity.  This is to ensure continuity in the event that the page administrator is no longer able to maintain the page or leaves the college. 
  • Profile Images: You should not use the Roanoke College logo or shield as the profile image, as that is reserved for the main college accounts. Departments and offices can use a logo lock-up, which is the Roanoke College logo with your department name. You can request a logo lock-up from the Graphic Designer. Alternatively, you can use a photo for the profile image. 
  • Account Name and Handles: For account names, you should use your office's official name. Examples: Roanoke College Admissions, Roanoke College Track & Field.  For handles, you should use the college's name or an abbreviation (RoanokeCollege, Roanoke or RC) + your office name or a shortened version of your office name.  Examples: @RCAdmissions, @RoanokeFootball, @RoanokeCollegeBiology
  • Graphics: The images for all Roanoke-affiliated social media pages will maintain a consistent graphic identity according to the college's style guidelines. 

If you have any questions, please contact the Director of Digital Communications in the marketing and communications office. 

Any existing sites or pages that represent Roanoke College will be reviewed routinely and may be amended or, when necessary, removed.  All policies, procedures, and guidelines regarding College trademarks, names, and symbols apply to social networking sites.

When posting on behalf of Roanoke College

If you post on behalf of Roanoke College for a particular department or office, then the following guidelines must be adhered to:

  1. Terms & Conditions: You are expected to adhere to the Social Media Commenting Policy.
  2. Speak for your office:  Posts on social media sites should remain professional in tone and in good taste. Speak on behalf of your office or program only, not in a personal nature and not for the institution as a whole.
  3. Strive for accuracy: Get the facts straight before posting and review content for grammatical and spelling errors.
  4. Be responsible: What you write is ultimately your responsibility. Participation in social media on behalf of Roanoke College is not a right, but an opportunity, so please treat it seriously.
  5. Copyrights: Respect the copyright of others. This means don't steal photos or videos that other people have shared and pass them off as your own. It is not legal to copy and use images that you find online.
  6. Privacy: Be aware of and follow FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, protecting students' personally identifiable information in educational records.

When posting as yourself on your own personal social media pages

  1. Confidentiality: Protect confidential and proprietary information of Roanoke College.
  2. Logos: While you may use Roanoke College's logo, you may not use Roanoke's name or logo to promote or endorse any product, cause, or political candidate.  Roanoke's trademark and logo guidelines can be found here.
  3. Identify views as your own: Identify views as your own. If you identify yourself as a representative of Roanoke College, make it clear that views that are expressed are not necessarily those of the college.
  4. Using personal sites for work: If you need to connect regularly with your constituents on a personal level through social media, then you might consider creating a separate Facebook profile just to use for work related purposes.  If you decide not to do so, then extra attention must be paid to ensure that your posts, even personal ones, are appropriate for your Roanoke College constituents to view. Never speak about Roanoke College, its students, faculty or staff in any way that could be considered disparaging or inappropriate. As a rule of thumb, if you are using your personal profile for work purposes, then you should not post anything you would not want College administrators to view. Some supervisors may require you to friend them with whatever account you are using to communicate to constituents so they can monitor how the College is being represented.

Updates and Contact Information

Due to the evolving nature of social media, these guidelines are subject to revision by the web team at any time. We also welcome feedback from the campus community. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact:

socialmedia@roanoke.edu