Social media guidelines

University of Minnesota Libraries
policies, best practices, and guidelines for social media

If you plan to create a social media channel for a University of Minnesota Libraries service, collection, department, or other official entity, you must first submit a request to the Libraries director of communications.

To get started:

Define objectives and goals

  1. Define your audience – whom are you trying to reach?
  2. What are you trying to achieve? Consider broad and specific goals.
  3. Is social media going to help you reach these goals? What other tools are you planning to use?
  4. Are there existing social media channels within the Libraries that you can use instead?
  5. Develop measurement criteria – how will you know that you are successful?
  6. Write a draft social media plan and meet with the director of communications.
  7. Share final social media plan with communications and with your supervisor.

Choose your platform(s)

Whichever platform you choose, do it well – quality over quantity. Research the various platforms and choose the best fit for your audience and your goals. Start focused with one social media channel and expand later based on your success or experience.

Managing social media

Best practices for continuously generating social media content:

  1. Integrate social media planning with your overall communications plan.
  2. Don’t just broadcast – engage your audience, share content from others, poll your audience, and respond to questions. Use social media as a customer service tool. Monitor social media to see what others are saying about the Libraries and respond when appropriate. 
  3. Collaborate with contributors from other University of Minnesota Libraries social media channels. If you are a staff member who blogs or posts about issues related to libraries, you should consider following and interacting with “official” Libraries social media channels. And, likewise, managers of “official” Libraries social media channels should consider following and interacting with these professionally focused social media channels — whether or not they are University of Minnesota Libraries staff members.
  4. Ensure that each social media channel is managed by more than one person, to ensure that you have a back up plan should someone go on vacation, is out ill, or leaves the Libraries.

Plan and schedule your social media content:

  1. Plan to post and monitor content several times a week to daily, include weekends if you schedule content. Blogs should be updated at least every other week.
  2. Establish an editorial calendar and an engagement calendar for your social media channels. Share with the director of communications.
  3. Consider using a social media management tool to schedule and manage content. 

Measure the effectiveness of your social media content:

  1. Use social media analytics and/or Google Analytics to track your effectiveness. Report your results to your supervisor and share with the communications team.
  2. Create a spreadsheet or document to report on practices that have been successful or ineffective. You may want to model future content on what has been successful in reaching your audience.

Use of official University of Minnesota Libraries social media

Do not use an official University of Minnesota Libraries social media channel to promote personal causes. Use it only for University of Minnesota Libraries business.

Handling controversial remarks and inappropriate behavior

  1. Delete remarks on official Libraries’ channels from social media users who post inappropriate remarks based on race, religion, sex, or ethnicity. When you come across inappropriate remarks on other users channels as part of monitoring, it might be best to ignore the message rather than respond. Use your best judgment.
  2. If a critical remark that is otherwise appropriate is posted about the Libraries, in many or most cases, it is best to address it. If it pertains to an issue you are not able to address as a Libraries employee, please forward to your supervisor and/or the director of communications.

Follow up with social media users who inquire about University Libraries services.

If you are contacted with a question regarding University Libraries services and you do not know the answer to the question, please direct the user to contact the University Libraries using the “Contact us” form. 

University of Minnesota social media guidelines

The University of Minnesota has a full page of social media guidelines.