Social Media
CSU Social
All official social media pages are listed in our Social Media Directory. For institutional, departmental and recreational use, all Charleston Southern University affiliated pages must comply with the following application steps.
- Thoroughly read the Social Media Policy before submitting the registration application.
- Complete the application below with all social media accounts that currently exist under your supervision.
- Follow our social media best practices to make sure that all accounts are being used properly.
Social media is a great way to connect with current and prospective students, alumni, parents and community members. It is an essential tool to drive engagement and encourage involvement.
Social Media Policies
CSU students and employees should be prepared to maintain Charleston Southern University-branded social media accounts as one would with a department web page. Before deciding if a separate social media presence for one’s program or department is necessary, think about possible content and goals. If content will be limited (i.e., one-time event, biweekly post), then consider asking the administrators of existing accounts to post information instead. Review CSU’s social media best practices for further guidance.
For the purpose of the following policies, social media refers to, but is not limited to blogs (web-based journals) and microblogs (e.g., Tumblr), collaborative websites (e.g., Wikipedia, etc.), message boards, social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), podcasts (multimedia distributed over the internet), video sharing (e.g., YouTube) and photo sharing (e.g., Instagram).
Keep in mind:
- Any account associated with CSU must register with the Office of Marketing & Communication and comply with all policies or face closure.
- All social media posts contribute to the university’s brand and image.
- Administrators should ask themselves if posts convey a message that is consistent with the university’s mission, vision and Biblical core values.
In all of these formats, the Marketing and Communication team integrates Charleston Southern’s core values of learning, leading and serving for all of its audiences.
Social Media Application
Applicants must read all information provided on this page before going forward. Applicants need to make sure that all policies and best practices are understood for both social media administrators. If you have any questions, please reach out to the Content Strategist by email.
Social Media Policies
Having a well-planned social media strategy is essential before setting up a personal, professional or institutional account. The following information provided by CSU’s Office of Marketing and Communication will help you identify your communication goals and map out a strong strategy to launch, grow and sustain engagement on your channels. Before you use social media, consider these three things: permanence, personal responsibility, and public forum.
Build Community
- Determine your intended audience and identify your community.
- Which communities would you like to engage and communicate with?
- Does your digital community already exist? If so, how can you leverage it?
- Asking these questions will help you create a content strategy and identify which social media channels to use.
- Consider that prospective students use very different platforms than older alumni, for example. If there are influencers and thought leaders within your department that have a social media following, collaborate with them to activate and include their existing audience.
Set Goals
- Define your goals and objectives in the beginning so you are able to measure results and refine your content strategy.
- Why do you want to start an account?
- Do you want to increase access to students, faculty, staff and coaches?
- Spark digital engagement with a specific community?
- Solicit user-generated content?
- Why do you want to start an account?
- Determine your goals, write them down and seek feedback from your team.
- Platforms and channels evolve fast and frequently, so it is important to map out your goals before you choose a platform.
- Social media allows you to deliver tailored messages to hypertargeted audiences, so different channels often have different goals.
Allocate Time & Resources
- For optimal engagement, it’s advised that administrators post at least twice a week. Posting rarely and inconsistently could lead to probation and removal of your CSU-related social media account(s).
- If you are using more than one platform, define a purpose for each.
- Each platform is unique, so post accordingly.
- Do not start an account unless you have the dedicated time and resources to maintain a consistent content strategy.
- A lot of campaigns fail because there is a lack of commitment to the channel.
- Plan ahead!
- Also realize that social media channels are tools that will help you achieve communication goals, but may not always be the best option for every project or goal.
- A lot of successful pages use a content calendar to plan out what posts need to be posted when. Maintain consistent image and voice when having multiple page administrators.
Conduct Research
- Research similar accounts within your niche for ideas and best practices.
- Create a competitive landscape of your peers and conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis.
- What do you see working?
- What could you adopt, apply and augment for your own content and community?
- What do you see that isn’t performing as well?
- Think outside of the higher education community for opportunities.
- Some of the best ideas and campaigns come from unexpected places.
- Explore communities that have similar goals and see what’s working well for them.
Drive Engagement
- Become an early adopter and be an active user of the platform.
- Respond as necessary to inbound questions and comments.
- Remember that social media is a two-way street. Engage in conversation with your audience.
- Each channel has its own unique set of functionalities and requires rethinking traditional engagement from static websites.
- Timeliness and consistent engagement is expected. Engagement often requires collaboration across teams.
- Share information across departments and work closely with your colleagues on how to best respond to comments, engage, and promote content.
- Check your hashtag! Ensure it is not only relevant, but also read it to be sure it cannot be misconstrued for another phrase/meaning.
Measure Results
- Determine what success means to you and your team.
- Your success metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) should be defined when you map out goals.
- Page Views are no longer the only metric that matters.
- Look at Comments, Video Views, Likes, Shares, Reactions, and content submissions.
- Social media channels are increasingly the primary communication channel for your community and contain a wealth of data.
- Are you delivering and tailoring the right messages on these channels?
- Use all available data, insights and metrics within each platform to measure and quantify engagement.
Not sure how to respond?
Check out our helpful Social Media Response Chart here.