Brand Guide

Social Media Guidelines

Central College supports the engagement of prospective students, current students, faculty, staff, alumni and the community in the social media space. These guidelines are designed to help Central faculty and staff in making appropriate decisions when managing or developing social media pages/content on behalf of the college. These guidelines are intended to follow the Central policies already put in place.

Management and Account Administration

Before you begin creating a social media presence for your departments, office, organization or club, please contact Aubrey Schafbuch, content specialist – social media and web writing, to inform the Office of Communications about your page and learn guidelines to follow. We recommend that a faculty member, staff member or advisor is an administrator on the page. It is acceptable to assign a student to run the page.

Please keep in mind those accounts are affiliated with Central. Posts from those accounts are a direct reflection of Central’s brand. Anyone who creates a page or has a page role needs to sign a document agreeing to hand over the username, password and give up their page role status once they graduate or no longer are affiliated with that department, office, organization or club. In addition, any account that becomes inactive is subject to deletion. Inactivity is defined as no tweets or posts within six consecutive months. Representatives from the Communications Office will periodically monitor accounts for activity. You will be contacted about inactive accounts and how to proceed moving forward.

Best Practices

• Post regularly.
• Be transparent. Acknowledge and correct mistakes.
• Engage in friendly, civil and respectful conversations.
• Ensure content is accurate and current.
• Interact with those who are engaging in our content.
• Use brand voice and stay positive. Do not use negative language. No emojis on Facebook (few exceptions).
• Have a plan. Consider the audience, the message and social media goals/ targets. Don’t let the social presence lapse into inactivity.
• Make your posts engaging. Posts perform better when there is a photo or video attached with a link.
• Whenever possible, link back to Central’s website to help drive traffic to central.edu.
• Never display or promote content that violates Central College policies.
• Do not endorse or oppose political candidates or engage in politically charged discussions.
• Address issues that arise from the community when appropriate. Be careful not to violate privacy laws that could harm the image and reputation of the college.
• Monitor social accounts and remove comments, photos, video links and posts that contain profanity, are spam, or are unlawful, threatening, harassing, bullying or hateful content.
• Political guidelines: There will be no endorsing of any political candidates or parties. If a candidate or political person is on campus, we can share that. The best practice would be to say they will be here, we do not need to identify their party. If we do this for one person, we need to be fair and do for all.

Additional Guidelines

When you are adding/changing your profile photo and cover photo, make sure you are using the correct logos. Also, make sure your photos show you are affiliated with Central; no random photos for profile or cover photos. Office of Communications reserves the right to hide or remove usergenerated content in comments that violate Central’s policies. This also applies to comments and posts that are inappropriate, vulgar or disrespectful to Central, including students, faculty, staff, board members and alumni.

Crisis Communication

In the event of an emergency, Central College will communicate a unified message across all institutional social media platforms. Social media is increasingly becoming the first place people will go in the event of an emergency. If you manage a social media page affiliated with Central, you agree to only share information directly from Central’s institutional accounts and direct others to that account. You also agree to share critical information directly to the Office of Communications. Please contact the Central College Office of Communications for questions.

Social Icons

When using icons in print or digital communications, the order should be Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

Contact Us

In addition to the above guidelines, please contact Aubrey Schafbuch in the Central College Communications Office for additional information and assistance.