Social Media
Social media is a powerful communications tool used by Southeast Community College to educate, inform and engage with its students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community partners. The key to successful social media efforts is the ability to connect with your intended audiences, start conversations and build community.
While social media networks are free to set up, the time and effort to maintain the site is not. Please take the following guidelines into consideration before establishing and managing SCC-affiliated accounts:
- Goals and Objectives: Why do you want to use social media, and what do you hope to achieve? Goals and objectives should be measurable and specific for each channel.
- Responsibility: Who is going to handle the day-to-day operations of content management and monitoring the social media channel(s)? Success in social media requires time, energy and thought. Be realistic about whether you can commit the time and resources needed to create and monitor content. When possible, avoid relying on students for this role.
- Audience: Who do you intend to reach via social media? Be specific and include internal as well as external audiences for each channel. You may find your audiences are slightly different.
- Channel: What social media channels do you want to utilize? Your audience will determine the best channel(s) to use.
- Promotion: How will you add followers on your channel(s)? Have a plan for the best way to grow your social media presence.
- Frequency: How often will you post to Facebook or tweet on Twitter? The trick is to be consistent; utilizing a monthly content calendar is often helpful.
- Monitoring: Who will respond to posts/questions on each of your channels? Part of the time factor with social media is engaging with your audience in real-time when they leave a comment or ask a question.
- Evaluation: Did you meet your goals? Determine the best method for measuring your success at accomplishing your goals.
- Review: How often should you review your social media plan and make adjustments? After evaluating whether the goals were met, adjust the plan accordingly.
Remember, social media pages are secondary information sources – the southeast.edu website serves as the official primary Web presence for the College. SCC currently maintains a presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube. Use social media as a channel to direct traffic to the website. If you do not intend to post content on a consistent basis, consider submitting content to be posted on the SCC social media channels instead.
Social Media Guidelines and Best Practices