Social Media Guidelines for Employees

Starting a Social Media Site on Behalf of the University

First, thank you for promoting Baker! Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other social sites are excellent ways to build your brand. Need assistance?

• Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  in the marketing and communications office.
• The marketing department can serve as administrators for the site and help create it but will not be responsible for content.

Best Practices for Social Media

Baker University encourages sharing its news on social media sites. It’s an effective, inexpensive medium to distribute our message and brand to the public. That said, we ask employees and constituents to follow these guidelines:

Maintain Confidentiality

Do not post confidential information about Baker University or any of our students, administrators or staff. As an employee of the University, there will be times when you come into contact with sensitive information. Please keep this to yourself, and remember that there is no such thing as an entirely private social media site. It’s possible that content you post, no matter your settings, can show up in search engines long after being deleted.

Don’t Harm the University

Before you post or provide commentary, be mindful of whether your words can harm the University’s or its affiliates’ image.

Who Is Responsible?

You are responsible for any postings your name accompanies. You are responsible for what you post on your own site and on the sites of others. Individual bloggers have been held liable for commentary deemed to be copyright infringement, defamatory, proprietary, libelous, or obscene. As a general rule, don’t write anything on social sites that you wouldn't feel comfortable saying out loud in your office.

Maintain Transparency

If you are posting on behalf of the University, say so. Make it known who you are before you promote, and be honest about your identity. In personal posts, you may identify yourself as a Baker employee, but please make it clear through your bio, Twitter description, and so on that your views are yours as an individual.

Corrections

If you make a mistake in a social media post, correct it, and then disclose the correction to your fans, followers, and so on.