Social Media
Overview
Social media enables Yakima Valley College to interact directly with the communities it serves. It provides a public venue for promoting the college, answering questions and sharing stories about our students, alumni, faculty, staff and campus life. Examples of social media sites are YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok and SnapChat.
Guidelines
The Community Relations office oversees the social media efforts of YVC and manages the college’s main social channel accounts. If you are interested in creating a social media account for a department, program, club or other YVC entity, please contact our office. Some important reminders and guidelines are included below:
- All college-sponsored social media sites must be approved by the Community Relations office. All college departments, programs and student clubs interested in creating a new social media account must first develop a social media action plan, which outlines who is responsible for the page, how the social channel will advance their goals, and how they will develop content. This plan should be submitted to Community Relations for approval.
- All divisions must provide a list of college-sponsored social media accounts, usernames and passwords to Community Relations.
- Only authorized agents of the college may conduct official college business using college-sponsored social media sites.
- All college-sponsored social media sites must include an approved YVC logo as well as the non-discrimination statement and/or a link to the statement on the College website.
- To ensure that your social media efforts adhere to the design and policy standards of YVC and that your efforts are not tied specifically to an individual’s personal account, all official YVC social media accounts must be created as business pages. Pages should be titled as follows “YVC Name of Program/Department/Club”. When possible custom URLs should be created with YVC/Name of Program/Department/Club. An example would be YVC Art Club (page title) and facebook.com/yvcartclub.
- Only those sites that meet these criteria are considered college-sponsored social media sites.
Any program, department or student club wishing to create a social networking or social media account should first review the following guidelines as well as the Washington State Guidelines and Best Practices for Social Media Use.
Best Practices for Use of Social Media
1. Be Thoughtful About Your Posts
Privacy doesn’t exist in the world of social media. Search engines can turn up posts years after they are created and comments can be forwarded or copied, even if you’ve deleted a post. Any post has the potential to become widely known. If you wouldn’t say something at a public meeting or feel comfortable with it appearing on the front page of the local paper or evening news, carefully consider whether you should post it online. If you are unsure about posting something or responding to a comment, don’t hesitate to seek advice from your supervisor or the college’s Community Relations staff.
2. Maintain Confidentiality
Do not post confidential or proprietary information about YVC, its students, alumni or employees. Use good ethical judgment and follow the college’s policies and federal requirements, such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Under FERPA, directory information (information contained in the education record of a student which would generally not be considered harmful or an invasion of privacy, such as a student’s program of study and participation in officially recognized activities and sports) may be disclosed while non-directory information (such as race, nationality or gender) may not be disclosed). Social media are public forums — do not post anything that is not suitable for presentation in a public forum. Before sharing photos in which individuals are identifiable make sure they have consented by signing an YVC Information, Photo and Graphic Release Form.
3. Remember Your Audience
A presence in the social media world is or easily can be made available to the public at large. This includes prospective students, current students, colleagues, peers, your supervisor and the media. Consider this and whether a post may alienate, harm or provoke these or other groups.
4. Strive for Accuracy
Get the facts straight before posting them on social media. It is better to verify information first than to have to post a correction or retraction later. Review content for grammatical and spelling errors. Take care in sharing/retweeting content of questionable accuracy posted by others.
5. Don’t Feed the Trolls
If someone doesn’t have a legitimate complaint, it’s best to ignore them until they get bored and move on rather than potentially escalating a situation. If someone is being abusive or harassing, you can mute or block them, and you can always contact the college’s Community Relations team for support.
6. Do Not Engage In Cyberbullying
Do not harass, libel, slander or embarrass anyone. Do not post any material that is obscene, defamatory, profane, libelous, threatening, harassing, abusive, hateful or embarrassing to another person or entity. Individuals may be held personally liable for defamatory, proprietary or libelous commentary. Keep in mind YVC is an equal opportunity employer and familiarize yourself with the college’s policies covering non-discrimination and sexual harassment.
7. Take Care with Satire and Sarcasm
Satire and sarcasm often don’t translate well on social media and can easily be taken out of context. Take care, especially if a post could be perceived as offensive without more context.
8. What About Disclaimers?
Even if you don’t specifically state your affiliation with Yakima Valley College in your profile, people are very likely to be aware of that affiliation. In all social media interactions, whether or not you use a disclaimer in your profile, you may be perceived as representing YVC.
Administration
Assign an administrator who regularly monitors postings and content. While the recommended minimum frequency of posts is once to twice a week, be sure not to overload your followers with updates. When page editors and administrators, especially students, have left the college and no longer require access to social media accounts, you must update/adjust your page roles immediately and update passwords (make sure to notify Community Relations of any password changes).
Stagnant Accounts
Community Relations reserves the right to disable or temporarily unpublish YVC social media accounts that are dormant (no recent posts or activity) as such stagnancy reflects poorly on the college.
Main YVC Social Media Sites
The Community Relations office maintains an official college presence on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn. Several other departments and student clubs also maintain secondary accounts. For additional information, please contact Community Relations.