This page includes tips to help you manage your Twitter, Facebook, Blog, and LinkedIn accounts.  For specific questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Twitter Tips  |  Facebook Tips  |  Blogging Tips  |  Youtube Tips  |  LinkedIn Tips

Word to the Wise when Representing Carleton University on Social Media

Here are some things to keep in mind regardless of what network you are on:

  • Read your post three times before posting.  First time ask, is this something I think is ok for Carleton University to be talking about?  Second time check your grammar.  Third time make sure you’ve added any hashtags, tags, images etc. that would help boost your post.
  • Be clear about your posting expectations.  If you only post and respond during business hours make this clear to your followers.  During your specified ‘available’ times, someone should be available to monitor your page or group several times a day.
  • Watch which account you’re posting from.  When acting as an administrator for your Carleton page, make sure you are signed in under the Carleton account and not your personal account.
  • Do not disclose confidential information. Information shared on Facebook is not secure. We do not recommend sharing/discussing personal information about a student and/or his or her application over Facebook. If a student wants to discuss specific information about status of admission, details of application etc. send them a message directing them to liaison@carleton.ca
  • Be professional, even if you disagree with what people post.  You should also be prepared for those commenters who don’t agree with what you’ve said or posted. This is all part of the game. And provided their comments aren’t derogatory, even if it isn’t what you’d like to do with these posts, your best and most open action will be to allow them posts to remain up there. Let your fans or other members of the group hold a discussion about the topic.

Have any tips you’d like to add?  Let us know!

Twitter at Carleton

Twitter is a great place to point your followers to information relevant to your department. This doesn’t mean however, that you should have a Twitter feed just so you can send out news releases.

Basically, you need to stick out from the myriad of other groups out there on the social media giant—you need to give them a reason to follow you.

Tips for tweeting:

  • Update regularly.
  • Have someone checking the account daily. In the Twitter world, a day of no response is an eternity.
  • Follow people who you think will provide you with content you can share.
  • Respond to questions, suggestions and comments that people direct to your Twitter account even if they aren’t followers.
  • Blend a good mix of your own original tweets and retweets of the thoughts of others.
  • Use hashtags if you’d like your tweets to be easily searchable. The main Carleton hashtag is #Carleton_U. (If your group uses a particular hashtag, send it on to us at socialmedia@carleton.ca and we will include it in our social media directory)

Responding Privately

In your time managing your Twitter account there are bound to be times when people direct comments or questions toward you to that you don’t feel comfortable handling. In these cases, feel free tend the tweet as an email, and the Office of the Vice President (Students and Enrolment) would be glad to provide advice. If you get a message sent to you from a member of the media, please send the information on to the Department of University Communications.

Resources

Facebook at Carleton

Millions of people use Facebook everyday to keep up with friends, upload photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.

Examples of Content to Share

  • post news from your department
  • post information from top visited pages on your departmental website
  • post links to articles that are relevant to your department
  • invite your fans and their friends an event
  • share youtube videos that are relevant to your department
  • post questions on your discussion boards about hot topics in your field even if they aren’t talking specifically about Carleton.
  • share photo of people in your department or scenery on campus

Commenting on comments

Use the ‘Comment’ function to post answers to inquiries on wall posts if the posted information is applicable for all market segments.  For more specific inquiries (ie. inquiries that would generate responses that would vary by market segment or inquiries that would generate a back and forth conversation), use the ‘Message’ function.

Keep in mind that for inquiries relating to undergraduate admission status, you can refer students to liaison@carleton.ca.

When it comes to the content on your page, avoid letting it get old or continually posting something that isn’t generating the discussion you had hoped for—if people aren’t commenting, just think of a way to modify your information.

The not so fun part of Facebook

Not all commenters are created equal. While it would be wonderful if everyone could remain civil even if they have different opinions, with such a wide audience, such is rarely the case, and it’s likely at some point in your Facebook page administrator career, you’ll come up against a situation in which you’ll have to make decisions on an inappropriate comment. Keep in mind, differing opinions or arguments take place on Facebook all the time—that’s what happens when you get people passionate a bout a topic all talking at the same time. When we talk about inappropriate comments, we are referring to abusive or harassing language.

Facebook’s own comment policy states: We love your comments, but please be respectful of others. We reserve the right to delete profane, harassing, abusive and spam comments and to block repeat offenders.

The primary administrator of your page or group is responsible for scanning through the photos and videos to make sure no inappropriate comments have been posted. If you are also making good use of your Discussion Board or Notes section—and doing so is a very good idea, the primary administrator must monitor these sections and remove anything inappropriate.

What, you ask, does inappropriate mean then? Well, inappropriate in the world of social media refers more to content that is profane, harassing, abusive or spam. It could also include comments that are intended for an audience outside of who you are trying to engage with on your site. So if your page is meant for discussion on neuroscience and someone posts a comment on a legal case Carleton is involved in that doesn’t revolve around neuroscience, you have no obligation to keep the comment up.

What does not fall under the category of inappropriate is comments that are relevant to your group but contrary to what you think.

It’s a fine line for sure and some cases may be more difficult to judge than others. If you’d like to run a situation by someone else, email us at socialmedia@carleton.ca.

In extreme cases, if a fan continues to make inappropriate comments/post inappropriate links, this Fan can be removed and, in severe cases, permanently banned from the page.

To remove a Fan:

  1. Click ‘See all’ under the Fans section
  2. Select the ‘x’ next to a user’s name
  3. Click ‘Remove’

To permanently ban a Fan:

  1. Click ‘See all’ under the Fans section
  2. Select the ‘x’ next to a user’s name
  3. Check the box next to ‘Ban Permanently’
  4. Click ‘Remove’

Getting your page promoted on Facebook

There are a number of ways you can get word out to your intended audience about your new page. Think about putting a link to it on your Carleton University website. The Carleton University (Official) page is the parent page of all Carleton Facebook pages and at times throughout the year, can promote your page to its followers.

Take a look through the social media directory for a list of other groups actively involved in the social media environment. Don’t limit yourself to those people on Facebook groups. Even if you’re not on Twitter, reach out to those that are and see if there isn’t a way to get a little bit of word out that way.

When promoting, make sure to provide the full name of your page as there are a number of unofficial Carleton pages that exist on Facebook.

Resources:

Blogging at Carleton

A blog is a type of website or part of a website with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video, displayed in reverse-chronological order.   Most blogs are interactive, allowing visitors to leave comments and message each other via widgets on the blogs. They also provide RSS feeds so readers can use specialized software or RSS aggregation sites to easily follow multiple blogs.

Tips for Blogging:

  • Have a point of view and to present said point of view in a conversational tone.
  • Believe in what your posting and have some reasoning beside it. You’re sure to be called out if you simply state opinion without presenting any proof—that’s what Twitter is for.
  • Focus on quality over quantity.  Don’t feel the need to post three blog posts a day as long as the times you do post (which should still be at minimum once a week) are of such high quality that followers of the blog will rabidly await its publishing.
  • Watch your grammar, spelling and punctuation.
  • Keep it short. Imagine you’re walking a tightrope (albeit one only a foot off the ground) and you’re balancing between underwriting (and not providing any relevant content) and overwriting (losing relevant content in a forest of irrelevant ramblings).
  • Use videos every now and again, refer readers to other places they can get more information and different opinions on the topic you’re discussing, and break up text with headlines, sub headlines, bullets, and images.

Moderated Comments

Like all other social media forums, the blog has a commenting element to it. In fact, commenting is a more integral part in a blog than it is in most other social media tools because as mentioned before, if you don’t have comments, you don’t have a blog.

There are a few options for how to allow comments on your blog, but no matter what option you pick, it’s imperative that you DO allow comments. The most likely scenario involves people submitting comments and having them approved by a moderator before they become viewable to all.

  1. Regularly check to see if comments have been submitted and make a decision on whether or not to post them in a timely manner.
  2. Make your decision on approving a comment based on appropriateness, not based on your opinion of the comment.
  3. Prepare to continue the discussion in the comment section—your blog post doesn’t stop when you make your original post go live.

Appropriate Comments

In terms of determining what is appropriate and what is not, keep to the conditions set out for other types of social media tools—content that is profane, harassing, abusive or spam. It could also include comments that are intended for an audience outside of who you are trying to engage with on your site. For example, a blog post on the nontrivial solutions to Fermat’s equation, need not post a comment that is arguing the eating habits of early North American settlers because they don’t provide relevant discussion points.

It can sometimes be a fine line and some cases may be more difficult to judge than others. If you’d like to run a situation by someone else, contact the Office of the Associate Vice-President (Students and Enrolment).

Resources

Youtube at Carleton

YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos. The Carleton CMS system uses Youtube to share videos and makes inserting videos into your departmental website easy. See Carleton.ca/cms.

Your own YouTube channel is only useful if you’re able to regularly post videos to the channel.

If that’s not the case, when you have videos to post consider your departmental website, which is already video-enabled thanks to Carleton CMS.  Or consider posting on the existing Carleton University YouTube Channel. For contact information, see the Carleton Social Media directory.

Still, hosting a video on YouTube is any easy way to share your videos on other social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, or your blog and can easily be embedded.

Tips

  • Keep any video you produce short.
  • Choose good tags for videos.
  • Share links to your videos on other social media sites like Facebook, Twitter
  • Embed your videos on your department website (using Carleton CMS)

Resources

LinkedIn at Carleton

There are a number of people at Carleton with LinkedIn profiles. Some are using them individually and some are managing LinkedIn groups for their department. LinkedIn, like the other social media networks, takes a time commitment to be used effectively. While membership can also be secured at no price, there are also advantages to buying a membership.

One thing that can certainly increase the amount of engagement on your LinkedIn profile is to make sure to complete your personal profile.

Our Co-op and Career Services team has developed a step-by-step checklist for completing your profile.

There are also a number of resources online to help you build and maintain your presence on LinkedIn:

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