Talking Stick - September/October 2015 - 58

CONVERSATIONS
our residence life staff and I will also
do a training session for our full-time
residence life staff about personal best
practices and their role with the official
university housing accounts.

David: We work in a way similar to
what Janine and Mallory have already
discussed. It's not a formal policy,
but our residence life and education
staff and accountability staff work
with us to help students and staff
understand how their online personal
brands impact them now and in the
long run and also how they impact the
department. This past year we had a
good number of teachable moments
for student staff. They were not enough
for someone to lose their job over but
definitely warranted a conversation
about what being a role model means.
We work closely with the
university's accountability office to
balance First Amendment rights and
controlling the brand of our department
through so many voices. We're actually
reviewing our media policy now
regarding who can speak and when
it's okay for staff (particularly student
staff) to speak with the media. Are they
always wearing their RA hat, or can
they just speak as a student? Right now,
everything has to be funneled through
the communications office.

Sidarous: Same for us in regards
to media requests. If a student or
staff member gets a media request,
we coordinate with our university
public affairs office and typically they,
the director of housing, or myself
will respond. For us, I do not see
that policy changing, but it is an
interesting discussion, particularly
with the student paper and other
outlets reaching out to students. The
university social media policy directs
staff and students to funnel all media
requests to the public affairs office.
Quinn: I echo what everyone else has
said. We have a social media directory
for all offices on campus that have
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TALKING STICK

"official" accounts; this is a great
resource for students.

TS: What other campus departments,
if any, did you work with to establish
these guidelines?

Tucker: We worked closely with the
strategic communications unit on
campus. The campus social media
coordinator significantly influenced
our guidelines and approach to
handling social media.
Sidarous: University marketing took
the lead on our campus to write and
enforce a campus-wide social media
policy. Our additional guidelines refer
to the university policy.

found their reports and features to be
very user friendly. We set up keywords
and geographic location to help us
identify uses we want to respond to and
others we may just monitor.
In terms of responding to tweets,
posts, and pics, for me this is a huge
judgment call. In some cases you
want to respond because you want to
impact the impression; other times
the response may escalate or seem
disingenuous. I talked often with my
student interns to gauge their reaction
and/or tweaked the response. In
addition, like Janine stated, I connect
with the department or unit that is
being highlighted so our response can
be the most helpful for the individual
and set the correct impression.

Sidarous: We monitor through
Quinn: Our division worked closely
with the university's marketing and
communication and information
technology departments to get feedback
on our social media handbook (http://
bit.ly/bsusmguide15) that was developed
by our student affairs technology
committee, chaired by Ed Cabellon.
David: While we are waiting on
university-wide policies, we continue
to work closely with the LSU office
of communications and university
relations, as well as our residence life
accountability office to balance First
Amendment rights and our needs.

McGee: Our campus has not really
made a lot of social media policy
overall. I think the general rule of
thumb is to not violate the student
code of conduct. However, there has
been push back on this because, in
some cases, it may infringe on First
Amendment rights.

TS: How do you monitor social media
channels, and do you have protocols for
how and when to respond?

Tucker: We use SproutSocial; we've

Hootsuite, email notifications, and
the actual social media sites. I check
several times daily, and various
residence life staff are responsible for
monitoring their community Facebook
page. Our goal is a response within
24 hours, but it is often much quicker
than that. Staff are trained to know
how and when to respond and when
to pass something along to myself or
their supervisor.

McGee: We monitor social media
through a TweetDeck account, email
notifications, and Hootsuite reporting.
We have several saved searches for
hot words so we can possibly see a
conversation that we weren't included
in such as one about roommates,
housing, #UA19, etc. This way we can
interject ourselves into a discussion
to add expert advice if needed. If
a situation is brewing between
roommates, marketing staff notify
residential staff to reach out to the
roommates for a potential mediation.
David: Ditto to Janine's and Mallory's
points. Hootsuite, email notifications,
push notifications on our cell phones,
and constant monitoring are our keys
to keeping our finger on the pulse of
http://bit.ly/bsusmguide15 http://bit.ly/bsusmguide15
Talking Stick - September/October 2015

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