• Social media accounts created on behalf of Highline College are the sole property of the college. Employees must receive permission from their supervisors before creating a social media account on behalf of the college. Account managers have no ownership rights.
• Use of social media must comply with all Highline College policies, guidelines and regulations.
• Development of a social media account on behalf of Highline College requires the creator to give notice to the Communications and Marketing team. 
• Posting confidential information about Highline College faculty, staff or students to any social media account is prohibited. Legal liability may arise for comments that are protected, proprietary, copyrighted, defamatory, libelous or obscene. Information learned through employment with Highline College, such as non-public information, is restricted until it has been officially announced. 
• Communication through college-related social media is considered a public record and will be managed as such. All comments, posts or direct messages made to a Highline College social media account are public information. See Guidance For Removing Comments and Posts below for additional information.

• Highline College employees and students who post on behalf of Highline College must work to protect the college’s reputation and promote the college’s mission, vision and values.
• Highline College employees and students who post on behalf of Highline College must maintain records of account/site usernames and passwords to facilitate transition of account management to another employee when necessary.
• More than one college employee must have administrative access to any social media account. 
• If the account is for a student club or group, one college employee must have administrative access.
• If an employee or student, who has administrative access, leaves the college, the password to the social media account must be changed upon their departure. 
• Highline College logos may not be used without approval from the Communications and Marketing team. Contact Director of Marketing Tony Johnson for an approved logo.

Social media accounts must be maintained on a regular basis. Questions and comments received through social media must be responded to in a timely manner.

Supervisors should assist in developing a response when a comment or message is deemed sensitive or if the account manager is unsure of an appropriate response. 

Any questions or concerns should be directed to Vice President of Institutional Advancement Josh Gerstman or Director of Marketing, Design and Production Tony Johnson.

Procedure

• Supervisors are responsible for determining who will be permitted to post to the social media accounts under their control.
• Employees using social media to communicate on behalf of Highline College must be mindful that any statement made is on behalf of the college; therefore, employees must use discretion before posting or commenting.
• Messages, postings and comments must not include profanity, obscenity or copyright violations. Do not engage in arguments with community members who are critical of the college, instead acknowledge their concern and invite them to discuss the issue in email, direct message or over the phone, if necessary. Citing or quoting colleagues or coworkers on sensitive subjects without their approval is prohibited.
• Employees should always consider whether it is appropriate to post an opinion, commit the college to a course of action or discuss areas outside of one’s expertise. If there is any question or hesitation regarding the content of a potential comment or post, it is better not to post. Please consult the Communications and Marketing team with specific questions. 
• Anonymous posts are prohibited from staff, faculty or administration who are posting on behalf of the college.

To ensure Highline College social media accounts are successful, the Communications and Marketing team has developed several best practices. These include, but are not limited to, the following tips:

Identify your department’s goals and determine how social media will help you achieve those goals. Sometimes social media may end up hurting a department’s goals because it’s not understood how much time commitment is involved to have a successful social media presence. However, social media can also: create awareness, be a tool to recruit students, engage students and create a sense of community. If done right, social media can have a huge benefit to your department and its goals.

Identify your social media accounts target audience. Students? Prospective students? Community members? Alumni?

When creating content… Ask yourself if it aligns with your target audience’s information needs. Some great questions include: Why should my followers care about this page and its content? What posts and information can I provide that will help my followers? What do my followers want and what will they like? How are my followers different from other pages’ followers? 

And then communicate that information and those reasons to your followers in your posts, photos, videos and stories. Let those answers to those questions drive the types of posts you create. 

Need an example? The main Highline College social media accounts’ target audience include students, prospective students, South King County community members and staff/faculty. This means our primary focus is to create and post content that our students would care about. It’s a combination of important information they need to know (think tuition deadlines, info. on classes, etc.) and fun, engaging information pertaining to Highline College-related activities (events, campus beauty, student life).

Post regularly. If the account is new, we recommend posting 1-2 times a week with the eventual goal of posting content once a weekday. Established accounts should strive to post content daily (even if it’s simply ‘sharing’ content from the main Highline College social media accounts).

Post high-quality content. What is high-quality content? High-resolution images that are not distorted or pixelized, videos, written descriptions that inform and engage followers by asking questions, sharing stories and using multiple features that various social media platforms offer (Facebook photo layouts, Instagram Stories, or Reels, Q&A polls, etc.). 

When sharing posts from other accounts, we recommend taking time to write something in the text body explaining why that post relates to your followers or why they could find value in it. Tagging other community partners (including the main Highline College account) in the text body of posts increases the likelihood the community partner will share your content, which means more people will see your post/information. More shares = more eyes = more followers/likes. This is especially important if you’d like the main Highline College account to share your content to its followers.

Promoting events: Facebook events are a great way to get the word out about your event, as it directly notifies your followers and the followers of event co-hosts when it is created. What are event co-hosts? Co-hosts can take the form of any Facebook page (in the greater community or within Highline College) that have a stake in the event. If creating an event for students, always add the main Highline College account as a co-host. This ensures the event is added to the main Highline College Facebook page and it alerts the main account’s thousands of followers, thus increasing event awareness and possibly attendance.

Make sure your Facebook events have compelling cover images, lots of detail in the event description and be sure to promote the event several times before it begins. Please link out to the main Highline College website if additional information is needed. Include registration links if registration is required. Also, consider leveraging the event itself for social media posts after the event is over. This can take the form of photos, videos, etc. 

If promoting an event on a different social media platform (i.e.Instagram, Snapchat or Twitter) please tag the main Highline College account so that it may share your event with its followers.

Engage. Engage. Engage. We recommend “liking” and following all of Highline’s known social media accounts on behalf of the social media account you’ve created. To increase engagement, comment and share their posts (including the main HC account). They may return the favor AND you’ll be putting your page out there for more people to see. A link to some of our pages.

Accessibility: Social media platforms have many ways to make your content accessible. Whether that be inputting “alternative text” to an Instagram or Twitter image or adding captions to a video, please utilize these features when available.

Highline College strives to be an integral part of our community. As such, we welcome and openly embrace the diverse views of our students and community members.

Removing Comments and Posts

Views expressed by students and community members on our social media accounts do not necessarily represent the college’s views, but we recognize a thriving academic community is not possible without our students and community members sharing their thoughts freely with one another on our social media accounts.

With that in mind, there may be rare occasions when it is necessary to hide or delete a comment or post, such as when the comment or post includes:

• Spam or similar comments promoting a product, service or entity unrelated to the discussion
• Personal attacks on individuals, threats against individuals, groups, organizations or harassment of any kind to an individual, group or organization
• Illegal activity or encouragement of illegal activity
• Information that could compromise the safety of the college’s staff or students
• Political statements, including comments that endorse or oppose political candidates or ballot propositions.

The removal or hiding of comments or posts should be taken very seriously and only be done after ample consideration and input from other college employees. Social media managers should first bring up their concern over a comment or post to their direct supervisor. If there is then need for further guidance, the supervisor should contact Vice President Josh Gerstman, Director of Marketing, Design and Production Tony Johnson and/or Associate Director of Communications, PIO Raechel Dawson.

Blocking Users

As with removing comments and posts, Highline College values our community members’ free and open use of expression. However, if an individual user has shown a pattern of harassing or threatening behavior toward Highline College through social media, there may be grounds for blocking. Account holders should document the pattern of questionable behavior (screenshots) and contact Communications & Marketing. The team will determine whether blocking is constituted and/or if Public Safety needs to be involved. Each case will be determined on a case by case basis. As always, if there is ever a believed immediate threat to the college or anyone on campus, contact Public Safety and/or the police as soon as possible.