In the “Building a Social Media Culture at Dell” case study we read in MIS 5603, the author went into detail about a program that held at the company called the “Social Media and Community University.” Anyone who worked at Dell was allowed to sign up for this program and get involved in representing the company on social. That got me to start thinking about what types of things we’re doing at my job to help ensure uniformity among the numerous people who may be speaking on behalf of Temple on social.
For a little background, Temple has 17 different schools and colleges, each of which is present on social media. Plus, many of the individual major programs within those colleges have their own social presences as well. In addition, there are 18 sports that make up the athletic programs. Add in things like Admissions, Alumni Relations, Community Relations, other campuses like Temple Rome, Temple Japan and Temple Ambler, and the dozens of other campus partners, and that would be upwards of 60 social media channels per platform representing the university.
With that out of the way, it’s extremely important to try to establish at least some level of consistency across the university’s social presence at large, this is done in a number of ways. The first of which is Social Media Managers meetings. Once a month, the university’s Strategic Marketing and Communications department invites the managers of all of these different profiles to meet in their office at Temple’s Main Campus to talk about the latest developments in Temple’s brand strategy, what events are coming up, how the channels themselves have changed, etc. By meeting in person, it helps iron out any inconsistencies there may be, and align everyone towards a similar goal.
In addition, the Strategic Marketing and Communications department put together a “Brand Book” featuring extensive social media guidelines. The Brand Book was shared with the chief communicators for many of these campus partners. The book was accompanied by “Brand Workshops” at which the campus partners were informed about the style behind the university’s brand (i.e. colors, typefaces) as well as the tone of brand content, over the course of a few hours, and were given opportunities to try them out for themselves in the controlled setting.
It’s not easy to align a brand that big, but with the appropriate steps–and some fun workshops–it can most certainly be done!
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