SOCIAL MEDIA: Strategies

and Best Practices

Session Goals
Discuss Social Media Strategies and Best Practices.

Exchange ideas to help position your institution to take

advantage of the increased visibility inherent in todays
social media culture.
Discuss challenges that Division III institutions face
related to the ever-changing social media landscape
and brainstorm ideas to overcome those challenges.
Share resources for educating institutions, coaches
and student-athletes on relevant social media issues.

Panelists
Nafeesa Connolly - Simmons College
Student-Athlete
Kelly Anderson Diercks - Augsburg College
Associate Athletic Director/SWA

David Kemmy - Roger Williams University

Director of Athletics
Blake Timm - Pacific University
Sports Information Director

Does Your Athletics

Department Have a Social
Media Policy?

Social Media Policies

Creating a Social Media Policy

Stay on brand

Stick to basic
standards

Numerous
platforms

Target audience

What is the
purpose?

Social Media Strategy

Simmons College
College-wide: Broaden the reach of colleges
messaging, reinforce the brand.

Womens leadership and success

Value of a womens education
Gender issues

Social Media: Simmons College

Simmons Athletics: No social media strategy.
Created 3+ years ago.
Updated twice a week, depending on season.
Promote large events (e.g., rival games, community
service, Blue Outs, awards).

Created 2.5 years ago.

Updated every day if necessary.
Instant updates (e.g., game-day scores, wrap ups,
links to website, academic/athletics accomplishments).
Spring 2014.

Within or Independent of a
Specific Policy, Does Your
Institution Monitor Social
Media Use?

Monitoring
Roger Williams University
No specific monitoring system in place.

Communications and compliance staff intermittently

check team Facebook sites.
Regular discussions with coaching staff on exercising
caution and discretion.
We are reactive instead of proactive at this point, from
a university and department standpoint .

189 million Facebook users are mobile only making

monitoring more difficult.

Augsburg College
Social Media Central

Social Media: Simmons College

Monitoring
College-wide:

No

Simmons Athletics: No
Coaches discretion.
May or may not check-in on
players pages.

Social Media Monitoring

Pacific University

Social Media Monitoring

Pacific University

How Does Your Institution

Educate Student-Athletes
on Social Media Use?

Educating Our Student-Athletes

Roger Williams University
Hawk Leadership Academy.
Half-day workshop on social media.
FROSH Orientation program for all new studentathletes.
Presented by upper classmen.

Informing Student-Athletes
A little bit goes a long way
Beneficial
Social media is here to stay.
Applicable in every day life.
Protection vs. Prevention
Cant hold our hands but can inform us to prevent
situations.
Unlimited Resources
Athletics Department
Institution
Professors

AD
Assistant AD
FAR

Peers
SAAC

Best Practices

Ask Yourself
Is it something I would want on the cover of a
magazine?
Is it something I would want my mom to see?
If it was in a commercial aired across the U.S., would I
be proud?
Does this go against my values or morals?

What to Cover
Pros/Cons.

Branding and values.

Real-world cases.
As a team/department/SAAC, what rules should we
implement.
How to be yourself.
Privacy settings.
How to use social media to your advantage.

How Does Your Institution

Use Social Media as a
News Source or
Promotional Strategy?

Social Media to Promote

Pacific University

FACEBOOK
News Stories and Announcements
Features
Photos
Game Promotions
TWITTER
News Stories and Announcements
In-Game Scoring Updates
Fan Interaction
Links to News Stories
YOUTUBE
Highlight Videos
Interviews
Videos of Special Events
INSTAGRAM
Photo Collages
Instant Video Highlights

Social Media to Promote

Pacific University
DO NOT REINVENT THE WHEEL.

Use web platforms to populate social media.

SIDEARM
Can post stories to Facebook and Twitter at the
same time stories are posted.
PRESTO SPORTS/D3SCOREBOARD.COM
Can post to Twitter as you post score updates out of
the GameDay screen.

Communicating
News/Events
Burden on communications/sports information staff.
Still ask them to put out there as much as we can
especially on Facebook pages.
Value of team pages for targeted audiences.
Awareness of what student workers should/should not
be posting.
93% of marketers are using social media for business
use.

Social Media: Simmons College

Sending and Receiving Information.

Website.
Facebook.
Twitter.
Blogs.
Collaboration between athletics and campus
communication departments.

Interaction with Coaches

Personal accounts.
No interaction (friends, following, tagging, posting)
until at least final season is over.
Professionalism.
No conflicts of interest.
Team-related accounts.
Anytime.
Important information communicated via
telephone (call/text) and email.

Social Media with the Team

Official Facebook page
Parents
Alumnae
Students
Campus
Facebook group (private)
Team

Facebook group (secondary)

Team, coaches, recruits
Updates
Game day
Memorable moments

What Social Media-Related

Challenges Exist Under the
Current Recruiting
Legislation?

Recruiting Challenges
Difficulty in keeping track of things from a compliance
perspective.
PSAs communicate freely this way.
Our coaches should be on board with them.
A lot of confusion on part of Division III PSAs.

National SAAC Position on

Legislative Changes
2012: Text messaging
Support
2013: Social media
Opposed

What Resources are Available

to Institutions Seeking to
Provide Education Related to
Social Media?

Resources
People
Janet Judge
Chris Syme - CKSyme Media Group (former SID, sports
specialist)

Other
FieldHouse Media - Fieldhousemedia.net
CoSIDA - cosida.com
Mashable - Mashable.com
The Complete Final Social Media Sizing Cheat Sheet
http://bit.ly/1bKlLv
NCAA programming bit.ly/NCAAprogramming2014

Questions?