Guidelines for using DCAL's social media accounts
These guidelines are for anyone who has access to DCAL’s social media accounts. They provide good practice advice and guidance on the appropriate use of social media.
The guidelines cover the following social media accounts:
- YouTube (under construction)
Only designated DCAL staff/students have access to DCAL’s social media accounts.
If you have been provided with access to a DCAL social media account you must ensure that you do not compromise the security of that account.
You must not share account login details with anyone else and you should avoid writing down login details.
If you have forgotten your login details, you can ask the DCAL Social Media Coordinator to re- supply you with the details. Please do not change the password; if you feel it needs to be changed, please contact Social Media Coordinator.
Be aware of potential malware and phishing attacks by other social media users. If you identify a suspicious message (eg a tweet or Facebook posting) do not click on any links in the message and don’t share the message with anyone else. Never input any account or login details unless you are totally sure that you are on a trustworthy website.
If you believe that the security of a social media account is at risk you should alert the Social Media Coordinator.
Users of DCAL’s social media accounts will be trained by the DCAL Social Media Coordinator or other existing users before they use DCAL’s social media resources.
These guidelines are also intended to help and support those who use social media accounts.
If you require any further advice or training you should contact the Social Media Coordinator.
You can provide social media advice and awareness training to other DCAL staff but you must not provide them with access to any social media accounts.
You can access the DCAL Twitter account via the Twitter website (www.twitter.com/DCAL_UCL), or via Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com).
You should use Hootsuite for most Twitter activity. Hootsuite provides an interface that allows you to easily monitor tweets posted by users we follow, as well as mentions of ‘@DCAL’ and any hashtags.
You can also use Hootsuite to generate reports for things like the number of clicks on a particular link in a tweet.
Who to followFeel free to follow more people and organisations. Of particular interest are individuals and institutions who are involved in deafness and sign language related research and teaching, deaf education, practitioners, policy-makers, etc, particularly if they are regular tweeters – including:
- Who is following DCAL (check regularly to see if DCAL has new followers that we can follow)
Who not to follow:
- People whose Twitter accounts are mainly personal.
- People/organisations who never/rarely tweet. (Check back regularly to see if this changes.)
There are several types of tweet that we can send:
- Tweets you create yourself
- Retweets: when you resend a tweet that someone else has already tweeted
- Tweets of existing web pages and articles (many websites now provide the option of
- tweeting their content)
When creating a new post, make sure it adheres to the character limit of 280 characters, with a maximum video length of 2 minutes and 20 seconds. Always check spelling and grammar before posting.
You should:
- retweet DCAL-relevant tweets by DCAL staff, students, associates, advisory committee and other “DCAL friends”
- tweet/retweet relevant web articles and news items that are related to DCAL research and DCAL interests
- tweet new/interesting/relevant research articles.
- if you aren’t sure about DCAL rubberstamping the content, you could tweet/retweet as “May be of interest:”
- respond to people that send tweets to us or mention DCAL in their tweets.
Your tweets should be friendly, polite and informative. You can adopt quite an informal style on Twitter but you still must avoid typos and grammatical errors. (Also, correct any typos and grammatical errors in tweets before retweeting.)
We need to go beyond just ‘broadcasting’ about features, press releases etc and use Twitter as a proper engagement tool so don’t be afraid to encourage, and engage in, conversation.
You should avoid confrontation and you must never insult or criticise anyone on Twitter.
If you are unsure how to respond to a particular tweet you should contact the Social Media Coordinator or another senior colleague for advice. Don’t tweet if you are not sure that you are doing the right thing.
Finding the right information to tweetYou should ensure that all tweets are relevant and interesting for some or all of our audiences.
You should monitor a number of sources to ensure that we tweet relevant, interesting information. You should:
- See if any new content has been published on our website and decide whether it is tweet-worthy.
- Look at what the people we follow are tweeting by monitoring the @DCAL_UCL Home Feed in Hootsuite. You can retweet or reply to tweets as necessary.
- Look at mentions of DCAL in tweets by looking at the Mentions columns. You can choose to retweet any relevant tweets and/or reply to tweets as necessary. You should always reply to DCAL-related questions that users have.
- Look at the columns in Hootsuite for any relevant hashtags, eg #TISLR2013. You can choose to retweet any relevant tweets and/or reply to tweets as necessary.
- Check the ‘direct messages’ column. Be very wary of any direct messages that contain links – these could be malware links so please don’t click on them. Reply to any direct messages as necessary, but only if you can be sure the message is legit.
- Search for ‘DCAL’ in Google and look at items that have been added in the last 24 hours. Tweet anything interesting, relevant and positive. (Make sure you have the right DCAL.)
- Think about what our followers might be interested in. If it’s a quiet day on Twitter you could tweet something that has been popular previously, eg information about invited speakers, upcoming conferences or other events. It’s fine to tweet about something several times.
To create a new tweet in Hootsuite – FIRST, make sure you select a social network (or social networks) to post to (e.g. Twitter, Facebook) at the top of the Hootsuite page. THEN click on the ‘compose message’ area at the top left of the Hootsuite screen. Although the character limit for a tweet is 140 characters it is better to aim for 120 characters maximum as this means that tweets are less likely to be truncated when they are retweeted by others.
To retweet a tweet by someone else, click on the icon beside their tweet and select the arrow symbol. You can then choose to send the tweet without editing it, or you can edit it (eg to make it shorter or to correct some styling). Don’t be scared to edit other people’s tweets, but be careful not to change the tweet’s meaning.
Good practice- Always try to include a link in your tweets. Twitter now automatically shorten links. Hootsuite shortens URLs automatically but if you need to shorten a URL go to bitly.com
- Check spelling and grammar before tweeting (and before retweeting)
- Don’t tweet any stories that are negative about DCAL or our stakeholders
- Try to attribute tweets wherever possible, eg include the twitter ID or name of the institution or publication. This might not always be possible.
You can enhance your tweets by including relevant hashtags in your tweets. Hashtags help users find tweets on particular subjects.
Consider creating hashtags for events (e.g. #TISLR2013, etc). Create and post them before and at the event.
TBC: Keeping a record of DCAL hashtags?? (e.g. from ESRC: “For example, if you tweet something relevant to ESRC-funded postgraduate students you could include ‘#esrcphd’ in the tweet. A list of ESRC hashtags is available on Sharepoint”)
DCAL Hashtags: #digsigns (Digging into Signs Workshop, March 2015), #BSLSignBank, #TISLR2013
Twitter responsibilitiesThe Research and Communication Coordinator has overall responsibility for DCAL’s Twitter activity.
Our Facebook page is located at
https://www.facebook.com/pages/DCAL-Deafness-Cognition-and-Language-Research-Centre/136511306447860?fref=ts
We should be selective in terms of what content we post on Facebook. Facebook should primarily be used to communicate web features, news items and major events (eg ???? Festival of Social Science and ESRC photography competition??? ). This sort of content is particularly suited to Facebook as it enables the inclusion of relevant images and engaging text.
You should avoid confrontation and you must never insult or criticise anyone on Facebook.
If you are unsure how to respond to a particular post, you should contact the DCAL Social Media Coordinator or another senior colleague for advice. Do not post if you are not sure that you are doing the right thing.
You can post a message on Facebook by logging into the DCAL Facebook account, or through Hootsuite (www.hootsuite.com). You should use Hootsuite for most posts.
To post a message using Hootsuite, enter your text in the ‘compose message’ box at the top of the screen and select the Facebook icon in the box to the right of the ‘compose message’ box.
At this point, you also need to decide if you want to post the content to Twitter.
Include some short, descriptive, engaging text and include a relevant image when prompted.
To ensure that we have adequate resource to cover Twitter and Facebook activities we have a social media rota in which each social media co-ordinator will be assigned week date(s) to take responsibility for DCAL social media activities. This social media rota will also be put in the DCAL web calendar as well as emailing all the social media co-ordinators. The rota is flexible and colleagues can swap days as appropriate. Ensure that the DCAL Social Media Co-ordinator is aware of any changes so these can be updated accordingly.
Other social media outlets that DCAL is not currently using but could consider in future include:
- Linked In
If you think these are worth using for DCAL, please contact dcal@ucl.ac.uk.
There are a number of social media monitoring tools. TO BE CHECKED.
Tools we use include:
- Hootsuite custom reports, eg to see the number of clicks on a link in tweet
- Crowdbooster – provides stats on followers, tweets, retweets, mentions etc
- TweetReach – provides information on how many Twitter accounts tweets that contain a particular hashtag have reached (costs $20 per report)
- SocialBro – good for seeing who our new and influential followers are
- Google Analytics – useful for seeing how many people arrive on particular pages from social media sites
- Storify – useful for compiling social media activity for a particular event or campaign
Our YouTube channel is located at www.youtube.com/theesrc
Managing ESRC’s videosAll ESRC videos should be added to YouTube using our YouTube account. Videos can then be embedded on our web pages as required.
Making videos easier to find on YouTubeThere are several methods that you can use to help increase the number of people who can find (and hopefully view) our videos on YouTube. Many users will search for videos using specific keywords. It is therefore vital that all videos have clear and descriptive titles and descriptions as these will affect how a video performs in the search facility on YouTube as well as in search engines like Google.
For example, there is an ESRC video about Ketso on YouTube. This was titled ‘Getting creative with Ketso’. Changing the title to ‘Getting creative with Ketso: group discussion and creative thinking’ resulted in a significant increase in the number of people viewing this video, presumably because ‘group discussion’ and/or ‘creative thinking’ are search terms that people use.
Some specific things to do- Video titles are the most important thing to get right. Use descriptive titles that summarise what the video is about and include good keyword phrases that will help the video perform well in search. Titles can be refined for older videos if they aren’t getting many views.
- Use clear and meaningful descriptions that clearly describe what the video is about and that include keywords. Again, these can be refined for older videos.
- Include relevant tags for all videos. Tags should be included in the following format (using spaces and commas): “DCAL, research, sign language, deafness”
Tip: One way to help find good tags is to find popular related videos and look at what tags they use. You could use some of the same tags for your video as it will help the video get listed under the ‘related videos’ section of popular videos.
Before uploading the video ensure that the video file name includes main keywords and phrases. This helps optimise the videos for search engines.
YouTube responsibilitiesArild Foss and Jonathan Connor are responsible for managing ESRC’s YouTube channel.
We receive an email in the websupport@esrc.ac.uk mailbox when someone comments on an ESRC YouTube video. Digital Communications staff will monitor and respond to these comments as required.