Section Menu

Division of Student Affairs

Contact Information

(209) 667-3177
studentaffairs@csustan.edu

Mary Stuart Rogers, MSR 180

Division of Student Affairs
Group photo 2 students. Media banner.

 

Division of Student Affairs social media aims to provide educational, informative, and engaging content for the campus community. All departments, programs, and affinity groups who utilize social media accounts on behalf of the campus are also representative of the University. As such, all units in the Division of Student Affairs are expected to uphold the integrity and reputation of the University.

If your department, program or affinity group holds a social media account, please register the account with Strategic Communications & Marketing.

 

General Guidelines

All social media accounts within the Division of Student Affairs will adhere to the guidelines and expectations outlined by the Strategic Communications & Marketing. Content that fails to comply will be recommended for removal.

Employees who utilize a social media account are required to maintain a professional tone when interacting with students on social media. We ask that you continuously emphasize and remind student assistants on the importance of maintaining professionalism when responding to inquiries while using your department or program's social media account(s).

Respond back to students in a timely and accurate manner. To maintain a professional tone, make a habit of beginning and ending all messages with proper greetings and closings. Here are some acceptable forms of greetings.

"Hello,"

"Dear,"

"Greetings,"

"Hello Team,"

Avoid: 

  • Responding to questions as if you were text messaging a close friend.
  • Using casual greetings such as "Hey," or "What's up," in your messages.
  • Using contractions such as "Don't" or "Won't".
  • Using text message lingo when responding to comments or direct messages such as, "Lol".
  • Refrain from using emojis in your messages to students.

The use of emojis should be limited to only on social media. They should not be used on email responses, nor publicized on website. Emojis can be included on captions for social media, however they should not be overused.

Employees are required to use maintain a passive stance on social media.

This means:

  • Departments and programs are prohibited from using a university social media account to direct message students.
  • A student should be the first to direct message the account.
  • Interactions with students should be strictly limited to responding to a simple question, or responding to an engagement activity - such as a poll, story, survey or giveaway.

Accounts are asked to refrain from the following improper uses:

  • Using a department or program social media account to promote or endorse individual candidates running in active student government elections, club/student organization positions.
  • Scheduling appointments through direct messages.
  • Providing personal, academic, financial, career or life advice through direct messaging.
  • Advising a student on academic requirements through direct messaging.
  • Arranging the trading or exchanging of personal items.
  • Advertising a personal side business or personal fundraiser.
  • Advertising a "GoFundMe" or similar platforms soliciting monetary donations.
  • Refrain from double-tapping, liking, resharing or retweeting personal posts and uploads shared by students, especially if the content is not affiliated to the university.
  • Refrain from liking or sharing content which may portray the university in a negative image.

Comments may not always be positive. Comments, however, are considered a form of freedom of speech and therefore protected under the First Amendment. Negative comments cannot be deleted and must remain on your content. If you find a comment that could be considered harmful, threatening, hateful or suspicious, please report it.

How to Report a Comment:

Report harmful, threatening, hateful or suspicious comments to the Student Affairs Marketing Team and University MarCom Team via email.

While you await a response,

  • Do NOT respond to negative feedback or engage with a commenter(s). Providing a screenshot of the content in question will help in investigating.
  • Do NOT delete the comment(s), regardless of how obscene they may appear. These incidents must be reported to the Student Affairs Marketing Team and the University MarCom Team to investigate.
  • Not all comments or messages received by your account will warrant a response.

Promoting personal, political, ethical, religious, beliefs or viewpoints is strictly prohibited. Refrain from liking or resharing content which express personal political or religious points of view. Disciplinary actions will be taken if an account is found in violation of this policy.

To promote equity, social media accounts will not be used to promote individual candidates running in active student government elections, student club/organization elections, or on-campus positions. This prohibits accounts from publishing an image onto the department social feed, including resharing on a Story. Accounts found in violation of this policy, will be asked to remove the post immediately.

Tips for Account Creation:

  1. Register the account using a secure email account from Stanislaus State.

  2. Create a secure password that is not easy to guess.
  3. Only grant access to staff members/student employees you consider to be responsible.
  4. Establish a clear purpose of the account with your team.
  5. Set expectations with your team.
  6. Establish who will review content before it is posted on the account.

Security Tips:

  1. Consider adding the Student Affairs email account: studentaffairs@csustan.edu as a secondary backup account. The Student Affairs account can be used to recover your account in the event you are locked out of the account.

  2. Avoid using your personal device(s) to access your department/program's social media. This limits the chances of making inadvertent mistakes.
  3. Log out of each social media platform when you are not actively using it.
  4. Refrain from using the same password on multiple accounts.
  5. Routinely change your password, consider doing this twice a semester.

 

Content Accessibility

Accessibility is a topic that goes beyond including captions to videos and adding alternative text to images that you upload. To view a more comprehensive guide on web accessibility, please visit the Web Accessibility Resource webpage.

 

Meeting Accessibility Not Meeting Accessibility

An Accessible Visual

1. Limit the amount of text.

While no text on the image is the best solution, in this case, it was very minimal.

You can place the majority of your event's important details in the photo's caption.

Social Media caption for this post:

Join us for a day of fun at our annual Spring Convocation on Aug. 29! Meet student leaders from both campuses at our consortium! Registration link is on our bio!

2. Provide alternative text for this post.

This example still displays text, therefore you must  provide an alternative text description.

The alt-text description could read:

Spring Convocation. Three students in a group photo. Stanislaus State. Student Leadership & Development.

3. Reinforced brand identity.

The department's secondary identifier logo is placed at the bottom right in a location where it is prominent. This logo is not required on all of your posts but using it on a more consistent basis reinforces the University brand identity.

Avoid Creating Inaccessible Content

1. Contains heavy amount of text.

While your image can contain some text, too much text creates issues for users who rely on assistive technologies.

Solution:

You can list your event's important details, inside the caption. This frees up space on the visual and places more emphasis on the visual aspects of your graphic/photo.

2. Do not share URLs on an image.

Instructing your audience to type a long URL is not effective, and users cannot click on links embedded in an image.

Solution 1:

Consider placing your event's registration link(s) inside your social media profile's bio.If it is for a simple event.

Solution 2:

Use a Link in Bio tool. These tools allow you to create a landing page with multiple web of links inside one simple page.

3. Always add alternative text to your posts.

All images or posts that contain text, must have alternative text provided (including the one in this example). This ensures that users with screen readers will still be able to view your post.

 

Updated: January 12, 2024