Chris Syme serves as a sports information director at Montana State and coordinates website and new media duties among her responsibilities. This is from her blog "New Adventures of an Old SID." Among her duties at Montana State are website and new media coordinator, cross country, track and field and golf. She was a presenter at the 2009 CoSIDA Convention and will speak at the 2010 CoSIDA Convention in San Francisco.
Since we made a commitment to dive into the social media pool a couple years ago, I figured it was time to look at developing a social media policy. We have several coaches on board now and we have a pretty vigorous social media community. Being the strategic thinker that I am (
thanks Gallup's Strengths Finder material), my first priority was to gather best practices and sort out where we needed to go.
There are many reasons to formulate a good policy for your department (subject for Part Two), but before you open that door, you had better take a look at some prerequisites first.
1. Do you have a social media strategic plan? This is code for, "do you know what you're doing?" Don't "just do it" because everyone else is. Have you made a commitment to find out what your fans and media outlets want? Do you have the time and resources to manage your social media? Have you spent some time (or are you willing to) learning about social media? There are almost a gazillion apps out there now--wish I was exaggerating. How do you sort through all that? How do I build trust? What is transparency all about? Should we have a Facebook page, a twitter feed?
Amber Naslund at
altitudebranding.com has laid out a wonderful slide presentation called, "Getting a Foothold in Social Media." I would recommend it as a primer. It's easy to read and has lots of basic information about social media. I would pay special attention to the list of blogs she recommends. Start following them. Dedicate some time to becoming educated. There are tons of good books out there, but if you are not a book reader, go for blogs.
2. Look at what other schools your size are doing. I think this is crucial. I could spend all day dreaming about how our men's basketball program could have a twitter feed like
Duke's Blue Planet, but it's not feasible for us. Unlike
Kentucky, we don't have the resources to pay someone to manage our head men's basketball social media. So, I recommend looking at the schools in your conference first. What are they doing? Most of them probably have similar cultures to yours. Rank them from most successful to least successful. Make a list of those features they are using and take note of how they use them. Is their twitter feed just spitting out URLs to news articles (bad use of twitter, BTW)? Do they host video on their web? What looks engaging to you? Are their coaches blogs, Facebook pages, etc. linked to their main website?
3. Does everyone on board have a commitment to keep it current?We had a recruiting guru come through about two years ago and get our coaches all fired up about blogging. Almost all of them gave it a shot. A year later, only two were posting regularly. I asked the rest to take them down--some had not posted for over a year.
I helped the coaches that still wanted to have something find a better method. Most of them turned to Facebook fan pages. This was a great way for them to add content and keep the buzz going by having fans posting as well. I am an administrator on most of their Facebook pages and post occasionally on their behalf if I have video or news that will interest their communities.
4. Is your administration on board?
This is probably a no-brainer question, but I know many SIDs are self-propelled. Some ADs don't really care what you do as long as you keep it current and they don't get any complaints. But I will guarantee you there will come a time when you will need resources ( people, equipment and time) to really make this thing fly. Using social media effectively should be a department priority and it should be a partnership between marketing, sports information, external operations, coaches, and administration. Make it work, as Tim Gun would say.
I almost added a fifth point titled, "Will you have help?" and I decided against it. I think if you have 1-4, you are good to go. Some of us don't have any "help." I manage the social media in our department--it's my job. A lot of people are involved, but it's basically up to me to make it fly. I know many of you are in that boat too. If you are, then go on to #5...
5. Do you have a passion for it? I almost asked if you were addicted, but I thought that sounded too harsh. I am a self-confessed
three-screener. You don't have to be one to be successful at this, but it helps. I follow Twitter while I watch TV and spend many hours pouring over books and blogs every week. It fuels me. It doesn't turn everyone's crank, but you will need a touch of that to be successful.
Next up: "Developing a Social Media Policy-Part Two: Collecting Best Practices."