1. Susan Thares
03/13/2013
Social Media Policies &
Effective Strategies

2. Things To Consider Before You Begin
• What are you solving for?
• Who is the audience you want to reach?
• What does your customer want/need from you?
• Engagement or one-way communication?
• Where does your audience engage on social media?
• What constitutes success?
• What resources ($$ and people) are available?
• Identifying key stakeholders in your organization
• Leverage other government resources

3. Policy Components
• Purpose
• Scope
• Who does it apply to
• Background & Definition
• Defining social media/digital engagement & benefits of using it for your agency
• How is relates to and advances your agency mission
• Roles & Responsibilities
• Who is authorized to speak in an official capacity
• Approval processes
• Policy Specifics
• Access
• Account Management
• Acceptable Use
• Legal Requirements
• How it’ll be managed/Governance

4. Creating Policy
Internal Use Guidelines
• Follow all applicable government & agency policies
• Disclose only publicly available information
• Don’t use your status to discuss overly personal info
• Show respect & professionalism
• Respect other’s privacy
• Correct misinformation or mistakes
• Avoid political statements

5. Creating Policy
External Use Guidelines
• Comment Policy
• Linking Policy
• External link evaluation criteria
• Disclaimer of endorsement
• If you receive PII

6. Creating Policy
• Obtain Terms of
Service for all Third-
Party Apps you plan
to use
• Get approval
from OGC
• Familiarize yourself
with the latest
records management,
privacy and security
guidelines
• Leverage all the great
resources on
HowTo.gov

7. Making them available…

8. First Steps to an Effective
Strategy

9. Starting your Strategy
• Listen online for questions, comments, information gaps
around your products and services
• Wade through the noise, look for good nuggets and don’t take it
personally
• Creating content is key
• Write in plain language, inject some humor and go beyond text
based content
• Link back to resources on your websites
• Build an inventory of content before you start and determine how
often you are going post
• Metrics
• What to measure and how to report it
• Adjusting as you go

10. Online customer listening is
essential to a successful
social media strategy

11. Create Relevant Content
MonitorTrends
Identify Key Customer Issues
Listen

12. • Include a variety of links to your websites,
resources and blogs
• Create visual collateral (video, photos,
infographics)
• Create a content calendar
• Repurpose content when you can
• Retweet relevant info from the White House, other
agencies and other parts of your agency

13. • Establish some basic metrics
• Review metrics regularly and adjust accordingly
(e.g. # posts/tweets, time of day, days of the
week, etc.)
• What content resonated most with your audience
• Test different ways to communicate a message
(e.g. use different tweet headlines that link to the
same blog)
• Create FAQ spreadsheet with corresponding
answers in Facebook and Twitter formats

14. Sample FAQ document

15. Have Fun with It

16. StudentAid.gov Homepage
16

17. Facebook
www.facebook.com/FederalStudentAid
17

18. Facebook Post Examples
18

19. Twitter
www.twitter.com/FAFSA
19

20. Twitter Post Example
20
Shortened link
to info on
StudentAid.gov

21. The more the merrier…
21

22. YouTube
22
www.youtube.com/FederalStudentAid

23. Some of our YouTube Playlists
23