The SOJC’s social media channels are intended to promote and showcase news, announcements, and student life within our school. Our social media channels are an extension of the SOJC and should tell the story of our school. They also need to be in compliance with the UO and SOJC brand, including brand messaging, and the school’s priorities as established by the dean.

Key Messaging Points and Priorities

The SOJC social media accounts strive to share compelling content for our target audiences that focus on the following school priorities and messaging points:

• Brand and reputation
  • Sharing information about SOJC initiatives and programs
  • Highlighting student accomplishments
  • Highlighting faculty and staff accomplishments and awards/recognitions
  • Note: All content must align with UO and SOJC brand standards
• Welcoming vibe and supportive community
  • Highlighting student life in Allen Hall, at SOJC Portland, around campus, and around Eugene and Portland
  • Highlighting the natural and cultural wonders of Oregon and the PNW
  • Highlighting how our faculty and staff support students
  • Showcasing the accomplishments and contributions of our alumni and donors
  • Representing all members of our community, with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Purpose and impact
  • Highlighting how our students, faculty, staff, and alumni are making a difference with their work
  • Showing the impact SOJC community members are making on the university, the state, and the world
  • Emphasizing ethics and brand responsibility
• Research and academic excellence
  • Highlighting student learning, accomplishments, and research
  • Promoting faculty research and accomplishments
• Experiential/hands-on learning
  • Highlighting hands-on learning opportunities
  • Sharing compelling images and videos from student trips, internships, student-run agencies and publications, student work in the field,
• Flexible program and student passions
  • Highlighting unique classes
  • Highlighting alumni’s unique career paths, with particular focus on young alumni
  • Highlighting student projects and interviews that demonstrate their passion
• Transferable skills and SOJC differentiators
  • Showcasing student work and experiences with a focus on skills such as critical thinking, creativity, brand responsibility, ethics, entrepreneurial thinking, data and media literacy, tech skills, and research skills
  • Highlighting student and faculty research and experiences in our identified differentiator fields, including science communication, immersive media, game studies, sports communication and media, brand responsibility, solutions journalism and engagement journalism, documentary studies and production, visual journalism, etc.
• Recruiting talent
  • Sharing content that is likely to appeal to prospective undergraduate and graduate students
  • Sharing job announcements for faculty and staff openings

SOJC Social Media Platforms

Twitter

This platform currently has the widest reach for all audiences and is used for engaging with faculty, alumni and donors, industry professionals and partners, as well as current and prospective students.

There are four options for promoting announcements and news with Twitter:

1. Faculty and staff post through their own accounts and @uosojc retweets the content without additional information.
2. Faculty and staff post through their own accounts and @uosojc retweets the content with an additional comment to offer more explanation or call to action.
3. @uosojc posts through the main SOJC account and faculty and staff retweet without additional comment or information.
4. @uosojc posts through the main SOJC account and faculty and staff retweet with an additional comment to offer more explanation or call to action.

Note: If you would like to bring more attention to your colleagues’ work, follow your colleagues and the @uosojc account. Retweet posts and tag @uosojc to create a broader awareness of faculty efforts.

Instagram

This is one of our primary channels for reaching current and prospective students, as well as young alumni. The content that performs best on this platform are visually compelling posts that highlight student engagement and experiential learning.

This platform requires high-quality images and videos. There are two options for posting content on Instagram:

1. SOJC Comms posts your high-resolution image through our SOJC account to either our grid or our story.
2. We share the image you posted through your own account onto our IG story. Please note that we are only able to reshare your image if your profile is public, or with the appropriate permissions on a private account. It also makes it much easier to reshare your story posts if you tag @uosojc.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a good platform to promote faculty research, alumni news and engagement, and some student experiential learning. The primary audiences for this channel are alumni, donors, faculty, and prospective grad students.

Because this is one of our newer social media accounts, we are still working on building a following on this platform. One of the ways that you can help us grow and expand our reach is to follow our page and like and share our content.

Please note that this platform operates similar to Facebook in that it offers an opportunity for followers to comment, share, and like our posted content. However, SOJC page followers cannot share their own content directly to the SOJC page.

TikTok

We use this account primarily to showcase student experiential learning and engage with current and prospective students. Please note that this is not the proper channel to promote events, academic research or data, or other professional endeavors. Because this is one of our newer social media accounts, we are still working on building a following on this platform.

Content consists of video only and should be on-trend, creative, and often humorous. Often, this content will be experimental, trying new ideas to attract attention to our profile. It is great for offering student slice-of-life content, tips, or other interesting content that showcases the student experience. The target audience includes incoming students, prospective students, current students, and young alumni, and it showcases the college experience.

Facebook

Our primary audiences for Facebook include faculty, alumni, and other industry professionals. The events featured on this platform allow followers and their networks to use it for event tracking. However, our market research has determined that many undergrad students do not use Facebook and may not have an account.

Please note that if you would like to share something about the SOJC on Facebook, it’s best to send it to the SOJC Comms Team to share it through the main SOJC account. Depending on individual profile privacy settings, if you tag the @uosojc account, there’s a good chance we will be unable to share your content directly from your page.

Accessibility

As a public institution, we are required by law to make our content accessible to people of all abilities and to comply with ADA guidelines. When you post or send us SOJC-related content to share, please:

• Add captions/subtitles to videos.
• Add alt-text to photos. This feature describes photos to people with visual impairments. You can access alt-text by selecting “edit” on your photo.
• Tell us the pronouns of people included in the photos so that we are accurately able to reference them in the copy of the post.
• Do not add a lot of text to social graphics, as this is usually not ADA compliant.

How to Help Us Promote Your Content

If you have an event or launch coming up, let us know about it in advance. Email Andra Brichacek Roe or Chad Shelton with details of your upcoming event, announcement, etc.

Note: we are unable to post all events, accomplishments, and achievements, as we have to be careful to not overwhelm our followers with too much content.

We must schedule content into our social media content calendar, and we aim to post one post a day on each channel. As a result, we may not be able to post your content for up to two weeks after we receive your information. Alerting us as early as possible to upcoming events will help ensure we have room for your announcement.

General reminders:

• Tag @uosojc in your tweets. If we don’t see your post, we can’t reshare your information.
• Keep us up to date with your current social media handles.
• All images and videos should be high-quality/high-resolution.
• Note: If you have a graphic for your event, consider if it’s designed for social media. Graphics that include lots of text are often not ADA compliant and rarely have good engagement.
• Depending on the platform, posts with a clickthrough link or another call to action drive more engagement.
  • Note: We have two options for adding a link to an Instagram post through either our link in bio feature, or link stickers on Instagram Stories.
• Please keep your faculty/staff profile page on the website up to date, as this is the resource we use most often to find your title and information.
• We share most event announcements on Instagram Story and Twitter to reach students and alumni.

Things We Need to Make Your Posts Successful

If you are sharing information or content with us that you would like us to share on the SOJC social media accounts, please include the following:

• Appropriate link to a story, article, event listing, etc. If possible, avoid linking to news outlets with paywalls, as posts rarely perform well if audiences are unable to access the content.
• At least one original high-resolution image to share along with your post, if possible. Original images are preferable to stock images, but stock images can be used in specific circumstances. In either scenario, we must have permission to use an image on social media. We will not use images pulled off of Google.
  • When providing an image, please include a photo credit.
  • You can upload your images to this Google folder and add the photo credit to the corresponding document.
  • Note: Social media platforms have their own dimension requirements (pixels). Find the most current information for image sizing in this post from Sprout Social.
• If you have collaborated on your post information with anyone, please include their social media account handles. Example: If you did an interview with KLCC Eugene, please include @KLCCEugeneOR in your post. Tagging accounts will help increase our visibility to nonfollowers.
• Hashtags for related events. Example: If you are presenting at a conference, please include the conference hashtag with your information or post.

Creating New Social Accounts

As the SOJC expands its reach on social media, we are aware that there are times that programs, classes, groups, and projects may want to create a new social media account. Please note that all social media channels affiliated with the SOJC are an extension of the school and should tell their stories in a professional, strategic, and on-brand way. Do not create additional SOJC-affiliated accounts without prior approval from the SOJC Comms Team because adding channels divides up our audience and makes it more difficult to manage the UO and SOJC brand.

Please consider the following questions before starting a new SOJC-related social media account:

• Is this account sustainable long-term, or is it for a one-off project?
  • If it is a one-off project/trip/etc., it is not advisable to create a channel that will sit dormant after the project/trip is complete. Accounts that are inactive should be discontinued/deactivated so that we do not segment our audience. Instead, consider using a hashtag.
• Who is my target audience? How many followers do I have for this account?
  • Would my goals be better met by sending content to the SOJC accounts, which already have thousands of followers?
• What is the purpose and intent of this account? Is there any reason why this content can’t/shouldn’t be shared on the main UO SOJC accounts instead?
• Can I ensure that my new social media account will follow UO and SOJC Brand Guidelines?

To ensure that we do not lose access to an account that goes dormant after a student, staff, or faculty member leaves the UO, you must provide SOJC Communications with the handle, names, and contact information for two administrators. Please avoid having only one administrator for your social media account.

If you want to create a new social media account that includes a reference to the SOJC, you must first request permission and receive approval from SOJC Communications. It may take up to two weeks for a decision to be made regarding your request. If you have any questions, please contact Chad Shelton.

Branding for new and existing social accounts

• Social media accounts must follow UO Brand Guidelines.
• SOJC Communications will provide an avatar (profile image) that fits with our brand guidelines. Do not create one on your own. Please contact Allison VanSciver to request the avatar file.
• New and existing social media accounts must include the SOJC name prominently in the bio, and link to our main accounts (@uosojc) whenever possible.
• If possible, new accounts should include UO SOJC in the account name.