Before you set up an account

On this page:

• Reaching your audience
• Promoting your project
• Shaping your message
• Investing your time
• Sharing your views

Reaching your audience

New social media accounts take time to establish an audience. Accounts need to follow a growth and content strategy to be successful. Our main York St John channels have thousands of followers and can instantly reach a bigger audience, so it may be more effective to work with the Communications team to promote your project on these channels before setting up a new account. You can contact them by emailing news@yorksj.ac.uk.

Promoting your project

Our main social media accounts currently share a wide range of University information including courses, public events, news and campaigns. The Marketing, Student Recruitment, Communications and Admissions teams work together to find the best way to promote courses and the University as a whole across multiple platforms, and would be happy to work with you to explore how social media channels can support your needs.

Shaping your message

York St John University is an inclusive and welcoming community. It is important that the language and imagery we use reflects this.

Staff or students who run or intend to run any form of social media channel affiliated to York St John University are expected to read, understand, and adhere to the University’s brand guidelines.

Investing your time

Social media can be a great way to reach a target audience with important information and content. However, there are a significant number of legacy social media accounts associated with York St John University that are no longer used or can no longer be accessed because they have been set up and abandoned.

Please think carefully about whether any new account can be managed and maintained. If you are no longer using an account, it is better to remove it than have it live with no new content for a long time and out of date information.

Sharing your views

If you are a current member of staff and intend to use your personal social media account to refer to your work or professional role, or if you mention York St John in your job title, bio or anywhere else on your profile, please include the following: 'All thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.'

If you run or intend to run a student led account for a project, event, society, or sports team, please include the following line in your bio or about section: 'This is a student led account and does not represent the views of York St John University.'

If you would like to discuss any of the above before deciding whether to launch a York St John affiliated account, we would be pleased to work with you and share our current social media operating models and strategic aims.

Please contact t.barker@yorksj.ac.uk.