Social Media Account Request Form

• All proposals to create an official University of Cincinnati social media account must be presented to their unit’s leadership for justification and assessment prior to being presented to Mar Com for strategic review and inclusion on the university-wide social media inventory. In addition to following the guidelines and best practices, all social media accounts both new and existing must follow university branding and accessibility standards. 
• While it may seem necessary to meet your communications needs by creating social media accounts specific to your area of focus, maintaining effective and engaging social media accounts requires an enormous amount of resources, not only the time it takes to set up, post, and respond on various accounts, but also the resources required to develop informative, interesting and engaging content, and the strategic planning required to ensure demographic targeting and post visibility.
• Consider your goals and determine if they can be accomplished by providing content to an existing account or if content can be shared through traditional or digital marketing (digital screens, newsletters, etc...) 
• Divisional Leadership and MarCom reserve all rights to deny account creation that violates best practice guidelines, further fractures the brand voice, or presents an increased opportunity for institutional risk.

Questions to consider

1. What do you want to accomplish through social media?
2. Who is your intended audience?
3. Which social media platforms will you use?
4. How will you build your audience?
5. What other ways is your current audience being reached?
6. Is there an account that exists that you could provide content to instead of creating and managing a new account and growing a following?
7. How often do you plan to post on social media on each platform?
8. Who is responsible for creating content, monitoring the account daily, and engaging with your followers?
9. What type of content are you planning to create?

It is important that you review the answers to these questions with your director. Once unit leadership has reviewed your answers and provided approval for the new account, then you are ready to submit a social media account request.

1. Identify an email address to be associated with your accounts. 
2. Review UC Social Media Brand Guide
3. Submit a Social Media Account Request