Social Networking admins - one or many?

[Julie Grundy Marsello]

Hi,
If you have a Facebook Page or Twitter account, does 1 person do all the postings? Or do you give the log in to various members of the team?

Looking for industry standards because I have been asked by the management to be the sole poster of the Facebook Page, but I'd rather distribute the responsibilities to multiple members of the team due to an overly extended work load already.

Any advice on what you're doing at your school would be greatly appreciated.

[Rachel Doyle]

I do all the posting for the main university Twitter and Facebook page, but I have also allowed some of our programs to set up their own fan pages and do the posting, for example our MBA program posts everything on their own pages.

I haven't shared the main Twitter and Facebook accounts with anyone else, because it makes me responsible for regularly updating the content. I find when there are too many "cooks in the kitchen" everyone seems to think someone else is taking care the updates and then no one does it.

[J.D. Ross]

I'm the only one who has access and posts to our official Twitter and Facebook presences.

We do have a few other departments on campus with Facebook pages, and they handle postings for themselves, although I have asked to be added to their page as an administrator.

I agree with Rachel that having one person responsible often makes it easier to keep track of things.

[Darren Ladner]

We have two people who administer the main campus page. Any side pages in FaceBook by other departments must still run though this office for approval and to have one administrator assigned to be responsible for what content is put on that page. We are also working with FB groups which is new to me. The students usually come up with these ideas. These groups and all other FB pages must be attached to the main campus FB page. Also we are discussing with the other FB pages that they need to follow some guidelines according to the Marketing office to keep the pages consistent with the main school FB page. Such as logos, etc. . Now with the FB groups, there is a student assigned as co-administrator along with a faculty co-administrator. These two are assigned responsibility for what goes on in the FB group. The faculty member must approve everything that the student does in the FB group first.

[Julie Grundy Marsello]

Thanks to for the responses. You're help is greatly appreciated!!

[Curtiss Grymala]

For the most part, each of our Facebook pages has only one person posting to them. However, we also indicated that I should be an admin user for any Facebook fan page officially created by the College. I'm not an admin to actually post anything, but I am there to ensure that we maintain control over the pages even if the pages creator(s) leave the school.

For our Twitter account, again, only one person will actually post (at this point, the only posts on our Twitter feed are news release excerpts that I've got going to Twitter through the API), but there are four or five of us that have access to the Twitter account, just in case.

[Bill Herndon]

Here at ISU, we have one person doing the posting to/from/about our social media sites (Facebook, Twittier, Ning, Orkut, YouTube, Bloggers, MySpace) and we have created a system of linking the site(s) to each other and integrating our Admissions info. We have created specific landing pages so we can track movements through out the social media-verse and it seems to be working.

[Dirk Herr-Hoyman]

A single account, which is shared by a team, or a set of personal accounts, either one could be appropriate.
We have done both our university Facebook page. I think it depends on the effect you are looking for,
is it something that's a bit official or do you want to personalize it in a folksy way.

[Brenden Sparks]

We have one person in our dept (Strategic Communications) who manages content for our "official" university FB and Twitter pages, but there are 2 other people in a different department (Public Affairs) who have access but don't do anything with social media (which is why my department picked it up in the first place).

There's a campus "working group" that tries to encourage collaboration and communication across campus, but the culture here is that everyone does what they please.

[Jessica]

I do all 'main university' type postings in FB and Twitter and act as the 'voice' of the accounts adding personal touches here and there, such as personal questions or greetings.

Our strategy includes adding admins from various parts of the university to act as liaisons both in FB and Twitter.

For FB currently admins include: 2 people from university communications (including me), 2 people from public affairs and one social media work study student to help me out with events and pictures/video. We also cross promote other official university pages/groups via our gateway 'official' university page.

For Twitter we use: myself, 1 student connected to student organizations on campus, 2 people from retention, 1 person from the registrar, 1 person from student activities.