Account Requests

Social Media Account Requirements

College of Engineering Accounts

Requirements to qualify for an official secondary Texas A&M College of Engineering social media account are:

• Read through the Texas A&M University social media policies.
• Contact Engineering Communications. Send a request for guidance on setting up accounts or assistance regarding issues with currently existing accounts. Please contact engcomm-socialmedia@tamu.edu.
• Identify a full-time staff member to serve as the social media representative for your organization.
• Request a social media platform outline to define marketing goals. Contact engcomm-socialmedia@tamu.edu.

Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station Accounts

It can take years of diligent work to build a worthwhile and credible following when starting the first social media account for an entity, and it also requires a full-time staff member to manage it. Engineering Communications has trained staff apprised of state and The Texas A&M University System guidelines, ready to help elevate your center or institute’s content on existing channels to earn the respect of followers on the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) social media accounts.

To request your content be shared via the TEES social media accounts, please e-mail teesresearchsm@tamu.edu.

Considerations to Make Before Requesting an Account

Before requesting an account, think about this:

• Accounts with no activity for 90 days are considered inactive and must be removed per university guidelines.
  • Refer to Guideline III on Texas A&M University Systems Employee Use & Engagement Guidelines.
• Will you have enough content to keep an active status, and also engage your audience?
• Do you want to grow your own audience/following from the ground up, or use the broad reach of the College of Engineering or TEES accounts?
  • If starting from scratch sounds daunting, you can work with Engineering Communications when you have news or events to get it posted and engage the larger engineering audience where we dedicate time and effort to recruiting followers and keeping a strong content stream so that we stay in our followers feeds.
• Recommended minimum posts per platform:
  • Facebook – three times a week
  • Instagram – three times a week
  • Twitter – one time a day
  • If you are an engineering program, remember that your audience is the very same one we already have a substantial following with on our college accounts. Establishing a following can take months, or much longer, and it needs to be managed by a full-time staff member within your program. Engineering Communications focuses on content creation for primary and secondary accounts only.
• If you choose to create your own account, Engineering Communications cannot assist with running it. You will be responsible for the security, quality, accessibility, frequency of posting, responding to all comments, messages and questions.

Once the above requirements have been met, accounts that can be requested for monitoring by Engineering Communications are:

• Twitter
• Facebook pages and groups
• Instagram
• LinkedIn group

The Process

• Strategy. Meet with an Engineering Communications social media representative to develop a strategy for your social media outreach. We can assist you with the development of strategy and tactics for official social media channels.
• Training. Attend a required training on social media best practices and accessibility provided by Engineering Communications. Additional training will be provided based on trends or changes in social media best practices and accessibility.
• Security. To assure long-term continuity, all login credentials for each social media account will be maintained by an Engineering Communications social media representative.
  • Accounts created prior to Dec. 1, 2019 – Must provide a listing of ALL social media accounts and login credentials to Engineering Communications social media representative.
  • Accounts created after Dec. 1, 2019 – Will be approved and created by Engineering Communications. A social media representative will provide login credentials for new accounts to the program and/or department. The login emails for pre-existing accounts will be changed to an alias email provided by Engineering Communications.
  • Social media channels that allow for multiple users must also add at least one administrator from Engineering Communications.
• Responsibility. An official representative must be assigned to the requested and/or pre-existing social media account. The representative must be willing to take on the workload to oversee the account. If the accounts are associated with an official college program (e.g., Engineering Entrepreneurship), the director must be responsible for the social media account. Secondary accounts left unattended for more than 90 days are required by the Texas A&M System to be archived and removed.
• Branding. All approved accounts must follow branding guidelines defined by the college and university.
• Compliance. All approved accounts must comply with the social media policies outlined by the Texas A&M System
  • The Texas A&M University System Public Notification
  • The Texas A&M University System Employee Guidelines
  • Agreement to adhere to social media policies is required in writing.
• Continuity. Do not leave social media channels unattended. The Texas A&M System policy states that an account should be removed from public view after 90 days if there are no updates or activity associated with the account. The suggested activity level for a social media account is at least once a week. More information: Refer to Guideline III on this page.

Guidelines on how employees should represent Texas A&M Engineering and the Texas A&M University System.