Social Media Tips & Guidelines

Be Polite Use common sense in your interactions. Remember that you are representing the University of Florida and the MBI as well as yourself.

Be Accurate Use care to ensure the information you share is public and correct.

Be Honest Use your authentic voice and be transparent about who your are.

Personal & Professional Usage

Maintaining professionalism

  • A positive digital footprint can improve your reputation
  • Avoid negative interactions and engaging with controversial Twitter users
  • Present yourself visually with a profile picture and cover photo. Upload a profile picture of either yourself or an image that is representative of your research. The ideal mix would be a profile picture of yourself and a cover photo representative of your research.
  • A public account can be viewed by many people: your friends, peer scientists, potential donors, potential patients. While academic freedom allows our faculty a great deal of latitude in being able express themselves about issues, it’s always best to be civil. There’s always a potential risk in sharing content that causes controversy. 

Maintaining confidentiality

  • Protected health information should never be discussed
  • Even a deleted tweet can be captured by a Twitter user; be sure to review your tweets before hitting “send”

Maintaining boundaries

  • Consider keeping public and private personas separate
  • Click here to learn how to make a professional Facebook page.
  • We encourage you to write a disclaimer stating, “Views are my own”.
  • The best accounts merge personal and professional information in a tasteful way. Otherwise, professional accounts can be perceived as sterile.

Keeping up

Social media can be overwhelming. Don’t feel like you have to “keep up” with everything out there! It’s perfectly acceptable to drop in and out in the world of social media. However, when starting a professional social media presence, be sure to promote your page across all your social platforms to build your followers. Easy ways to stay social include:

  • Liking posts/tweets from colleagues and partner institutions
  • Sharing research in your field that isn’t yours — become recognized as an industry expert
  • Sharing and retweeting relevant content
  • Offering congratulatory messages to colleagues when they garner achievements. A simple way to do this is to share/retweet their post and adding a personal comment.
  • Posting and sharing content during conferences, which usually have an associated hashtag
  • Using applicable and appropriate industry keywords and hashtags. Don’t overload your post, otherwise you may risk looking like spam!
  • Tagging (with @) applicable individuals, institutions or organizations to expand your reach and generate shares and retweets
  • Including links, images or videos whenever possible
  • Linking to your papers and abstracts — many journals now track online references and tweets and social media references

General Tips

  • Use CamelCase (capitalize every word) when hashtagging. This helps users easily identify words. Example: #SocialMediaSavy. Please be sure to research and search hashtags before using, to avoid inadvertent negative associations.
  • Look at researchers that you’d like to emulate. Take note of their post types and social media habits.
  • Be positive, authentic and professional.
  • Remember that everybody is watching (and can take screenshots before you have the opportunity to delete any comments or posts!)
  • Look back to this page for future updates. This webpage will evolve as best practices evolve.

Choosing a platform

Facebook

– Ease of sharing with friends and colleagues in your network – Great for socializing, such as thanking your friends and colleagues in your network, posting photos, etc. – Ability to create a professional page

M-B-I Facebook page

Questions?

Feel free to contact the MBI Communications Team or UF Health Web Services if you have any questions.

Todd Taylor
Department: HA-HSC NEWS / COMMUNICATIONS

Todd Taylor

Associate Director Of Communications
Phone: (352) 265-9423
Jacqueline (Jackie) M Hart
Department: HA-HSC NEWS / COMMUNICATIONS

Jacqueline (Jackie) M Hart

Digital Communications Specialist
Phone: (352) 273-6387