Social Media

Students, staff, and faculty share their thoughts and expand their communities through all kinds of social media platforms; that's why IPFW uses key social media outlets to join the conversation and engage its audiences.

The IPFW Social Media team manages IPFW's primary social media outlets, including:

• Facebook - facebook.com/ipfw.mastodons
• Twitter - twitter.com/ipfw
• YouTube - youtube.com/ipfw
• Flickr - flickr.com/photos/ipfw/

Through these outlets, the Social Media team answers questions, collects feedback, promotes campus events, and helps students get more involved with life in the university.

In addition, the IPFW Social Media team advises departments, units, affiliated organizations, and recognized student organizations in the planning, creation, care, and feeding of a social media presence. In the near future, the Social Media team will produce training and development documents aimed at the internal audience, as well as comprehensive guidelines covering all major social media platforms.

Curious for more information about how IPFW uses social media? Here are some case studies of specific campus customer service solutions that started as conversations on social media:

• Case Study: Changing the bookstore credit card policy
• Case Study: Bringing local food trucks to campus

For information about social media at IPFW, contact John Kaufeld, Online Marketing Specialist, at 260-481-6848 or kaufeldj@ipfw.edu.

Which sites should be registered?

Only official IPFW department or office social media outlets need to be registered.

As the IPFW Social Media Policy explains in the Exclusions section (page 3), three types of social media outlets are excluded from the policy:

• Social media outlets established by faculty in support of instructional activities. 
• Personal accounts owned by employees or students.
• Social media outlets operated by both recognized and ad-hoc student organizations.

How employees, students, and student organizations use social media falls under the IPFW Code of Student Rights and Responsibilities and other university policies.

Registering your social media outlet

To register a departmental or office social media outlet, gather the following information and email it to socialmedia@ipfw.edu:

1. The web address of the social media outlet
2. The contact information (name, email, and phone number) for the outlet's two managers
3. The administrator user ID and password (for all outlets except Facebook pages)

The online marketing specialist will review your information and add it to the master list of IPFW social media outlets.

If a new administrator takes over the social media outlet or if the department/office stops using the social media outlet, let the online marketing specialist know by emailing socialmedia@ipfw.edu. 

Registering a Facebook page or group

Registering a Facebook page or group adds an extra step to the process, where you add the online marketing specialist as an administrator on the page or group. 

You still begin the registration exactly the same as for any departmental or office social media outlet, by gathering the basic information about the Facebook page or group, and then emailing it tosocialmedia@ipfw.edu:

1. The web address of the Facebook page or group
2. The contact information (name, email, and phone number) for the outlet's two managers

After you email this information to the online marketing specialist, he will 'like' your page or join your group, and then email you to confirm this. At this point, you need to add the online marketing specialist as an administrator for your Facebook page or group. He will help you with the details if you have questions.