Social Media Guidelines

Social media is a powerful tool for promoting the Harvard SEAS mission and vision. All Harvard SEAS social media accounts are expected to follow the Harvard social media guidelines and best practices, as well as the social media accessibility best practices to ensure professionalism, accuracy, and consistency across all platforms.

General guidelines

Before creating any new social media account, consult with the SEAS Office of Communications and review the Use of Harvard Names and Insignias in Electronic Contexts policy. It is recommended that account managers complete the Digital Accessibility for Content Creators course. 

Faculty and staff should maintain a clear distinction between posts made in a professional SEAS capacity and personal posts. Material disseminated by official social media accounts — including area, center and program accounts — are considered to be institutional statements.Official social media accounts should not be used to issue statements on matters that fall outside the University’s core function. Depending on how they are framed, most reposts of social media content are now understood to convey a statement either for or against the position taken in the original post. 

Social media is a public forum, so even with privacy settings in place, content can be reshared or taken out of context. We advise exercising caution and reviewing your posts before sharing, ensuring they align with SEAS’s values and mission.

If you see any concerning content on social media related to SEAS, reach out to the SEAS Office of Communications. Please also understand, however, that it is not SEAS’s role to police or punish the online expression of individual members. When necessary, please refer to Harvard’s guidelines on Responding to Online Abuse, Harassment, and Intimidation.

Flagship accounts & content

Harvard SEAS flagship social media accounts—on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube—are managed by the Office of Communications. These accounts focus on sharing the latest research, spotlighting community achievements, and promoting school events and programs.

The Office of Communications creates original text, video, and images intended for distribution on social media. This content may be shared by other School-based social media accounts (for example, area accounts).

Areas and centers within SEAS manage their own accounts. It is recommended that at least two individuals have access to the account, and there is a plan for managing ownership changes.

Creating a new school-affiliated account

When creating an account, you must use your officially designated entity name (e.g., your area name). Before creating a new social media account for an area, center, institute, lab or program, please take the following steps:

1. Research whether there are already social media accounts for this entity 
2. Only open accounts that you are committed to maintaining regularly over the long term.
3. Avoid creating new accounts for short-term, temporary projects. Instead, use larger area or School accounts to promote these projects.
4. Develop a plan for account ownership, content review, and posting frequency. At the same time, you may wish to create a procedure for dealing with emergency situations (times when it may be inappropriate to post content) and make a plan for how to respond to comments (if at all).
5. Contact the Harvard SEAS Office of Communication for information about the best practices for using each social media channel. 

Content & Style for Social Media

Social media posts should support the school’s mission and vision, maintain a professional yet accessible tone, and emphasize SEAS’s leadership in engineering and applied sciences. Hashtags should be used sparingly. Avoid using all-caps in social media posts.

Posts should highlight key achievements in innovation, technology, teaching and learning, and the community’s contributions to solving global challenges. Additionally, in moments of crisis, it’s best to pause social media activity to avoid potential miscommunication.

Use of official social media accounts to harass, intimidate, or discriminate against anyone may be cause for disciplinary action.

Social Media Accessibility

When posting on behalf of SEAS, it’s important to follow social media accessibility best practices. In all communications, Harvard SEAS strives to uphold values of respect, integrity, and accountability while fostering a collaborative and inclusive online presence.

• Write alt text or image descriptions to describe photos on all social media platforms. 
• Put important information in the text of your post, not only in the image. For example, if you post an event flyer, make sure you have written appropriate alternative text for the flyer, AND make sure the text of your post has all of the important information about the event date, time, location, etc.
• Provide closed captions for all video content or review and correct the auto-generated captions. For platforms that do not provide the ability to add a closed caption file (such as Instagram), we recommend open captions, also known as “burned-in” captions, that are embedded in the video itself. 
• Use “camel case” for hashtags—i.e., capitalize the first letter of each word in a hashtag so that screen reader software will read the hashtag correctly: #HarvardSEAS

• Use emojis sparingly. Screen-reader software will read each emoji symbol aloud. Make sure the emojis you use make sense even if you were to hear the name of the symbol, rather than see its image.

Responding to Negative Comments or Threats

The SEAS community should be mindful of interacting with negative or disruptive comments. Dissenting opinions should be respected, but any language that threatens, harasses, or violates SEAS’s values should be addressed by hiding or reporting such comments. We closely follow the comment policy for Harvard University: 

• When a commenter posts a dissenting opinion about our social media content, we do not delete, hide, or block that comment. But when a commenter uses foul language or hate speech, we hide or delete the comment, depending upon the capabilities of the specific social media platform.
• When a commenter uses threatening language against an individual or institution, or repeatedly disrupts conversation by posting comments that use foul language or hate speech, we block and/or report the commenter to the social media platform. We also report violent threats made against our School and its faculty, staff, or students to the Harvard University Police Department.
• We delete spam comments, unrelated comments, or unsolicited comments that appear to be selling a product or service unrelated to the Harvard SEAS. We also block users who repeatedly post spam comments.