Guidelines

The implementation and use of institutional social media accounts for official university marketing and communications are increasingly common. Social media platforms offer significant opportunities for raising brand awareness, engaging audiences, driving action, and spurring advocacy.


Effective April 15, 2019, The Ohio State University adopted The Institutional Social Media Accounts for Marketing and Communications policy. If you manage a social media account for CFAES purposes, please read the policy and accompanying documents at go.osu.edu/socialmediapolicy

Obviously, Ohio State’s policy will also guide the use of social media by CFAES employees. Employees who use social media accounts for official university and marketing communications are encouraged to review the CFAES Social Media Guidelines below.

CFAES Social Media Guidelines

 

AVATARS

As you know, our brand identity reinforces that we are one college with one mission: We sustain life

Through all CFAES communications, including social media accounts, we want individuals—alumni, donors, partners, friends, legislators, and clientele—to know and recognize who we are. We also want them to know about the great work we do through teaching, research, and outreach. To do that, we must be consistent in how we communicate about who we are. To help strengthen our online identity, we have created avatars to be used across all accounts. If you maintain a CFAES-related social media account, please use the general CFAES avatar. If your program is a cross-college initiative, meaning your work is done through more than one college, please use the alternate avatar. To download the files, simply right click and choose 'save image as' and then select the location for your file. 

If you have any questions about avatars, social media branding, or have trouble downloading the files below, please email the CFAES Brand Team at CFAES_BAT@osu.edu.

 

CFAES avatar Cross-College Avatar
CFAES avatar Alternate avatar

 

zoom backgrounds

Show some CFAES spirit during your next online meeting by downloading and using one of the great Zoom backgrounds designed by our students. The university also has some nice static and motion options to choose from. Check them out here.  

 

SOCIAL MEDIA BRANDING TIPS

  • Social media post images do not require brand approval. 
  • The tag and logo are not required to be on images posted to social media.
  • Try to select a strong image that conveys the content of your post and use the text area of your post for details. Embedding text information into an image does not comply with ADA guidelines and makes it difficult for people who use screen readers to get the information they may need. 
  • Your department/unit/program identity should be promoted in your cover photo and in your page posts.