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Before You Dive In

• EVALUATE YOUR GOALS, taking into account your audience and messaging, and consider whether these mediums will help you achieve those goals. Don’t jump into social media for the sake of doing so – have a plan. Consider conducting research with your target audience to see if they will use your social media tools.
• BENCHMARK similar department social media efforts for tips and tricks about making your presence valuable to end users.
• REVIEW YOUR WORKLOAD or the workload of your employees to determine if your department has the resources to support social media activity. If someone cannot be dedicated to this work for at least an hour each day, reconsider the effort. Instead, look to other institutional social media efforts and see if you can take advantage of those outlets on a more sporadic, as needed basis.  Remember, new content is critical to building and maintaining credibility in social media communities.