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The Social Media Subcouncil is currently requesting feedback on the draft Guidelines for Social Media Naming Conventions.
Please review our draft guidelines and provide your input, either by commenting on the page, or directly editing the guidelines. Request access to the wiki. |
Government organizations adopting elements of social media must consider many factors when establishing accounts on social media services and when developing in-house social media products. These guidelines provide recommendations for government agencies to ensure trust and integrity are communicated and to ensure brand consistency is achieved.
When establishing an account on an existing social network (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.), the account name should reflect the agency's name and convey an official status, therefore leveraging the brand attributes of authenticity and trust.
Naming consistency across social networks is recommended for branding and name recognition.
Examples of Name Variations Due to Naming Contraints: Library of Congress |
|
Service | Account Name |
---|---|
Website | loc.gov www.loc.gov |
Flickr | library_of_congress (www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress) |
YouTube | libraryofcongress and uscensusbureau (in development) |
librarycongress www.twitter.com/librarycongress
|
Acknowledge the difference between institutional accounts and "empowered" accounts in the name of the account. Accounts in which individuals have been authorized to speak in a professional capacity that is of interest because of their relationship to the agency vs. institutional accounts created to distribute agency content with an institutional identity, should be named differently. Example: a Flickr account called "Library of Congress" vs. an account called Michelle_(LOC) would create different expectations of what a user would find on these accounts. The first account is the official conduit of agency content; the second account is used to respond to public commenters. The second account is associated with the first account through naming and selection of brandmark as buddy icon.
If there are likely to be multiple individual accounts on a service, create a convention of personal name+agency and follow it. (Example: Helena (LOC P&P), Barbara (LOC P&P), Phil (LOC P&P).
Do not convert accounts created for personal use to official use.
The URL for government agencies helps to convey authenticity and trust of the content it contains by use of the domain suffix .gov or .mil.
Leverage the trustworthiness/authority of the brand/agency name for the file naming conventions.
The file name alone can not be the only means of assurance to the user that the account is official, reputable and sponsored by the agency.
Tagging content on social networks can help improve findability of content, especially when filename constraints restrict fully descriptive naming conventions.
Lists of existing government account names on Twitter:
Twitter: The GovTwit Directory at http://newthinking.bearingpoint.com/2008/11/20/govtwit-directory/
(Note: Not all of the account names listed adhere to these guidelines)
Account names (user names) - sometimes your account name is the same as your channel name. In twitter, for example, your user name is the only name you have. In YouTube, however, your account name is what shows up in the address; it's the name you sign in with, but your channel name would be the "Title" of your channel
Channel names (and other official identifiers) - the name that the public sees on the social media site, which identifies your content as your official presence on that site.
URLs - the address that people will type into their browser to see a web page. Unlike our primary web sites, which convey credibility through our .gov / .mil domains, social media services will not automatically convey the official nature of our content.
File names - the name of media files (photos, documents, videos, sound files, widgets, etc.) are often used by the social media service to convey information (Flickr and YouTube, for example). The file names used by your internal file system or directory structure may not be useful in this case – be aware of how each social media service uses file names.
Tags - keywords that help people find your content on social media sites.
For more detailed explination of domain names, subdomains, etc., see: "Understanding and Decoding URLs" Johns Hopkins University. http://www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/general/evaluating/url.html
"Users are used to trusting websites based on the name of the site, or the name of the company in
the URL. If they trust the URL, they will interact freely with the website. With many Web 2.0
technologies there is either no comparable context that the user can base trust on, or if there is a
context, it can be misleading." from Position Paper: Web 2.0 Security and Privacy, Decemer 2008. http://www.enisa.europa.eu/doc/pdf/deliverables/enisa_pp_web2.pdf:
Many higher education institutions provide guidance on how to determine if a web site is trustworthy or questionable.
"Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask." UC Berkeley Library,
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html
" 5 criteria for evaluating Web pages." Cornell University Library, http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/research/webcrit.html
"Evaluating Web Content/Social Networking Sites." Johns Hopkins University,
http://www.library.jhu.edu/researchhelp/general/evaluating/