From the gratuitous self-promotion department:
In June, I’ll be co-presenting an Academic Impressions webcast on how to create a social media policy. My co-presenter will be Teresa V. Parrot of Widmeyer Communications (@tvparrot on Twitter).
We’ve been talking about this topic for a few months and agreed that colleges and universities could use some guidance in developing social media policies (or guidelines, as we like to call ours,since our campus culture — like many others — has an aversion to anything stamped as “policy”). In this session, Teresa and I plan to go beyond the nuts and bolts of creating the policy to also cover the nuances of selling your administration on the policy and building buy-in.
Since we’ve got several weeks before we present, I’m hoping to tap into the hive mind of the Internet. I’d be interested in hearing from you about what you see as the most important elements a social media policy should include. Also, if you have a social media policy for your university that you’d be willing to share for this webcast, please let me know, either in the comments here, on Twitter or via email (at andrew DOT careaga AT gmail DOT com).
Higher Ed Marketing 
In the development process, do you keep these guidelines in electronic form so they can be updated as privacy settings constantly change on social media sites? And, in the guidelines, do you also include simple how-to’s, or do you rely on the end user to use the FAQs provided on the sm sites?
Here’s a simple web based wizard to help get you started on a social media policy:
http://socialmedia.policytool.net
Disclosure: our company helped to develop this tool in conjunction with a local lawyer. We’re always looking for ideas to enhance the tool so all input is appreciated.
Bill – Good questions and worth considering as we develop the content for this webcast. For our campus, our guidelines are in electronic form entirely (no published brochure or handout, other than the downloadable document). We do plan to revise and update as needed. As for how-to’s, I think it’s a good idea for social media guidelines or policies to include some general how-to information but to direct readers to other sources, such as the social media sites or authoritative blogs that cover social media.
Shawn – Thanks for sharing your social media policy tool. I think that’s a great wizard!
Andrew –
DePaul University has guidelines at http://brandresources.depaul.edu/vendor_guidelines/g_socialmedia.aspx. I’m always looking for ideas to improve them
Thank you, Kris.
Our first set of guidelines are available at http://ur.tufts.edu/socialmedia but I expect them to continue to evolve, especially over the summer.
While these are guidelines, and not a policy, we do link to relevant electronic/communications policies.