Facebook Guidelines

Facebook is a good tool to communicate with current students, future students, alumni, stakeholders and various community members. As with all social networks, you create a post and when another user shares your post with their friends, it is spread through their network.

The University of Winnipeg's official Facebook page is managed by the Marketing and Communications and Student Recruitment team. This page is used to post messages and items for students and potential students such as application deadlines, course registration, upcoming lectures and events. Signature events which include convocation, the state of the university address and open house, are also posted.

Departments and faculties within the university may wish to create a Facebook page to post upcoming events such as lectures or faculty news as a way to share information to students and faculty members. You can share articles relevant to the department to engage in discussion that may be of interest to these groups.

Check out some examples of UWinnipeg units that are using Facebook.

Please look over our best practices for tips on how to maintain your page.

Page vs. Personal Profile

As an organization, it is best to create a page rather than a personal profile to post updates for your department or faculty. When someone “likes” your page they will be able to see your updates on their newsfeed. A page offers more tools for you to keep track of who is seeing your updates. You are able to measure the amount of likes your page receives, the number of people who have seen your post, the number of clicks, and a variety of other analytics. When you create a page you can give permissions to a number of users on your team. This is an easy way to manage your page without sharing your account information with everyone. Each person uses their own Facebook account to update the page.

Personal profiles are meant for individuals and represent that individual under their name. You can follow public figures to keep updated with them by following their public profile. You do not need to be friends with them to see their updates. If you are an organization that is using a personal profile to post news or updates, it is best to convert your profile into a page. Your profile may get deleted if your profile violatesFacebook’'s Terms of Service. If you have already established a large amount of friends on your personal profile, rebuilding that fan base is relatively easy. Only your confirmed friends and followers will be converted to people who like your page. If you have a personal profile you want to convert into a page, follow these steps.

Creating a Page

Visit the create a Page section on Facebook.

Choosing a Name

When creating a university page the page must start with The University of Winnipeg - Your department here. An example is “The University of Winnipeg - Faculty of Education”.

Choosing a URL

Go to https://www.facebook.com/username to create a custom URL for your Facebook page. When creating a URL for a university page you must use facebook.com/uwinnipeg-departmentname

Ex. facebook.com/uwinnipegPACE

Note: You are allowed to change your URL once on Facebook. If you change it for the second time that change will be permanent. Make sure you have an established official name for your brand before changing your URL. Only change it if your department is renamed. The advantage of creating a username is it is easier for people to find your page on Facebook. You can use the web address in promotional materials for your department.

Customizing your Page

Profile Photo - please use our crest with the red patterned background provided by Marketing and Communications, please email communications@uwinnipeg.ca.

Cover Photo - choose a photo that reflects your department. If you have an event coming up that you would like to be promoted, you can use the cover photo to promote it. The dimensions for the cover photo is 851x314 and under 100kb.

Wall Posts - you can post upcoming events and news on your page's timeline. Post a variety of content such as photos and videos of recent events that are taking place in your department. Keep your content fresh, if you want to promote an event multiple times, don’t repeat the exact message.

Events - when you create an event, a new page for that event is created. You can invite your friends to the event and they can choose to invite their friends depending on the permission setting you provide. For more information visit the Events section on Facebook.

Apps - there are numerous applications Facebook offers to customize your page. You can add various apps; feeds for twitter, youtube, instagram and RSS on your page. There are also custom apps where you can use HTML to create your own content.

Facebook Glossary of Terms

For more information visit Facebook Help