Council Media Takeover

The Inter-Residence Council Social Media Takeover (shortened to “Council Media Takeover”) is the process by which residential councils can access and post on the official IRC social media. This allows residential councils to advocate and showcase their work on a larger platform than their individual social media accounts. Additionally, councils may receive community cup points for participating! The following explains how it works, how to sign up, and what you should expect when it is your time to start posting! 

 

 

How It Works

The process of allowing councils to post on IRC social media is relatively straightforward. It essentially boils down to one general concept: each residential council will be able to pick a day for them to have supervised access to IRC’s primary social media accounts. From there, the council may post whatever information they wish, so get creative!

Timeline

In the Spring semester, there will be 12 weeks where Council Media Takeover will take place. Each council will choose a week for their posting day. From there, they will decide what exact date from Monday through Friday they will have access. Essentially, every council will only have a single day to post, but they have the freedom to decide what that day in the week they pick. Additionally, the council will communicate with the Vice President of Media & Marketing during their designated week to better plan and prepare for their posting day.

Restraints & Limitations

In order to subdue chaos and prevent inappropriate behavior, their are some general rules listed here at every council should follow:

  • Understand that all posts and forms of communication via the IRC social media must be appropriate for the general public and the rules and regulations of NC State Media as a whole. The Vice President of Media & Marketing will discuss this before the posting day and continually monitor and supervise any actions taken during the posting day. A good baseline to follow is this: Only post what you are comfortable with EVERYONE seeing!
  • There are no restraints on tweets and Instagram/Facebook/YouTube stories able to be posted during the timeframe within reason. “Within reason” means that the amount should not be excessive and every tweet/story should have a given purpose. For example, if a council posts a Q&A on Instagram stories and a total of 20+ stories are made, this is acceptable because each story has a purpose of answering a question. 
  • For Instagram, there is a hard limit of 1 OR 3 Instagram posts for the day. The reason why 3 posts are allowed in particular is because Instagram displays posts on an account page in columns of 3, so 3 posts will take up a row. This is mostly for aesthetic reasons but it is asked that councils follow this guideline.

 

How To Sign Up

Councils may pick their allotted time from a list of available weeks. To sign up, simply include your council next to the week of choice in the spreadsheet here: https://go.ncsu.edu/irc-media-takeover-signup

You may also enter your preferred day of the week, but it is not required at the moment. However, please keep it in mind before the week comes up to better prepare for your date.

 

How To Prepare

It is important to think of what you want to post before your time comes up. The VP of Media & Marketing will be in contact with the councils during their week, so it is okay if no ideas are thought of in advance, but here are a few ideas to get started:

  • Take a few videos talking about your day in the life of a member of your council! This can either be a sleuth of videos or just a post or two. Take us through how your council operates!
  • Introduce your council members and their roles!
  • Host a Q&A on social media stories! We can set this up a day in advance so you have some questions to answer by the time you have full access.
  • Post about your events and major impacts you have made in your community!

 

Community Cup Points

Additionally, there are incentives in the form of Community Cup Points for participating in the Council Media Takeover! There will be a set reward for participating, so everyone who signs up for a date and posts something will receive a fixed number of Community Cup Points. Additionally, after every council has posted, there will be a ranking of the best takeover posts. This will likely be a metric of likes, followers gained, post quality, and post quantity. A strict rubric will be constructed to make the ranking process as objective as possible, which will be posted once created. The top three councils will then receive bonus points, so plan hard and put your best foot forward!