Guidelines 

1. For individuals

Help protect CERN's e-reputation

• When posting about your activities at and related to CERN and interacting on your personal or professional profiles, respect the CERN Code of Conduct, CERN's Computing Rules, CERN's Data Privacy Protection Policy, and the Staff Rules and Regulations.
• Secure your social media accounts: revise your privacy settings, enable two-factor authentification where possible, and don't post personal identifiable information that may pose a security risk for CERN. This will protect not only CERN's e-reputation, but also your digital self.
• Do not share information that is confidential and/or internal to CERN, or that could have security or commercial implications (e.g., don't post a picture of your CERN access card or of internal documents such as contracts or project budgets).
• The use of the CERN logo is legally protected. It should not be used on any profiles that are not official CERN social media profiles. Please consult CERN Design Guidelines to know how to manage your account's branding.
• Protect intellectual property rights: make sure you have the rights to use any third-party material you include in your posted content and give credit where it is due. Please consult the Terms of Use for CERN Audiovisual Media.

Help promote information integrity and digital safety

If you are interested in being active on social media, help us make the digital space more transparent, inclusive, accessible and safe by adhering to the following:

• Be transparent. Clearly identify yourself and your role at CERN; clearly state in your profile that you post in your personal capacity, and your statements cannot be regarded as officially representing CERN. We suggest adding an appropriate disclaimer in your profile, such as "Personal profile. All views are my own".
• Confirm all the facts before posting. Do not use, support, share or repost information if its source is unclear or unreliable, or if you are uncomfortable with its content. If you share incorrect information by accident, make sure to correct it as soon as you realise.
• Think about how the message will - or could - be received by your external audience? Use humour with caution - not all jokes travel well, or are well received. Reflect on whether there are alternative ways in which your message could be read and try to remove any ambiguity.
• Per the Staff Rules and Regulations (refer to article S I 3.05), members of the personnel shall refrain from any act or activity:
  • that is incompatible with their functions, or
  • that would be morally or materially prejudicial to the Organization;

and that applies to their use of social media.

• CERN, as an intergovernmental organisation, does not take political positions and social media posts associating with the Organization's activities must respect this.
• Use clear, accessible, and appropriate language to address your target audience and enable meaningful dialogue and debate. Try to avoid scientific jargon when addressing a wide audience.
• Keep your content up to date. One easy way to make sure your content includes the latest information is to link to its source rather than copying the content into a social media post. Not only will give you credit where it is due, but information is often updated in the source website first.
• Be constructive. The Staff Rules and Regulations (refer to article S I 3.07) require personnel to exercise reserve and tact at all times. Avoid posting or encouraging offensive comments, and approach debates and criticisms constructively. Some discussions may not be worth engaging in. If you experience harassment online, you are welcome to contact the CERN Social Media team, and we will assist you.
• Be cautious when writing about CERN and third-party accounts, products or services. Before posting, you must run a reputational check to make sure they are not in conflict with the values in CERN's Code of Conduct. If you are posting in a personal capacity, clearly state that it is not CERN endorsing these accounts, products and services. If you have doubts about whether to endorse a profile, the CERN Social Media team can assist you.
• Use generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) programmes mindfully when creating social media content. We highly advise adhering to the following principles: define a purpose for the use of the AI programme, apply proportionate tools, and be transparent about their usage; respect people's right to privacy, data protection and data governance, avoiding the use of AI tools that employ practices that go against these rights.
• Make your content accessible and inclusive. Some best practices not only expand your audience, but they also improve your conten's performance. Here are a few that we try to apply consistently: closed captions on videos, alternative text on pictures, first letter uppercase on every word of a hashtag, and using gender-neutral language. (CERN's Digital Accessibility Policy is scheduled for release soon and will contain further guidance on the subject).

2. For sectors, departments, units, experiments, and projects

In addition to the guidelines above:

Help CERN to have a consistent digital voice

• Authorised institutional (‘corporate’) social media presences are limited to sectors, departments, units, experiments, and projects listed in the CERN Directory that have the express permission of the CERN Education, Communications and Outreach group to represent CERN. Others are welcome to contact the CERN Social Media team, and a decision will be made on a case-by-case basis. Please consult CERN Design Guidelines to know how to manage your account’s branding.
• Before opening an institutional social media account, you must have the proper authorisations from your management team and the CERN Education, Communications and Outreach group. Due to many instances of lost access and unsolicited messaging, you will be required to give admin rights to the CERN Social Media Manager and add your access details to our database.
• The use of the CERN logo is legally protected. It is authorised for use only on approved institutional accounts and must not be used on any other (non-institutional) profiles. Please consult CERN Design Guidelines and the CERN Social Media Manager to know how to manage your account’s CERN branding.
• Protect intellectual property rights: make sure you have the rights to use any material you use to create content and give credit where it’s due. Please consult the Terms of Use for CERN Audiovisual Media.

Help promote CERN and the incredible work done by our community

• Respect our branding guidelines for the ecosystem of CERN accounts. Please consult CERN Design Guidelines and the CERN Social Media Manager to know how to manage your account’s branding.
• Reflect on your strategy and content plan. Rather than posting for the sake of posting, think about what message you want to communicate with your post, what you are trying to achieve through posting, who you are looking to address, and what stories do you have to tell that would resonate with your audience. To keep an account alive, you need to post at least once a week.
• Interact proactively with the ecosystem of CERN accounts. Like, comment, and share posts from other CERN accounts, engage in conversation, and you might even collaborate in content creation (e.g. posts, livestreams). Here is a list of [official CERN] accounts that have been verified by us and are thus considered trustworthy.
• Occasionally, site visits are organised for [high impact] content creators (i.e. ‘influencers’). All such visits need to be coordinated with the CERN Social Media team and Press Office, even if the individual content creator(s) is visiting under a privately organised visit. Content creators can be a great opportunity to tell CERN’s story to a wider audience, but they may also pose a reputational risk (either directly or from the parallel social media or sponsored content CERN becomes associated with through their channel(s)).
• Be proactive in managing your communities and moderating interactions. Ensuring that your followers respect these guidelines – especially those under “Help promote information integrity and digital safety” – will help you create and maintain a healthy and constructive digital community, even when your followers might disagree. We recommend having a zero-tolerance policy for personal insults (e.g. choice of clothing, lifestyle, etc.) against our CERN community, perhaps blocking the account in question or reporting the comment. There will be some grey areas in managing your digital communities, but you’re welcome to reach out to the CERN Social Media team for support.
• Evaluate. We advise collecting the following metrics regularly: impressions, engagements, engagement rate, views, mentions. These metrics will tell you how well you are using the social media platform, how much your audience appreciates your content, and to what extent you are driving online conversation.

3. How to get started?

So, you are part of a sector, department, unit, experiment, or project that is listed in the CERN Directory, and you have got the permission of your management to start its new social media profile. What are the next steps? Please write to the CERN Social Media team with your answers to the following questions and we will work with you to make sure your account respects the rules outlined in these guidelines.

• What experiment / project / event do you work for?
• What social media platform do you want to use?
• What audience are you trying to reach?
• Is there an existing channel to which you could contribute?
• What communications do you plan to publish?
• How regularly do you plan to communicate?
• What human resources do you have allocated to maintaining this new channel?
• What is foreseen for the social media accounts when the project ends?
• Would a hashtag suit your needs instead of a new social media profile?
• Would a closed Facebook/LinkedIn group suit your needs?
• How do you plan on evaluating the impact of your social media activities?
• Are you ready to retire your social media profile if it doesn’t perform to standards?

4. How and when to retire an account?

If you are unable to post at least once a week and if your follower growth rate has been below 1.5% for over six months, the likelihood is that your social media profile is not performing well. We would advise to retire the account, content and hashtag, and instead contribute to CERN’s institutional channels or other CERN accounts. If you would like to keep your username from being taken, we suggested adding a sentence to your bio, saying: “Profile no longer actively managed. For more updates, please follow @CERN.”