Social media has become an integral means of modern communication. It plays a vital role in how we transmit our university’s story. If we use it effectively, the number of people we can reach is almost limitless.
We encourage you to use social media to promote your university-affiliated unit, department, college or office. However, it is important that the messages we publish across all of our university-affiliated social media channels are unified, carrying the same voice and purpose. Please use the following policies and guidelines as you promote A&M-Commerce on your social media pages.
These guidelines are meant as a basic outline of best practices for social media marketing. With ever-changing algorithms, it has become increasingly difficult to make content visible. Follow these guidelines to maximize your results and find social media success.
Let’s tell our story, Lions!
Answer messages in a timely manner. When receiving a message on social media, always answer it as soon as you can, unless it is spam, which should be reported. If the person asks a question you cannot answer, respond by saying that you will work on getting an answer. Then, reach out to someone who can help you answer the question.
Be mindful of characters counts across social media platforms. Twitter only allows a maximum of 280 characters per post, so a good rule is to try to keep your character count below the maximum if you are posting the same message to multiple social media accounts.
If your content cannot be reduced to less than 280 characters, post the full content to other accounts, but post a "thread" on Twitter. To do this, create multiple tweets at once in a single thread, labeled in the order of appearance at the end of each tweet (e.g. 1/3, 2/3, 3/3). For further explanation, read https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/create-a-thread.
Be mindful of photo/video dimensions. Photo dimensions vary depending on the social media platform. For Instagram, perfectly square photos are best, but there is a bit of leeway if your photo is slightly more horizontal or vertical. Twitter prefers more horizontal images. Facebook and LinkedIn are flexible and can accept a variety of photo sizes without cropping anything out of the thumbnail.
Be professional. Don’t post anything that you wouldn’t post to your own personal profile. Do your best to steer clear of controversial topics, things that could incite argument in the comments, or anything that could damage the reputation of your office, department or the entire university.
Engage your audience. Engaging your audience should always be your top priority. This can be achieved through calls to action, open-ended questions, exclusive content and more. We always aim to strike up a conversation with our Lion community.
Feel free to have fun and be creative with your content. Have a little fun now and then! Create engaging ways to interact with your audience, such as a poll or a contest.
Follow A&M-Commerce’s brand guidelines. Following the university’s brand guidelines ensures that all of us in the university community present our brand to the world in a consistent, distinctive and compelling way.
Know your audience. Most social media networks now offer insights which provide valuable information on the gender and age ranges of your audience, how they interact, peak times they are online and more. Be sure to stay up-to-date with insights and data.
Acknowledging peak times is particularly crucial. If you are posting all content at 8 a.m. but your audience peaks at 3 p.m., you’re missing your target. By the time they log on, your content is buried beneath everything else that has been posted in the interim.
Monitor your posts. Perform 3-4 (three minimum) social media scans throughout the day. During these scans, look for interaction on your accounts—people posting comments, asking questions or seeking information, anyone tagging or mentioning the university, etc. Try to answer questions or follow up with additional information as quickly as possible. Anything that seems concerning should be reported to your supervisor for further guidance. This is also a great time to find shareable content you can post from other profiles.
Post consistently, but don’t over-post. Consistency will give your content the biggest boost in the online world where algorithms are constantly changing. In years past, content appeared in straight-forward chronological order in our feeds, but now we only see content that social media platforms choose to show us. It’s all a complicated tangle of preferences, audience, relevance, etc. To help ensure that your posts are more visible, try to post daily, but note that it is better to post nothing than to put out something that is superfluous or insignificant.
While it is important to post daily for consistency, avoid posting too much because it can drive viewers away. You do not want to flood your audience with too much information. People find this annoying no matter how awesome the content.
Also, some platforms, like Facebook, interpret multiple posts in quick succession as a form of spam and will be less inclined to show your posts to your audience (This is not usually the case for Twitter as that platform supports submitting threads of multiple tweets at once).
Here are general guidelines for posting frequency by network:
Facebook—2 posts per day
Twitter—No more than 20 posts/retweets per day
Instagram—1-2 posts per day
LinkedIn—1-2 posts per day
These rules are not necessarily set in stone. There are always exceptions, but try not to veer too far from this guideline.
Use official university hashtags. Avoid creating miscellaneous hashtags that will only be used once or twice and then forgotten. Hashtags are a great way to tie together content and also promote visibility, but they are only strengthened by frequency of use. It is always great to create a hashtag for a specific event but only if you will be repeatedly using it.
Here are a few well-established university hashtags. Feel free to use them!
#TAMUC – Use this hashtag any time you post. This links your content to the publishing platform we use for our main accounts, which makes it easier for us to find and share your content.
#BGWednesday – Use this hashtag when making a school spirit post on Blue and Gold Wednesday.
#GoLions – Use this hashtag any time you share a post regarding school spirit.
#BestInClass – Usually used in conjunction with Lion Athletics
#TimeToHunt – Usually used in conjunction with Lion Athletics
Use quality imagery and use images or videos on all posts. Photo and video content is key to getting your post noticed. If you post a block of text without visuals, it will likely be sandwiched between posts that contain photos, and your readers will subconsciously skip over your post. Always try to include photo(s) or videos, and make sure they are high quality. If you need photo content, you can browse our online photo archives.
Use proper grammar. While acronyms and abbreviations sometimes have their place in social media, we should use them sparingly. As an institution of higher education, we should maintain an articulate persona.
Follow our university social media accounts:
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube
Do you have social media-related questions?
Contact E-Communications Specialist Ryan Scott at Ryan.Scott@tamuc.edu.
