Social Media Strategy and Best Practices

Before You Begin

Social media can be a valuable addition to a robust communication strategy, but consider a few questions before you launch a new social media account: 

• Who is your intended audience? Is this the right channel to reach them?
• Social Media Demographics for Marketers (Sprout Social, 2017)
• How much time can you dedicate to the management of this channel?
• Social media is fast-paced and requires time for monitoring and engagement as well as outgoing messaging.
• Set aside time to keep up with the ever-changing features and policies within social media channels.
• What are your goals, and how will you measure success?

Setting a Social Media Strategy

Consider the following steps when creating your social media strategy:

Listen: Use social listening practices to learn more about your audiences and ensure you’re posting relevant content. You can also learn more about the current conversation surrounding the University.

Plan: Keep a social media editorial calendar to ensure consistent and planned content for each week. Connect with other University communicators to share content across audiences.

React: Ensure timely content by tapping into trending topics, timely news stories, and events.

Engage: Social media is a conversation. Make sure you’re engaging with your audience. Provide customer service by answering questions, welcome campus visitors or event attendees, and use a friendly and conversational tone when appropriate.

Evaluate: Many social channels include free access to analytics and insights. You can use this information to measure success, and fine-tune your tactics. Keep in mind the following questions when evaluating posts with high or low engagement:

• What type of media was used?
• What time of day was it posted?
• What event/news item did it tie into?

Creating Content for Social Media

Balance: Content should be balanced between

• Promotion: News, events, deadlines, and reminders
• Personality: School spirit, fun facts, welcoming and lighthearted content

Language:

• Think about your audience(s):
• Use words they understand/use
• Frame messages by their need, not yours
• Avoid acronyms
• Be concise and make content easy to scan
• Posts should have a conversational quality. Avoid promotional or gimmicky language.

Find the Human Aspect:

• What would make this interesting or inspiring to our audience?
• Where can you infuse personality or emotion?

Be Visual:

• Use photos, video, and graphic elements to make your content stand out

Effective Use of Hashtags:

• Use hashtags to help connect your posts to a larger conversation
• UMN-specific: #UMNdriven, #UMNproud
• Weekly trends: #MotivationMonday, #TBT, #TriviaTuesday
• Trending hashtags

Related Resources

Assets

• Channel-Specific Social Media Icons
• University Social Media Graphics

Guidelines

• Quick Guide to Social Media Channels
• Social Media House Rules
• Social Media Policies and Codes of Conduct

Tools

• Social Studio