Social Media Guidelines

GETTING STARTED

A few things to consider before starting a new social media page.

Make Time

Being a social media page manager often takes more time than expected on the onset. Remember that for some people, social media management is a full-time job. It’s important to make enough time to do the job right. These are the tasks you’ll have to be prepared to do if you decide to create or manage a social media page:

• Begin.  You’ll want to form social media goals and strategies. Clear goals make it much easier to make everyday decisions and know if you are on track.

   

• Listen.  It’s important to know what others are talking about on social media so that you can join the conversation. There are helpful tools out there for social media monitoring, and some of them are free like Hootsuite and Social Mention.

   

• Respond.  Followers will respond to your social media posts or reach out to you directly and you need to take the time to respond in an appropriate manner, whether that means replying, liking, commenting, direct messaging, or emailing people.Promote: You probably started your social media page to promote your events or your department/college/organization. You’ll have to specify a portion of your content just for thoughtful

   

• Promote.  You probably started your social media page to promote your events or your department/college/organization. You’ll have to specify a portion of your content just for thoughtful self promotion.

   

• Participate.  Get involved in the conversation.

   

• Curate.  Discover and share content from other sites and sources. You’ll need to find many sources to take inspiration/information from, and it takes time to read it all.

   

• Research.  Possibly the biggest challenge you’ll have as a social media manager is consistently producing engaging and creative content. You’ll want to look up articles about new types of content, research other accounts for inspiration, and decide when to use those ideas.

   

• Craft.  Once you find something to share, you’ll have to figure out how to talk about it and make sure you are staying true to your social media voice and tone.

   

• Post/schedule.  You’ll need to continuously post new content on your social media page. Scheduling your posts ahead of time using a free tool like Hootsuite or Buffer can save you some time, but thoughtful scheduling takes time.

   

• Build community.  Spend time chatting with other social media managers on campus and find ways to connect your social media page to other UT pages to strengthen our online community.

It can be very helpful to dedicate an intern to social media management but if the plan is to use intern time, then you’ll have to make sure you can keep that intern position in the future.

BE AUTHENTIC

Social media is so saturated with the noise of other brands crying out for attention, and your followers can spot insincerity and self-promotion from miles away. Maintaining a consistent and unique voice will humanize your department/college/organization and encourage others to talk positively about you. Here are a few ways that you can be authentic online:

• Real photos. Editing photos to post online is fun, but if taken too far, your photos will appear unrealistic and unflattering.
  

• Attitude.  When most people start a social media page, they want a platform and megaphone, but what you should really want is genuine interaction with your followers by creating good, relevant content for them to react to.
  

• Intention.  Be clear about why you’re on social media. Think about how you can be authentic and leave a good impression on your followers.
  

• Gratitude.  Express gratitude to your followers and supporters regularly.
  

• Well-rounded sharing.  People use social media because it makes it easy to keep up with what’s going on around them. Another reason people use social media is to see enjoyable, interesting, useful, or funny content. Create a good mix of different types of content for your followers so they never get overrun with your self-promotions.

Remember: Don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s easy to start focusing too much on self-promotion or one subject. Being aware of these potential traps means you’ll be prepared to avoid them.