Best Practices

Launching your own social media channel isn’t as simple as throwing together a few hashtags and calling it a day—scheduling, coordination, and branding are the unsung heroes of your favorite Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, and we’re here to help you take the first steps in creating an effective social media channel for your department or office.

What are the goals of your posts, and when will they be scheduled? All these questions should be answered before the creation of your social media channel.

Information for All Channels
The following tips apply to all posts, regardless of channel.

Purpose: Ensure you have enough relevant content to post regularly, with specific audiences and goals in mind.
Frequency: Be sure to understand when and how often you should be posting—refer to individual channels for more information.
Voice and Tone: You’re speaking on behalf of WPI, so make sure your posts are clear and succinct without sounding too institutional.
Call to Action: Is there a clear action you’d like your followers to take after reading your post?
Accuracy: Make sure you have all relevant details before posting a status updating or sending a tweet—and if a mistake is made, fix it through a follow-up post, comment, or replacement.
Responsiveness: Always respond to questions or comments from your followers within 24 hours or less.
Follow the 60-30-10 “Golden Rule”: That’s 60% posts that engage with shares and retweets, 30% that share content conversation and responses, and 10% that focus on announcements and events.
Measure Your Success: Decide how you’ll measure your results, and schedule time to reevaluate, make changes, and incorporate what you learn.
Plan Your Content: It’s important to engage in real time, but don’t forget to create a content calendar to help you repurpose your existing content and schedule monthly campaigns.
SEO: Make it easy for future followers to find you in a search—be sure your profile includes your organization name, relevant keywords, and a URL to your site or blog.
Visuals: Humor, memes, etc. can be used to great effectiveness, but can also offend some in your audience. We suggest not using memes and be very tame with attempts at humor.
Guidelines: Please make decisions on social media posts similarly to how you would post on your university webpages. Refer to university policies (https://www.wpi.edu/about/policies) for more detail.

WPI

Looking for a social media scheduling tool?

Do you want a scheduling tool that can help you build out your content calendar and save time? Check out the article from Sprout Social.

Need help with designing your graphics?

There are several tools to help you level up your design game and make your social media posts stand out. Check out this article to see the products available to best suit your needs.