Social Media Best Practices

More than a selfie. It’s strategy.

Social media is an important part of your department’s online presence. Many times, it’s the first place a student will go to seek out information about an event or program you offer.

Social media reflects your department or organization and connects students to who you are. When utilized correctly and at its best, it can connect your audience to your content in ways that build engagement, community, and affinity for your unit.

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Account Basics

Ensure that your account profile accurately reflects your department/unit. This includes a profile image, username, and bio that informs your audience who you are and/or the services you provide. 

Please note that social media accounts should only be created if the unit has the capacity and content to maintain its presence.

Social Media accounts should not exist for one-time/annual events or one-off campaigns.

Audience

Knowing your audience informs the content you choose to produce and share. Different channels often target different audience demographics. Your audience is more engaged when it’s clear you’ve created content that specifically has them in mind. For example, you may find more parents and families on Facebook, faculty on X (formerly Twitter), and current students on Instagram. You should also consider what services your unit provides in order to know the best content to share.

Collaboration & Tagging

These functions allow you to partner with other accounts when your content is applicable to both your accounts and other audiences. Collaboration posts are automatically shared with your followers as a singular post with multiple “authors,” while posts you are tagged in (or you tag others in) will be added to your profile feed and can be shared to stories like other posts from public accounts. 

Note: It is best practice to plan and communicate with the account you’d like to collaborate with to ensure it aligns with their content schedule and strategy. 

Content Planning & Scheduling

Content planning simply means planning and organizing your social media content ahead of time to optimize the best results for your social media goals. It saves you time and increases your chances of creating consistent and relevant content. 

Planning content ahead of time benefits your feeds by allowing you to maintain a consistent and strategic social media presence. This step helps you ensure your content is aligned with your channel’s goals and effectively reaches your target audience. Organizing your content in advance allows you to be proactive in producing content that is timely and relevant and that can capitalize on key dates that might be relevant to your account. This approach also minimizes risks of errors and unnecessary last-minute changes, which will ultimately enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of your content (this will also be helpful for collaborative content). 

Note: Content can be scheduled in the native app (if it’s not a cross-collaboration post) or using a third-party social media management tool such as Sprout Social. 

#Hashtags

Hashtags can help emphasize your content, call out your audience, expand your reach, and increase the chances of your content being discoverable. When your hashtag includes multiple words, it is best practice to capitalize the first letter of each word within the hashtag. This improves readability and is consistent with accessibility measures. (When long hashtags are written in all lowercase, it is difficult for screen readers to recognize the words.)

Ex. #OurMottoMeansMore vs. #ourmottomeansmore | See the difference?

Fun fact: This is known as CamelCase, a name derived from capital letters being “taller” than lowercase letters, much like the middle rise of the hump on the back of the camel. (crazy, we know!)

Instagram recommends using no more than 3-5 hashtags when appropriate and relevant to the theme of your content. Avoid overusing hashtags and rely on quality, not quantity (a regular rule of thumb for social media in general).

Note: #WFU is the primary hashtag for the University.

Imagery

When capturing content for your post, make sure that the imagery is representative of your caption and the message you’re trying to convey. 

Photos should be diverse in subjects, representative of the content subject at hand, and encompass the Wake Forest experience. Ensure that the content is representative of the student experience in both identity and experience. 

When possible, human subjects in Wake Forest apparel and/or colors are a plus. Subjects in apparel and/or paraphernalia of different universities/ colleges should be avoided at all times (unless the image can be appropriately edited).  

Please make every effort to ensure all content, including photography and videography, never includes elements of WFU policy violations, such as our student code of conduct, housing violations according to The Guide of Community Living, etc., or content that portrays misrepresentation or underrepresentation of the subject at hand.

Links (in Bi0)

In the instance that you need to include a link with your post to direct your audience elsewhere for more information, please refrain from using long-form URLs in your post. Instead, it is best practice to adhere to the following guidelines:

Instagram: Since Instagram posts do not allow a link to be hyperlinked (meaning you cannot click on the link within the text of your post caption and be directed to the URL), it is best practice to include the language of “Link in bio” within your post caption and update your bio with the necessary hyperlink.

Facebook and X (formerly Twitter): These platforms support hyperlinks without the need for the “Link in bio” language. Standard practice is typically a shortened link to fit within the character count for X and post space for Facebook.

Metrics

Measuring your social metrics allows you to have a comprehensive view of how your content is performing and landing with your audience. It will help you enhance, adjust, and pivot as necessary. This can include measuring which posts are performing best, follower growth, when your audience is most active, etc. This can be done manually in your native app or more comprehensively in a third-party app such as Sprout Social. 

Sizes

When shooting or selecting photography or videography, be mindful of where your content will go and, therefore, the sizes needed for that platform. Note that all photos within the same singular post must be uploaded with the same dimensions (e.g., you cannot upload an Instagram post with a square photo and a landscape photo; you must upload all photos with either size). See below for size guides.