Your guide to developing effective social media content
The basics
You don’t want to be that Facebook friend who posts nine times a day, so try to limit your daily posts to one or two. If you’re tweeting, or posting a picture to Instagram, then you can typically disregard the one-a-day suggestion, but still try to not overwhelm your followers.
It’s also useful to keep in mind the time of day that you’re posting or tweeting. Something in the morning or in the evening is likely to reach more people than something that is posted at 2 a.m.
Photos, logos, and words are important. Remember that you’re an official representative of IU. For example, if you’re posting about a “pub crawl” event, there are liability concerns to keep in mind and images of alcoholic beverages should never be used. Please consider the event’s title, the purpose, and how it’s being billed before posting it to social media.
Use the checklist below and refer to the style and policy guides to help you develop your social media content.
- The style fits with our IUAA brand, voice, personality, colors, and fonts.
- The content is relevant, timely, and written in a friendly, warm tone.
- The content focuses on the needs and interests of the audience.
- The copy is short, descriptive, and entices recipients to read further or click a link.
- The reader has a call-to-action. The post leads to a website, a form, or the events calendar.
- Repeat messages are okay, but try to space them out, or vary the content.
- When posting more than once a day, consider your audience. Posts too close together on Facebook, for example, will cause your audience to miss some information.
Photos, logos, and links
Did you know that a post with an image gets about 94 percent more views than a post without one? It’s true, so always try to include a relevant photo or image in your posts.
If you took the photo yourself, feel free to post away! However, if it is coming from another source, make sure you have permission to use it. Most of the time, including a photo credit in the copy is all it takes. An example of this would be using an image from Indiana University’s newsroom; the post copy should include “Photo Courtesy of Indiana University.”
When possible, try to use a photo instead of a logo when creating a post. People are more likely to engage with a photo than another type of image. It is completely acceptable to share or retweet a post from an official account (IUAA, B1G, etc.) to “use” their design.
When possible, try to use the “short” version of a link in your post. This helps keep the post copy looking clean and organized. You can use a site like Bitly.com to shorten the link.
Did you know you can change the images that automatically generate in Facebook when you paste a link in the post? Simply click on the square with a plus sign below the image, and then upload a new image.
To remove the old or original image, just unselect the images you do not want to use.
IUAA brand guidelines
IU also has a useful resource guide. Please take a moment to read why consistency of brand for IU is important.
Policies
Event promotion and other sensitive issues are governed by the following policies. You’ll find links to each of these on this site:
Review, review, review
And review some more...
No one is perfect, and no one wants to make mistakes publicly. Get in the habit of reviewing your posts and page regularly to make sure everything looks good, and watch for comments pointing out mistakes.
Following this process can help you avoid mistakes:
- Write your copy in a text document first to check for typos.
- Consult the checklist in this document.
- Look for grammatical errors.
- Double check dates, times, and locations.
- Review all names.
- Make sure your links work and direct to the correct site.
- Look at your post, image, and link carefully before clicking publish
- Review the live post to make sure everything looks correct. It’s okay to delete and repost if something needs changed or edited.
- Look at statistics everyday. It will be easy to see which posts are preforming well based on the number of people reached, engagements (likes and comments), and clicks to your content.
- Learn from what works well for your audience and repeat that pattern/behavior in future content.