Before creating your professional social media presence, discuss your intention to do so with your department chair or manager, and develop a social media plan and content calendar.
Questions your plan should address:
- What social media channels, if any, have already been established by colleagues or the University for this purpose? Answering this question will help you avoid duplicating efforts or mixing messages.
- What do you hope to accomplish with this social media presence?
- Who is your intended audience?
- How will social media help you achieve departmental goals?
- How will you ensure this social media presence reinforces the University's overall goals and reputation?
- How will you measure success?
- What will this social media presence give your audience that they can't get anywhere else?
- Where will your content come from and who will be responsible for creating it?
- Will the presence be sustainable? Will there be enough resources to maintain the account over the long-term?
- Study various social media sites to answer the question: Which of the social media platforms available to you will best help you fulfill your goals for reaching your key audiences in an efficient way?
Selecting the Right Platform
Each social media platform has its own set of strengths and weaknesses in areas such as ease of use, type of content included, popularity with various audiences, privacy controls and community user expectations.
Understanding what you're trying to communicate will help guide your decision in selecting a platform or platforms. For the most up-to-date guidance, please reach out to Kira McNally, social media manager.
Whichever platform or platforms you select, it’s best to focus on one or two, especially in the beginning.
Managing Your Channels
If the social media presence will be for departmental rather than individual professional purposes, identify the faculty or staff member(s) who will manage the site.
Each social media tool should have two administrators from your department, and possibly one from the Division of Marketing & Communications as a backup.
Assign at least one of the administrators from your department to be primarily responsible for monitoring and updating your site. This person should be able to check the site at least once daily and, in general, depending on which social media presence you have chosen, update it with new content several times a week.
Set clear expectations for this person's understanding of the site's tools, the privacy settings you want to follow, and the frequency of posting and reviewing site content.
Assign and train a backup administrator who is familiar with the social media goals you have set.
Selecting a Name
The channel name should make it clear to visitors that it represents a specific profession, department or office associated with Bucknell University.
To avoid confusion, try to stay away from using "BU" as a replacement for "Bucknell."
Launching the Account
Create your social media presence and begin populating it with content for several weeks before announcing it broadly.
Share the link with a small group of people who can join or become followers and provide feedback. Doing so will allow you to become comfortable with maintaining the channel, work out any bugs and develop a small audience before launching more widely.
Announce your launch, focusing on the audience you’re seeking.
Briefly describe the focus of your channel and the kinds of information you plan to share and encourage people to start engaging with your channel.
Follow and tag official Bucknell University (@BucknellU) social media accounts.
Growing Your Account
Other opportunities for promotion include your departmental website and your email signature. Monitor, measure and be prepared to change.
Manage your channel regularly and track which content is most popular and best communicates your goals.
Depending on your analysis of this information, you may decide to emphasize certain types of content or turn your focus to another social media platform that might better communicate your messages to your intended audience.
Social media is a highly visual channel, where photos accompanying text often perform well. To assist in creating images, Marketing & Communications recommends using Canva.com as a design tool for campus colleagues whose design needs surpass the basic tools available in other programs like Word or Publisher.
Canva allows you to create a free account that offers a variety of templates for many different kinds of projects, including specifically sized social media channel assets. It will give you a starting point, and allow you to customize the project to your social media needs.
University color palettes, fonts, assets and logos are available for the Bucknell community here to ensure all projects align with the University branding guidelines. These assets can be uploaded to Canva, or the design program of your choice, for use in your projects.
For more information about university brand guidelines, please reach out to Barbara Wise, associate director of visual strategy, at bjw030@bucknell.edu.