Because of social media’s potential to impact perceptions of the University and its reputation, these guidelines were developed for all social media sites, accounts, interactions and posts on behalf of UT System Administration entities or officials in connection with their professional capacity or relationship to the University.
These broad guidelines are intended to accommodate differences in social media platforms while maintaining a universal code of conduct. These guidelines will be adjusted as needed to adapt to changes in the communication landscape.
- Relevance: Ensure your content directly relates to your department or organization and engages your audience.
- Engagement: Pose questions and solicit feedback to start or continue conversations with your audience.
- Mission Alignment: Ensure your posts reflect the spirit of the UT System’s vision, mission and values.
- Approvals: Create a defined process for approving content before it is posted. This could include a checklist for ensuring compliance with brand guidelines, accuracy and appropriateness.
Before posting, consider the following:
- Representation: Your activity on social media represents the entire UT System to a broad audience. Make sure your posts uphold our vision, mission and values.
- Sensitivity: Avoid topics that could reflect poorly on the University.
- Stay on brand: Ensure that all official social media accounts and users adhere to UT System branding guidelines.
- Tagging: Make sure you are tagging the correct accounts on your posts.
- Create a Content Calendar: Create a content calendar so you can stay on track with how much you are posting each month.
- Accessibility: To help ensure your social media content is accessible to all users at the UT System, consider captioning videos, optimizing graphics for color contrast and including alt text image descriptions.
Handling negative comments:
- Inappropriate language: Hid or delete comments that include profanity, threats or similarly inappropriate language. Depending on the severity, report threats to law enforcement or the UT System Division of Communications and Marketing.
- Negative feedback: For negative comments only:
- Ignore them, or
- Provide a polite and constructive response.
- Need Help: If you’re unsure how to handle a negative comment or social media tied to a crisis situation, contact Kasey Funderburg at the UT System Division of Communications and Marketing at kasey@tennessee.edu.
Creating engaging content involves several key elements that resonate with your audience. Here are some important factors to consider:
- Relevance: Content should be relevant to your audience’s interests, needs, and current trends. Understand what your audience cares about and tailor your content to those topics.
- Value: Provide value through your content. This could be in the form of useful information, entertainment, inspiration, or solutions to problems your audience faces.
- Visual Appeal: High-quality visuals, including images, videos, and graphics, are more likely to catch the audience’s attention and encourage interaction. Use appealing designs and clear, professional visuals.
- Storytelling: Tell compelling stories that evoke emotions and connect with your audience on a personal level. Stories can make your content more relatable and memorable.
- Interactivity: Encourage interaction by asking questions, creating polls, hosting live sessions, or prompting comments. Engaging directly with your audience can boost engagement rates.
- Authenticity: Be genuine and authentic in your content. Audiences appreciate honesty and transparency, which helps build trust and loyalty.
- Consistency: Maintain a consistent posting schedule and style. Consistency helps keep your audience engaged and coming back for more.
- Call to Action (CTA): Include clear and compelling CTAs that guide your audience on what to do next, whether it’s liking a post, sharing, commenting, or visiting a link.
- Personalization: Tailor content to specific segments of your audience. Personalized content can make your audience feel seen and appreciated, increasing engagement.
- Timeliness: Share content that is timely and relevant to current events or trends. Being timely can make your content more relevant and engaging.
- User-Generated Content: Encourage and showcase content created by your audience. This not only increases engagement but also builds a sense of community and trust.
By focusing on these elements, you can create content that is more likely to engage your audience and perform well on social media platforms.
To maximize your performance on social platforms, it’s important to understand your audience’s preferences and interests, and tailor your content accordingly. Regularly analyzing engagement metrics can help you refine your content strategy and ensure you’re meeting your audience’s expectations.
- Engagement Drops: If your audience doesn’t find the content relevant, they are less likely to engage with it (likes, comments, shares). Lower engagement can signal to the platform’s algorithm that your content is not valuable, reducing its reach.
- Audience Dissatisfaction: Posting irrelevant content may frustrate or alienate your followers, leading to unfollows or negative feedback. This can decrease your overall audience base and negatively impact your reach and engagement metrics.
- Algorithm Prioritization: Social media algorithms prioritize content that receives high engagement. Irrelevant content typically garners less engagement, so the algorithm might deprioritize your posts, making them less likely to be shown to your followers or potential new followers.
- Content Consistency: Consistency is key in building a strong brand presence. Posting content that deviates from your usual themes can confuse your audience about your brand identity, leading to reduced trust and loyalty.
- Official recognition: Prominently list all officially recognized social media accounts on your department’s web page.
- Identification: Ensure officially recognized social media accounts are clearly identified as such.
- Judgment and common sense: Use sound judgment and common sense in any online activity. Assume anyone can access and view postings, including those which may exist in some form long after considered “deleted.”
- Accuracy: Ensure the accuracy of postings by double-checking every time before making them public. If a posting is found to be inaccurate, retract or correct it as quickly as possible.
- Visitor comments: Monitor and respond to comments as quickly as possible. Avoid online confrontations and conflicts. If appropriate, respectful disagreement may be expressed, but personal attacks are inappropriate and reflect poorly on the individual and the University.
- Open conversation: Encourage open conversation. Listen to people and respond to as many comments as possible with constructive feedback. Permit negative comments (delete spam and anything inappropriate, such as profanity) and seek to respond rather than censor.
By adhering to these best practices, you can ensure that your social media presence effectively supports the goals and values of the UT System while fostering a positive and engaging online community.