Best Practices for Social Media

Tailoring your Content to each platform

Tailor your content to suit each network and appeal to its specified audience. Your audience on LinkedIn is quite different from your Instagram audience, and your content should reflect that. Yes, tailoring will take a little longer, but you want to post quality content. Quality over frequency is key.

Speaking of quality, post high-quality photos and videos that showcase JSOM in the best possible way. Nobody wants to see grainy photos or watch videos with poor sound quality. You must project a professional image for your brand. Remember to add hashtags and mentions in your messaging when applicable to reach a wider audience.

In general, the key is to post relevant, quality content on a consistent basis. When you do this, people will find you even if the social media feeds do not show your post.

How often should you post on each platform?

• X a 1/day (this can also be a repost)
• Facebook a 2-3/week
• Instagram a 2-3 posts/week, at least 1 story per day
• LinkedIn a 1-2/week
• YouTube a 2/month

Success does not necessarily look like a high number of followers, comments or likes. If you are cultivating a highly engaged community and providing them with quality content, those numbers mean little.

JSOM Audiences

• Undergraduate students
• Graduate students
• Alumni
• Faculty
• Staff
• Parents of students
• Prospective students
• Community

Platform Specific Content

The Jindal School of Management only uses specific social media platforms which include Facebook, Instagram, Linked In, X and YouTube. Learn more about the different kinds of content you should create for each platform.

Facebook

Age 25 to 34 makes up the largest percentage of our followers on FB at 62.1%. Because our audience is slightly older on here, we should avoid the type of casual content we would post on X or Instagram, but it is not as professional as LinkedIn.

Photos

• Facebook is the easiest platform to post a large quantity of photos on at once because of the photo albums format.
  • Post galleries from large events (Graduation, SB, award ceremonies)

Updates

• Gen Z is still on Facebook, but most primarily use it to update family and friends on their lives, i.e., posting about getting an internship, job, moving, getting married, pregnant, etc.
  • We can use this same concept but apply it to important updates about JSOM and UTD (University at Texas Dallas) (not smaller events):
  • Campus closures, COVID, etc.
  • Good news about JSOM (rankings, milestones)

Engaging posts

• Facebook is one of the easier platforms on which you can have conversations with others on posts. Comments are what gets your post the most exposure because when one person comments, their entire friends list can see that comment, bringing more eyes to your content.
  • Instead of directing your audience to a link, ask a question that they can answer in the comments.
    • Polls, giveaway contests, fun info and videos

Facebook Best practices

• Strategize when to post
  • Highest traffic occurs midweek between 1 and 3 p.m.
  • Weekends are poorer times for engagements — especially on Saturday. Because people are active, they do not expect much interaction.
• Utilize videos when you can
  • Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes video content. We want views.
  • Make sure the media you use is high quality.
  • Nothing is worse than grainy photos and videos

Instagram

Instagram is all about aesthetics. People post their best content here: food, travel, outfits, etc. This is the best app to reach undergraduate students.

Posts

• Because of how visual the app is, we need to use discretion when deciding what to post on our feed vs. our stories. Content that goes on your feed should apply to most of our audience.
  • Campus beauty shots
  • This type of content always does well and makes your feed look better overall. Who doesn’t like seeing a beautiful photo of UTD?
• Fun photos (graduation, welcome week, etc.)
  • Look for photos with a diverse group of students
  • Temoc at events — so good for the brand!
• Graphics
  • To promote specific stories, stats or milestones
  • These should fit our brand colors and style
  • Good for getting information out, but they don’t do well with engagement, so they should be used only when necessary.

Stories

• Of all social media content, Instagram stories are the most casual. They only stay up for 24 hours unless you add them to a highlight on your profile.
  • Event reminders
    • If a professor asks for you to post about an upcoming event or competition, this is where you would do it first — unless it’s a really big event.
    • Ex. Free food on campus
• Reposting
  • When someone tags @jindal_utdallas in their story, we can easily repost it. This is a great way to organically promote our brand and it encourages more people to post content for a chance to get reposted.

Reels

Instagram’s newest feature works like TikTok. These videos live on your profile with your normal posts and on a separate reels tab. On the reels tab, we can reach a wider audience outside of our followers, so we should use this!

• Student day in the life vids
• Tours

Instagram Best practices

• Use discretion when posting
  • Post regularly enough so your presence is consistent, but not too often to where you get unfollows
    • 50% of Instagram captions and comments contain emojis
• Repost stories and interact with your followers to keep a strong presence

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the most formal of all the social media platforms. The #1 use is to connect with professionals and find a job. It is also the most popular social network with Fortune 500 CEOs.

Professional-style updates

• A lot of our followers are alumni. They don’t care about everyday student life content, but they do like to hear when their alma mater succeeds.
• Rankings always do well on LinkedIn: Jindal school rankings explained

Success Stories

• People use LinkedIn to promote their personal brands. When we write an Inside Jindal or blog story about a student/faculty member/alumnus that is doing big things, we should post that here.
  • Research, award winners, etc.
  • Not only does this promote JSOM, it allows them to share with their own audience and bring us more engagement

Donor thank you’s

• When an alumni or local business gives a large donation, thank them here.
  • This can look like a graphic or a personal video from a student receiving a scholarship. Collaborate with DevAR (Department of External Affairs/ Alumni Relations) before posting anything.
    • This type of content shows our community that people believe in JSOM, and it allows them to pat themselves on the back for donating. Plus, it might inspire others to donate. It’s a win-win-win.

LinkedIn Best practices

• Keep it professional
  • Proofread all posts for typos and run them through Grammarly. The last thing we want is for our audience to see sloppy content on here.
• Tag people and companies
  • We want to reach their audiences and get as much engagement as possible.

X

X is often the first-place people check for breaking news. Journalists, public officials and companies use this app to share news, updates and interact with their audiences.

Content

The majority of our content on X will be curated from other sources:

• Reposting updates from the main campus X (@UTDallas)
• Inside Jindal content
• Blog content
• Sharing quality posts from other UTD/JSOM accounts. Do this sparingly and only if it appeals to a wide enough part of your audience. You don’t want to spam them with irrelevant information
• @JindalCMC, @JSOMDeanCouncil, @UTDallasAlumni, @innovationutd, etc.

Some content will be targeted toward what is trending:

• “National _______ Day”
  • There’s almost always one of these trending. If you see one that would appeal to your audience, make a post.
  • Be sure to include the hashtag and media (photo, gif or graphic) if applicable
• National months
  • Hispanic Heritage Month, Black History Month, Pride Month, etc.
  • Plan ahead for these more serious events with related blog content and social campaigns. A thread would work well here.
  • Look for past content on Inside Jindal or the blog to repurpose
• Memes
  • X is a more casual outlet. Using more slang and internet lingo is welcome here and a good way to get more interaction.
  • Pay attention to trending meme formats, and use them occasionally where you see fit

X Best practices

• Keep posts short. You have a 280-character limit, but you don’t need to fill that every time. Cut out any repeat phrasing, and use abbreviations where it makes sense.
• Include videos, polls, other media when possible
• X is very interactive; the more replies a post gets, the more exposure the account receives. The goal is to have lots of interaction with our posts. In return, you should also interact with your mentions.

YouTube

YouTube is extremely popular outside of the U.S. On our JSOM account, we have almost as many viewers from India as we did in the U.S. This tells us that it is a great place to market the school to prospective students who can’t easily travel to JSOM.

FAQ type videos for prospective students

• Utilize international street team members to create this content
• Virtual tours

Explainer videos for different programs

• What is the benefit of this degree? What type of jobs are available etc

Livestreams

• Especially during COVID, YouTube is the best platform for livestreams because it is extremely user friendly (for older relatives) and the video stays on your profile for later viewing.

YouTube Best practices

• Utilize SEO in video titles, descriptions and keywords
  • A lot of YouTube views come straight from Google, and people use it like a search engine.
• Put out quality content where we can
  • With YouTube currently including content from many departments, it is hard to control all of the content.
  • This is where we put any video that we shot with nice cameras, lighting, mics, etc. and edited. (Scholarship banquet, promo videos etc.)
  • These videos should only be a few minutes long and include the most interesting parts of the interviews