There is a wealth of resources online for those who work in social media management. Millions of articles promise to give an answer, whether you want to learn how to attract more followers, create more interesting content, or optimise the time of your posts.
The problem is that only a minority of these pieces take into account the specific difficulties encountered by social media teams in higher education. With a limited workforce and a mountain of clientele to juggle, your options for success are slim.
Ideas for using social media effectively in the academic environment that you won’t find by Googling. What follows is some enlightening reading:
- The value of making team graphic templates
- The meaning of mobile-friendly layout
- Methods for better organising your content calendar
- Why there is no such thing as the ideal moment to publish
- The real reason you shouldn’t waste time replying to direct messages
- The advantages of using the engagement rate
Make Your Own Graphical Team Templates
Marketers working in higher education often struggle to find suitable graphic content.
It’s possible that you don’t have any photographers or videographers at your disposal, so you’ll have to make do with stock photos or very little samples from links.
However, the problem may be easily fixed by making visual templates that can be used with many forms of content and delivery systems.
Making use of graphic design templates has several advantages:
Helps you get things done on time, even when you’re swamped with work or trying to make a last-minute announcement since you have a template ready to go. And there’s no need to start from scratch every time something new comes up.
Make up for the low-resolution pictures: Not able to locate an appropriate stock photo? Need a professor’s face, but all you have is a small, pixelated headshot? No sweat; you’ve got plan B and C templates, too.
Assist in the quick production of brand-compliant visuals by new staff: After learning the fundamentals of your programme, new hires may instantly begin producing brand-compliant visuals.
Simplify things for people who aren’t designers: Simply rearranging components on a premade design is all that’s required to produce professional-looking graphics.
Keep everything uniform while working with several designers: Multiple artists can work on the same graphic without anybody being able to determine who did what.
Distribute school resources by sharing social media profile templates. Give all your profiles the same polished appearance and feel.
Put Topics on Your Content Scheduler
Although 96% of social media managers now use them, content calendars are still relatively new to the industry.
However, the content topic or subject matter is an important component that you may have forgotten to include in your schedule.
The most important component of the editorial schedule, for several reasons:
Facilitates preparation:
By using themes, you may organise your academic year in advance, taking into account vacations and other significant occasions at your university.
Schedules can be shared across numerous users. You may free up other team members to compose the content and gather the materials for the article by giving them an overview of the topic.
Aids in maintaining order:
In spite of having a limited staff, you can still keep track of everything that has to be done (and when) by using a single page to organise everything.
Planning out your month and adding content topics in advance. Begin with yearly events like holidays, awareness weeks, and founders’ days, and then expand to more timeless themes like student organisations, research, and faculty biographies.
Finally, don’t stress about becoming too particular; remember that you can add in the necessary notes, assets, and topics as the time comes and you gather additional data.
When determining the “Best Time to Post,” take into account a variety of considerations.
The optimal time to publish on various social networking sites is another topic that has been covered extensively.
Managers of social media accounts in institutions of higher learning are urged not to make posts based just on “best practises,” but rather on a number of contextual variables.
Have we reached the correct people online? It’s possible that your social media tool’s 3 p.m. audience peak corresponds with kids’ online activity. But if you’re making a post for university administrators, do you think they’ll be online in the middle of the afternoon?
Is the data you’re about to reveal time-sensitive? Timeliness is essential for relaying certain announcements. There’s no use in holding off on posting on days like the first day of school or your company’s birthday.
Do you feel you can dedicate enough time to worrying about when to post? You probably don’t have time to think about the best time to post on each platform when you’re managing many accounts. Content scheduling can be useful, but it’s not recommended for high-profile accounts.
In this case, the quality of the material is far more important than the date of the post. If you have great material, you can expect it to do well at any time of day, but if you have poor content, it will never do well, even if you publish it during peak times.
Take Community Management to the Next Level beyond Direct Messages
Managing your online community increases the visibility of your material in social media algorithms, provides unique content for your followers, and shows that you care about their interests.
True, genuine community management is the only way to reap the rewards. That requires more than just checking direct messages and answering queries.
In order to properly administer a community, you need to look for accounts that:
- Mention you and tag you
- Use your location while wearing your school’s logo
Once you’ve located your target audience, all you have to do to get them interested in what you’re doing is to interact with their material by giving it a thumbs up, leaving a thoughtful remark, and sharing it with their followers.