Student Organizations Social Media Guide

Starting Out

Make a plan

Decide which platforms you want your organization to use. Think about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube. Think about what your audience uses and what type of content you are best at making. How are you going to promote your pages on these sites?

Research

Find similar organizations to yours at your school and at other schools. Take a look at their social media accounts to see what works well and what doesn’t. You can pull some ideas from others into your strategy.

Set goals

What do you want to accomplish with your social media? A certain amount of followers? Maybe you want to use different sites to get your name out there and recruit new members. Set SMART goals to make sure you accomplish what you want to with social media.

Make the time

Don’t start social media accounts unless you are willing to put in the time and effort to build it. Consistent new content is essential when running social media accounts. Promoting your account, interacting with your audience, and putting out content isn’t easy and only gets harder as you grow so be ready!

Adjust

You will learn a lot when starting up your social media accounts. Take what you learn and tweak your strategy so you keep growing! Also reflect on your progress towards your goals. Maybe your goals need to be adjusted.

Think Before You Post

Be respectful & positive

Think about how you want people to view your organization. If you are negative and disrespectful to people it will change your organization’s image.

Be accurate & authentic

Make sure you aren’t lying about anything on social media to make your organization sound better or to put other organizations down. It is also okay to be casual in social media posts. It doesn’t have to have the same tone and professionalism as an essay.

Encourage conversation

Make sure you allow all comments on your post. It is good to encourage discussion and debates within your organization.

Be smart

Could this post get me or my organization in trouble? How will this post affect my organization’s image? Can the post be negatively interpreted? Is everything spelled correctly?

Separate personal views

Don’t post your personal views on controversial topics like politics, religion, and other social issues. The opinions you post should be kept for your personal account. Also remember that if you talk about your organization on your personal account, everything you say can be associated with that organization.

Don't post copyrighted media

Find out who owns the material and contact them for permission. You need to make sure it’s okay that you use the material and that you give the owner credit.