Social Media

Getting Started

Social media is a main communication tool for most of our students. The division has a social media team that can help you determine which social media channels are most beneficial to your unit and provide you with tools and tips to be effective.

All departments within the Division of Academic and Student Affairs who wish to have an official, university-recognized social media presence must register a formal request with the division’s Marketing and Communications department.

After reviewing your request, our team will schedule a meeting with you to review the university’s social media policy and discuss strategy, security, best practices, next steps and any questions you might have. Our team will then submit a request to University Communications and Marketing for your official social media account(s). Once that request is approved, you’ll be notified by our team.

Your checklist:

• Review NC State’s social media policy.
• Review the User-Generated Content Terms of Use.
• You can review NC State’s brand guidelines.
• Review NC State’s Editorial Style Guide.
• Add Red Claybrick (dasa-communications@ncsu.edu) as a page administrator in Facebook. This account is run by DASA MarComm and ensures the university has account access in the case of staff turnover or an emergency.

Tips and Tricks

• If you plan to start a social media account, make sure you first consider the type of content you would like to share and who will be posting it.
• Make sure to establish a regular posting cadence, and schedule your posts to save time and energy. DASA MarComm recommends setting up and maintaining a content calendar, and using free social media scheduling programs like Hootsuite or Buffer.
• When writing copy for your posts, please adhere to the university’s editorial guidelines.
• Include tags and/or @ mentions in posts to encourage cross-posting from campus partners. And make sure to tag @NCStateDASA in all of your posts!
• Know your audience and where to find them. Students tend to be more active on Instagram, while parents and alumni tend to be on Facebook.
• Be social with your followers. Respond to comments and direct messages in a timely fashion, but also know how to recognize and ignore spam.
• Avoid using text-heavy graphics or visuals. Not only do these types of posts not perform as well from an engagement standpoint, but they also cause accessibility issues for alt text and screen readers. It’s easiest — and best practice — to just use high-quality photos and videos that showcase your department or unit.
• If you do design any graphics or flyers intended for social media, please limit the amount of copy on them and make sure to adhere to the university’s brand guidelines related to fonts and colors. Find out if your department has an account on Marq (formerly Lucidpress) if you need help creating simple designs that are on brand.
• If you publish a video on your account that includes a voiceover, you must include closed captions.

If you have further questions about social media, please contact our team at dasa-communications@ncsu.edu.

Additional Resources

• How to Caption Videos
• Marq (Formerly Lucidpress)