Social media

Your strategy and goals

What do you want to achieve? Is your proposed account intended to engage with a specific audience, drive traffic to your website, promote the work of your service or school or communicate specific messages to external groups? Or, is your activity to support or launch a specific campaign? Take some time to define your goals and think about how you will achieve them in the short and long-term.

Defining your audience

Define your primary audience as well as any secondary ones you may also have. Setting up your channel is the first stage but you cannot simply build it and they will come. Plan how to get your users there and how you'll keep them engaged. How will you reach out to them once your account is live? What relevant activity do you have planned to keep them there?

What content will you post?

What types of content will you share? Opinion pieces, video, infographics? Will it be focused around announcements or will you try to interact with your audience? Think about the types of content your audience group is likely to engage with. Social media shouldn't always be a one-way street, it's a good idea to find ways to ask you audience to take part, this helps users to develop a relationship with your account and the university, building brand loyalty.

Measuring your success

Hopefully you've set out some clear goals already but how will you know you've achieved those? Think about how you might define success, is it number of clicks to your website? Is it the number of likes your posts receive? There are lots of ways users might engage so think about what's important to your success and what tools you might need to measure it.

Keeping it going

One of the most important factors to consider before your set up your account is how you intend to manage and maintain it. Who's going to be responsible for populating, maintaining and monitoring your channels? Do not underestimate the time and resources required to manage your accounts, this will require content creation, scheduling and enquiry management. If channels are not managed efficiently this can be detrimental to the university's reputation so it's essential that you asses your capacity before opening a new account.

Account maintenance

• Channel/account managers and administrators are responsible for the naming, branding, and maintenance of their channels
• All channel branding should adhere to guidelines on approved university logos and imagery
• Accounts/profiles should be regularly visited to ensure that inappropriate comments and/or spam are removed
• Customer queries should be responded to promptly. A maximum time of 24 hours between recording a complaint or query and responding to it should be the normal standard
• Wherever possible, responses to queries or complaints should be directed offline, especially in cases which have confidentiality issues, such as student identity
• Responsibility for the maintenance of a social media channel rests with its creators or administrators. If a channel or page is no longer relevant or there is insufficient resource to maintain it, it should be deleted or made non-public

Conduct

LBU respects the rights of colleagues to use social both for official use and for personal use. Social media is a tool that may be used as a form of self-expression, as a marketing or recruitment tool, and as a means to enhance our reputation. It's important you're aware of your responsibilities as an LBU colleague.

Be professional

Consider whether a particular post may reflect poorly on you or the university. Think about your audience and your message – don’t post content that could be considered to be offensive, defamatory or derogatory, could cause someone to feel bullied or harassed, or could harm someone's reputation. Don’t post anything online you wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing on our website or in our prospectus.

Be accurate

Make sure you have all the facts before you post. It’s better to verify information with a source first than to have to post a retraction or correction later. Link to your sources whenever possible. 

For more information visit our Principles and policies tab.

Facebook demographics 2022:

• Largest age group:
  • Worldwide - 25-34
  • UK - 35-44
• Gender: 43% female, 57% male (no data available on other genders)
• Time spent per day: 33 minutes

Our Facebook audience is most likely to include:

• Postgraduate students and applicants
• Parents
• Partners
• Colleagues
• International

Facebook’s audience is in decline overall though engagement is still notable for some audience types.

Instagram demographics 2022 (worldwide):

• Largest age group: 25-34 (31.2%), with 18-24 close behind at 31%
• Gender: 48.4% female, 51.8% male (no data available on other genders)
• Time spent per day: 29 minutes

Our Instagram audience is most likely to include:

• Current and prospective undergraduate (UG) students
• International audience

Instagram has great reach with our UG audience but will require the most planning and content delivery. Instagram is image driven and this should be carefully considered as part of your content strategy.

LinkedIn demographics 2022 (worldwide):

• Largest age group: 25-34 (58.4%)
• Gender: 48% female, 52% male (no data available on other genders)
• 63% of LinkedIn users access the network weekly, and 22% daily

Our LinkedIn audience is most likely to include:

• Partners
• Colleagues
• Parents
• Graduates

LinkedIn is predominantly a B2B environment and is best placed for promoting research and enterprise information.

Twitter demographics 2022 (worldwide):

• Largest age group: 18-29 (42%)
• Gender: 38.4% female, 61.6% male (no data on other genders)
• Time spent per day: 31 minutes

Our Twitter audience is most likely to include:

• Partners
• Academic colleagues
• Journalists
• Other stakeholders                                          

Twitter is a good space to promote events, deliver news and drive discussions. While the worldwide audience remains young, the LBU base tends to be more mature.

YouTube demographics 2022 (worldwide):

• Largest age group: 15-35 (highest reach)
• Gender: 46% female, 54% male (no data on other genders)
• Time spent per session: ~30 minutes

Our YouTube audience is most likely to include:

• Undergraduate prospects and applicants
• Postgraduate prospects and applicants
• Colleagues
• Parents

YouTube is a video driven platform which is extremely popular with younger audiences. We would NOT recommend new account creation, but new playlists can be added to our main LBU account. Please contact us for more information socialmedia@leedsbeckett.ac.uk.

Make sure to fact check your content, do not make assumptions when posting and always check your sources.

When creating your post, double check any links you've added and preview your post to check your images are working as expected. Proofread everything and get a second pair of eyes if you can, being too close to your content can stop you spotting errors or missed opportunities. It’s helpful to craft your post in a Word document so any typos are picked up there.

Keep your messaging clear, users will be scrolling and want to read FAST - help them out. Twitter will force you to keep it brief by only allowing 280 characters for each Tweet, other platforms will allow for more but it's helpful to use this as a guide.

If you are blogging, or posting about your work at Leeds Beckett, use your real name, identify that you work for Leeds Beckett, and be clear about your role.

Did you make a mistake? If you make a mistake, admit it. Be open and be quick with your correction.

Make sure your efforts to be transparent don't violate Leeds Beckett's privacy, confidentiality, and legal guidelines for external speech. Ask permission to publish or report on conversations that are meant to be private or internal to Leeds Beckett. All statements must be true and not misleading and all claims must be substantiated and approved. Do not comment on anything related to legal matters, litigation, or any parties in which the university is in litigation without the appropriate approval.

What you publish is widely accessible and will be around for a long time, so consider the content carefully.

Make sure you write and post about your areas of expertise, especially as related to Leeds Beckett. If you are writing about a topic Leeds Beckett is involved with but you are not the Leeds Beckett expert on the topic, you should make this clear to your readers. Write in the first person. If you publish to a website outside Leeds Beckett, please use a disclaimer something like this: "The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent Leeds Beckett's positions, strategies, or opinions."

Also respect brand, trademark, copyright, fair use, confidentiality, and financial disclosure laws. If you have any questions about these, see your Leeds Beckett legal representative.

Social communication from Leeds Beckett should help our customers, partners, and co-workers. It should be thought-provoking and build a sense of community. If it helps people improve knowledge or skills, build their businesses, do their jobs, solve problems, or understand Leeds Beckett better— then it's adding value.

If you're about to publish something that makes you even the slightest bit uncomfortable, don't shrug it off and hit 'send.' Take a minute to review these guidelines and try to work out what's bothering you, and then alter it. If you're still unsure, you might want to discuss it with your manager. Ultimately, what you publish is yours—as is the responsibility.

If you would like to request approval for a new social media account you can do so by completing our Social media account request form, in which you should provide:

• A clear business case for its creation
• An explanation of who the intended audience is and how this will meet their needs
• A clear content plan, which must include sample posts, types of content to be created and the schedule of frequency of posting
• Detail on the timeframe in which you will commit to respond to those who engage or ask questions via the account
• The name and contact details of the person who will manage the account (the administrator / owner)
• The name, proposed branding and design of the account
• A shared email address which will be linked to your account(s) - no new accounts will be approved without this

A member of the team will review this application and contact you discuss your proposal and requirements.

If a Leeds Beckett social media account has been created without following our approval process you may be asked to remove it.

If you require new assets to post on your social media channel you will need to brief this work into the university's Creative team. Please visit our Submit a request page for more information.

If you would like to share your content via the main university channels please speak to the Social Media team, you find the information you need on our Meet the team tab.

At least one billion people—15% of the world’s population—experience some form of disability.

When creating any type of content, it's important to understand how it meets your users’ needs and this includes our social media content.

Within our online Accessibility guide you can find the principles of writing and creating accessible content but there's a few extra things to be mindful of when posting to your social media channels:

1. Use camel case for multi-word hashtags

   Capitalising the first letter of each word makes your hashtags more legible for users. For example, instead of #blackhistorymonth2022 you would write #BlackHistoryMonth2022.

2. Put hashtags and mentions at the end (if character limits allow)

   Punctuation marks are read aloud by screen readers. Be mindful of how hashtags or @ mentions can disrupt your copy.

3. Limit your emoji use

   Emoji and emoticons (i.e. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ) are read aloud by assistive tech. That means people will hear things like “loudly crying face” or “waning gibbous moon” Before using one, look up how it translates to text.

4. Provide descriptive image captions

   Descriptive captions and alternative text (also known as alt text) allow people to visualise your images when they can’t see them. Some social media platforms will add these automatically for you but it's important to check that they do reflect your images accurately.

5. Include video captions

   Video is used widely across social media and is a great way to engage your audience. Just make sure any video you post includes closed captions for those users who may be hard of hearing or for your users that are out and about and want to have a watch while they are on public transport without their headphones!

Hashtags are a great way to tap into trends, boost your visibility and connect with other accounts and campaigns across Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. What you choose to tag and how many you use will vary for each platform and audience type but keep in mind they should always be relevant to your post - don't spam your users.

• displaypurposes.com is a great site for finding relevant, trending hashtags to help boost your profile
• Check the LBU main Instagram account and see what branded or local hashtags you can make use of

It is important that you do post regularly on your channel so that your followers stay engaged and have a reason to come back time and time again. However, posting too often can can turn your audience off, remember they may be following lots of related accounts and you may be spamming their feed. Never post just for the sake of posting. Always share content that adds value to your community and relates back to your overall objectives and strategy.

Not every social media platform will be the right fit for you and your objectives. Each platform has unique audience demographics and algorithms and will require different types of content creation and regularity of posting. It's important to think about and understand which platform is right for you. Visit our Which channels should I use? section in the Guidelines tab for more information about each platform and what to consider.