Main University Accounts
Facebook: UNLincoln
X: UNLincoln (For news: NebToday)
Instagram: UNLincoln
Pinterest: UNLincoln
LinkedIn: University of Nebraska–Lincoln
YouTube: UNLincoln
Social Media Directory
The social media directory serves as a place to quickly find social media accounts for entities across campus. This page also allows you to submit your account to be added to the directory.
View the Social Media Directory
Social Media User Group
The Social Media User Group is a cross-campus group comprised of faculty, staff and student workers who have social media or digital communication as part of their roles and/or responsibilities. Members receive an e-newsletter with tips, social media happenings on-campus and updates from the industry.
Join the Social Media User Group
Keys to Great Social Media
Your social media efforts should focus on connecting with your intended audiences, starting conversations, and building community. It is not just a tool to broadcast the latest updates from your department.
Your content should always be prepared and shared with your audience in mind. Identify which audiences follow you on which platforms and tailor the content to those audiences by platform. A platform with a student-focus will call for different imagery, copy and content themes than one with a faculty-focus, for example.
Be authentic and transparent. This aids in community building and will encourage conversation amongst your followers.
Apply best practices in customer service. Social media is a great way to extend customer service efforts for your organization and become more aware of what people are saying about you. If your followers have questions that you can answer, try to answer those comments and/or direct messages in a timely manner.
Have fun, be engaging and experiment with new forms of content. Social media is ever-changing, which allows you the flexibility to test out new ways to connect with your audience.
Guidelines
Prior to starting any new social media accounts, contact University Communication & Marketing's social team at social@unl.edu for approval. You will receive training on Title II accessibility, resources for strategic social and more before you are approved to start an account and share content.
While social networks are free to set up for your college, department or organization, the work to use and maintain them is not. Here are some guidelines for establishing and managing university-affiliated accounts:
- Your account should include "Nebraska" in the name and “UNL” in the handle. Example:
Nebraska Research - @UNLResearch - We recommend consistency in naming across multiple social media channels. When starting your accounts, first consult with UComm to ensure you have the same username across all platforms.
- Your account(s) profile picture/social avatar should represent the university and be either your social lockup created in the lockup factory or another image that accurately represents your college/department/unit. Individual units are NOT APPROVED to use the Nebraska "N” by itself on any background or in any other format for the purpose of a social media or digital avatar.
- The Nebraska "N" with a red background is reserved for the University main account (@UNLincoln).
- Academic units and other non-athletic departments/offices (ex: Housing, Health Center, etc.) should use a red background when using their lockup.
- Campaign-related and special-use handles may be requested via social@unl.edu and will be evaluated on their merits. General phrases drawn from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln branding statement are reserved for University use.
- Your “About Us” or biography section should outline who you are, the purpose of the social page and link to your website on unl.edu.
- The University of Nebraska System has developed community guidelines, which are available here. Account managers should review these guidelines and link to them on official channels.
- The University has exclusive contracts with some brands (such as Adidas and Pepsi), so think twice before endorsing, mentioning, picturing or linking to competing organizations. This is important especially when taking photos or running contests with unique prizes.
- Each social channel has terms of service and conditions of use. Be sure to read through these documents, as you are responsible for following the rules for each platform.
Getting Started
Reach out to UComm
Prior to starting any new social media accounts, contact University Communication & Marketing's social team at social@unl.edu for approval. We’ll ensure you’re starting off on the right foot by providing training on Title II accessibility, resources for strategic social and more before you start sharing content.
Develop a Strategic Plan
Before you post your first piece of content, get a solid social strategy in place first. Your social media plan should be a subset of a broader strategic communications plan. It will:
- Guides how you will use your social channels,
- Outlines the audiences you hope to reach and
- Notes how you will measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your content.
To get started, check out the steps to build a strategic social plan here and schedule a free social media consultation by emailing social@unl.edu. You must receive approval and register your account with UComm prior to starting a new account.
Build a Content Calendar
Your strategy is set so you’re ready to post, right? Not quite. A content calendar is a super helpful step prior to sharing content — and doesn’t take long to set up. Content calendars can be set up however you find it most helpful. A good content calendar will pull from your strategy, helping you identify strategic themes for your content. We recommend assigning content themes for days of the week. This helps you plan out your content a bit easier so you aren’t scrambling to decide what to share each day.
Separating platforms out in your content calendar ensures you are not simply copying the same content across your platforms. It's important to tailor your content to the platform in which it is being posted, and having your platforms separated through a content calendar aids in that. See a sample content calendar here.
Make a Plan for Engagement
Building your social media presence will require someone’s daily attention as you will have to monitor others’ posts in addition to managing your own. Not only will your team need to decide how to promote your accounts, what topics and themes are relevant for the platform/audience, frequency of posting (when, what time, how often), but also your plan to engage with the community (answering questions, liking posts, resharing, etc.)
Keep Your Accounts Safe
Once you've secured your handles, be sure to keep your accounts safe with strong passwords and two-factor authentication.
Best Practices
Ensure Title II Compliance
All social media content must be accessible and compliant with Title II requirements. This includes but is not limited to: ensuring alt text is complete and available on all content you share; providing captions on all videos; and making sure graphics are legible (font size is readable and there is sufficient color contrast). View best practices for social accessibility here.
Develop a Plan
Your social media plan should be a subset of a broader strategic/integrated communications plan. A good plan should:
- Guide how you will use your social channel(s)
- Outline the audiences you hope to reach
- Note how you will measure and evaluate effectiveness
Measure Effectiveness
Evaluating effectiveness helps you make future content decisions. Having an idea of what content performed well will allow you to better understand your audience and make more strategic content decisions. Be sure to pay close attention to the content that generated more meaningful engagement, such as reposts or comments over likes.
Maintain Brand Consistency
Your social accounts are a reflection of your unit as well as the overall university. Fill out all portions of your profile correctly and completely, checking that links are accurate and you do not have any errors. Ensure any text or imagery in your cover image aligns with your department's mission, and that graphics on your pages follow Nebraska brand standards (like brand-appropriate colors and fonts).
Engage
The work of social media is not over once you hit post. Develop a plan for active engagement with followers and aim to answer questions/comments within 24 hours. Being present and responsive establishes credibility and helps to build your reputation. Note: Not all comments require a response; use your best judgment on whether someone is asking a legitimate question.
Be Consistent
While you should not share content just to share content, you should be consistent in your posts. Leaving a platform untouched for weeks or months erodes the work you've done to establish yourself on the platforms and as a source of information for your followers. Not only do many of the social algorithms reward you for a consistent posting schedule, but consistently posting provides value to your audiences and shows you're there.
Let Your Content Breathe
Don’t save up all your updates and blast them out at the same time. Keep your audience in mind and share updates when they are most likely to see them. Having a content calendar with posts — or even just content themes —planned out in advance is helpful to see what you are posting and when.
PLATFORM-SPECIFIC BEST PRACTICES
PLATFORM-SPECIFIC BEST PRACTICES
University-affiliated pages should all be set up as pages and not personal profiles. Setting up personal profiles and running them for anything other than that is a violation of Facebook’s terms and services. Instead, you should set up a business page and assign an admin to manage it.
Include photos and other rich media as often as possible. Photos and videos have high engagement value, catch your followers' eyes and help tell a richer story. Be sure to make all of your content accessible with alt text for photos/graphics and captions and video descriptions for videos.
Shorten your URLs. If you post a link to an article, make sure you shorten it with a Go URL, bit.ly or, if you're using a content management platform, shorten it in there. Long links will distract your audience from your content. Note: because these are auto-generated letters/numbers, it's always a good idea to ensure your shortened link doesn't inadvertently spell anything inappropriate before sharing it. Note: Facebook has recently started limiting the number of links you can share each month. Consider what needs a link to tell a larger story and what can be told directly on the platform. You can also use a “link in bio” tool to allows followers to access more information about your posts.
Facebook has its own scheduling tool. You can use this tool to pre-plan/schedule posts and also see how they will appear to your audience.
Encourage conversation. Facebook is a great place to ask your audience a question, have them take part of a poll or just encourage feedback. Let your audience post comments; just make sure you are monitoring them. Some members might post something negative or critical and you should let them. This often allows a chance for you to answer a question or start a dialogue. Do not remove, hide or delete a comment unless it violates the Social Media Community Guidelines developed by the University of Nebraska System.
X
University-affiliated X accounts should be set up with “UNL” in the handle. ex: @UNLCampusRec, @UNL_CoJMC, etc.
Post consistently. Before starting an X account, managers should have a plan on posting frequently and building a community.
X is for conversations. Managers should do more than just post updates and are encouraged to monitor their handle and other relevant hashtags and keywords to take part in conversations (@replies, reshares, etc.).
Include photos and other rich media in your posts. Make sure photos are sized appropriately for the platform, are engaging and include alt text with a description of the photo.
Posts can have calls to action. Write your posts to be engaging and exciting and then provide links to more information when necessary. Use URL shorteners to track clicks and also clean up your posts.
Follow other university accounts. Following campus accounts will allow you to cross-promote content, gather ideas and build community.
YouTube
Don’t use copyrighted material. Using music, images or other elements that you do not have the rights to can cause your video to be flagged as well as get the YouTube channel shut down. All videos are screened by YouTube and can’t be uploaded if they contain copyrighted materials.
Videos should include the proper information:
- Descriptive title: The title helps users find your video in the YouTube search engine.
- Video description: This description helps users find your video in the YouTube search engine and other search tools.
- Call to action: This is usually a website or place that allows the user to find more information.
- Relevant keywords or tags: This helps users find your video on YouTube.
- Accessibility requirements: Include captions on all videos you upload. You should also include a visual description of what is happening in the video for those with a vision impairment. This can be written description in the caption of the video or a secondary audio track with the description embedded.
Consider the thumbnail on your video. Upload a photo (or select a frame from the video) that is high quality and clearly shows what is happening. This is the image that people will first see and may determine if they watch the video.
Visually engaging content is important on every platform but perhaps most important on Instagram. The app allows you to share information in a few different ways.
Instagram Feed:
- Be engaging: Photos posted to the feed should be visually engaging and high quality (don't post blurry photos). Because it is primarily a photo-sharing app, Instagram is a great place to source UGC (user-generated content). Using community-taken photos is a great way to help build community and encourage others to upload their own photos. Just be sure to tag them in the photo and give them credit in the caption.
- Use locations: Tagging where the photo was taken and using relevant hashtags can help your posts reach a new audience. You can also use these features to search for UGC that you may be able to repurpose.
- Add a caption: Captions are a great way to tell a story from the photo or engage with your followers. Consider asking a question to encourage followers to comment.
- As always, be sure to include alt text to describe the imagery.
Instagram Grid:
Your Instagram grid is your profile where all of the content you post to your feed are compiled into rows of square photos.
Because this is one of the first things a person may see before following your page, ensuring it looks clean and consistent will help you attract new followers. One way to do this is using a consistent photo filter across all of the posts you upload. If desired, you can do this using an in-app filter or use a photo editing program like VSCO or Photoshop to apply the same filter to your photos. Also be aware of how your photo (or graphic) may crop in grid view. You may adjust text on a graphic or the size of the photo to ensure it looks good in the grid.
Instagram Stories:
Instagram Stories are currently not permitted for use based on Title II accessibility requirements.
Instagram Reels:
Reels are a way to share short-form videos. This is a great alternative to starting a TikTok account because you already have an audience established and you can test the capacity/ideas before diving into an entirely new platform. All videos with audio must include open captions and a description of the video should be included in the caption per Title II requirements.
Snapchat
Colleges and departments are not permitted to start their own Snapchat accounts.
MediaHub
UComm maintains a proprietary video delivery network that is optimized for use on unl.edu websites: mediahub.unl.edu
Videos that are to be included on unl.edu websites should be uploaded to MediaHub as MediaHub videos will play without restrictions in other countries where YouTube may be blocked.
MediaHub also provides users a service to "order captions." This will generate a SRT file that you can upload to social platforms to make your content inclusive of all online audiences.
Have a question, idea or need assistance? You can always contact the university social media team by emailing social@unl.edu.
LinkedIn is divided into two categories: members and organizations. While Personal Pages represent individuals, LinkedIn Pages represent collective organizations and you should ensure you are setting up a LinkedIn Page and NOT a Personal Page. Setting up a personal page for a brand/organization is a violation of LinkedIn’s terms and services.
As with all social platforms, posting consistently is important in engaging with and growing your community. Be sure the content you post here is relevant to your audience and the platform. LinkedIn is a more professional platform, but what you're sharing should still be interesting and engaging.
Include photos and other rich media as often as possible. Photos and videos have high engagement value, catch your followers' eyes and help tell a richer story. Linking to news articles is a great way to share news and engage with your audience. Just be aware of the image that auto-displays; if it isn’t appropriate or is cropped, upload your own.
Use short URLs. If you post a link to an article, make sure you shorten it with a Go URL, bit.ly or, if you're using a content management platform, shorten it in there. Long links will distract your audience from your content. Note: because these are auto-generated letters/numbers, it's always a good idea to ensure your shortened link doesn't inadvertently spell anything inappropriate before sharing it.
LinkedIn allows pages to "nest" under a "parent" page. For instance, all of the university's colleges pages are affiliated with the main UNLincoln LinkedIn account so that a user is able to quickly locate a college. Additionally, departments or units can be "showcase" pages of an affiliated page. If you are interested in starting a LinkedIn page, please email social@unl.edu. so that UComm can recommend the page structure to you, and link you up with your college/unit on campus.
TikTok
Colleges and departments are not permitted to start their own TikTok accounts.