Social Media
**UPDATES REGARDING CAMPUSWIDE SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY / GUIDELINES / STRATEGY FORM:
No updates at this time. We will relay any information our Public Affairs office receives from central communications in this space and via email to senior staff and social media liaisons.
The University's official guidelines for social media accounts can be viewed on the University Communications website.
Contact Amaya Savoy-Easton or Lauren Macknight with any questions about social media in the College of Liberal Arts.
Social Media Directory
The official social media channels for the College of Liberal Arts are:
Most of the college's departments, centers, and programs maintain one or more social media accounts that can be found on their individual websites.
Social Media Best Practices
PLATFORMS TO PRIORITIZE: Identify the audience you're trying to reach and select platforms based on the intended audience.
Instagram
Visual + Video-based
Audience: Students
Best for campus culture and personalizing content
LinkedIn
Text+Image or Link
Audience: Alumni, Faculty, Peers
Best for highlighting achievements and deconstructing research findings
Threads/X/Bluesky/Notes
Primarily short text or strung together text
Faculty, Peers, Organizations
Youtube/Discord/TikTok: Video-based / Broad Public
Post consistency should align with your unit communications goals. Specifics depend on the audience and account, but as a general rule posting at least 1-3 times per week is ideal, while posting more than 2-3 times per day can become excessive.
Minimum Viable Product: If your unit simply wants to be seen as active to a prospective student, faculty member, staff, or researcher; then limiting your output to 1 thoughtful post per month on each of your selected platform would suffice. If our office could make a recommendation, it would be to focus on Instagram for student awareness and LinkedIn for institutional recognition.
If your goals involve audience growth, brand awareness, or increased engagement, your team will need to align more closely with general rules for consistency.
TIPS: Make sure your account reflects its affiliation with the College of Liberal Arts as well as UT Austin so followers are clear about where your content is coming from. This can be done through text in an "About" or "Bio" section, as well as the logo and header images used for your accounts.
More in depth tips and best practices for Bios/About Sections.
When writing content, write in a voice that's engaging and credible without being too clinical or formal.
Remember: People connect with people
Make sure to tag the accounts of people or organizations you're mentioning in the post or ask to collaborate, if useful (i.e. @LiberalArtsUT, @UTAustin, @dallasnews, etc.) If you can’t tag them, make sure to send the post directly via Direct Message (DM) to see if they would like assets from the post to share on their channels.
Tutorials specific to platforms on Collaborations: Instagram, Facebook, Youtube
When it comes to accepting collaborations or resharing posts from people, partners, or news organizations, make sure that the media and message will still land with your audience and fit within your brand. If it doesn’t, decide whether it can live in a more temporary space on your account, i.e., Stories or Twitter/Bluesky that allow for a greater quantity of posts/reshares before the algorithm penalizes the account.
If you are utilizing student employees or student-generated content, consider using a third-party platform to better manage that content, including free accounts through Later and Buffer.
Utilize correct aspect ratios and dimensions for the platform and type of post.
Make sure any images you're sharing are worth looking at. They don't have to come from a professional photographer or high-end camera, but make sure they're also not all fuzzy cell phone photos taken from the back of a dark lecture hall.
Refer back to campus-wide guidelines for any moderation of the comment section:
“Units must monitor platforms for engagement and respond appropriately.
Do not delete content based on viewpoint. All moderation must be viewpoint-neutral, as required under state and federal law.
Document all moderation actions (e.g., screenshots, date, reason) for accountability.
Units must follow the below Rules of Engagement for Commenters to UT-affiliated accounts
Rules of Engagement for Commenters
The University and UT-affiliated accounts reserve the right to remove comments that include:
>> Threats, harassment, or speech promoting violence toward individuals or groups.
>> Obscene or sexually explicit content.
>> Advocacy for or depiction of illegal activity.
>> Commercial solicitations, spam, or repetitive disruptive content.
>> Off-topic or irrelevant comments that do not contribute to the conversation or relate to the post.
>> Defamatory allegations against the University or a member of the UT community.
>> Material that violates copyright or other intellectual property rights.
>> Private or confidential information of individuals or groups.
>> Content that is posted in violation of law or university policy may be reported to law enforcement or appropriate university authorities.”
Security and Two-factor Authentication
For further advice or consultation about launching or maintaining social media accounts, contact Amaya Savoy-Easton.
Public Affairs