Social Media

Humanities social media

The School of Humanities has an active social media presence on the following platforms:We recommend using the hashtag #UCIHumanities.

Should my department/program/center create a Facebook or Instagram page?

Typically, it will make sense to start your own social media presence when:
  • You have a clearly defined audience(s).
  • Measurable objectives.
  • You can commit staff resources to actively manage and monitor the account(s). This often requires someone who can check the pages outside of normal business hours.
  • You can consistently generate engaging content.
Developing a successful social media presence is a significant commitment of time and resources. Social media postings help to create a consistent public image of your department, program or center, but it is important to post regularly and create a strategic plan.

Inconsistent or irrelevant content can diminish the public impact of using social media in a university setting. For this reason, it is important to have a strategy and dedicated social-media manager in place before committing to this endeavor. In most cases, your visibility objectives can be met by leveraging the school's already-established accounts. The School of Humanities is happy to cross-promote your public events, courses and public-facing news items.

My department/program/center already has a social media page. Any tips?

Yes!
  • Click here for UCI's social media guidelines.
  • Click here for a presentation with social media tips created by Audrey Fong.
  • Click here for a free Fundamentals of Social Media certification course from Muck Rack.
  • Follow UCI Humanities and UCOP on social media platforms to get content ideas.
  • Follow relevant people and organizations within your discipline and within the university. For example, if you are a department, follow your discipline's association, department faculty, alumni of your department, UCI Humanities, UCOP and UCI leadership.
  • Consider who your audience is on each platform (see Pew research here) and what type of content each platform lends itself to. Tailor your message for each platform. Instagram, being an image-centered platform requires high-res images and does not bode well with long-form text.
  • Only use high-resolution and high-quality images photos and video on any platform.
  • When linking a URL on Facebook, delete the URL in any post once the story automatically loads in the post. 
  • If the UCI Humanities posts any content where your department/program/center is tagged or mentioned, please share it.
  • Provide context when posting. Just because you know that the x-prize is a notable achievement does not mean your audience does. Provide context when sharing news about academic accomplishments, events and news. 
  • Tag UCI as your location in posts. 
  • Because Instagram does not hyperlink links in posts, you will want to say "Link in bio" when a post is tied to a URL. You can then place the URL of the story in your bio, which does hyperlink. You can also consider a service like Tap Bio, which lets you put multiple links to stories through one URL. 
  • On Twitter, use threads to organize longer, more nuanced thoughts or a series of ideas. See an example of a thread here, here and here. 
  • On Twitter and Instagram, use hashtags related to your discipline & tied to what’s trending/in discussion. For example, did you know the most-used hashtag for historians on Twitter is #Twitterstorians? Did you know that #MedievalTwitter is a thing? 
  • Don’t just make statements, ask questions.
  • Ask students in your department to like or follow your page(s). This helps get students involved with what’s going on in your department and helps your social media channels reach individuals who have an interest in what your department has to say.

I am a professor or graduate student and am considering starting my own social media profiles. Any tips?

Yes! Building your audience now can help you amplify not only your voice but also your research, publications, events, etc. This is especially important because:
  • It’s a noisy digital world – the more followers you have, the more likely you are to be heard.
  • Social media sites have surpassed print newspapers as a news source for Americans: One-in-five U.S. adults say they often get news via social media, slightly higher than the share who often do so from print newspapers (16%) for the first time since Pew Research Center began asking these questions (Pew Research Center, Dec. 2018).
  • Academic publishers no longer invest as much time in marketing books as they used to. You have to be your own publicist and marketer.
  • Non-academic book publishers often require a built-in social-media audience before taking a risk on a new voice.
With an active social media presence, you can:
  • Find like-minded individuals, community.
  • Keep up-to-date on the landscape of your field.
  • Connect with journalists who are seeking experts for stories (estimates are that 60% of journalists are on Twitter).
  • Publicize your events, books, research, etc.
Where to begin:
  • Determine your goals & audience(s). There is no need to start a social media page on each platform. Think about your target audience - where do they spend most of their time online? Where are your colleagues spending most of their time online? 
  • Google yourself. What are the first things that come up in the search result? Are they what you want to be first? Is your faculty profile up to date? Once you're on social media, your profiles will also come up in search-engine results. 
  • Who’s “doing” social media really well in your field? Take notes from your peers who are engaging with others, making connections, getting their research out there and enjoying social media. I always enjoy seeing what takes place in the #Twitterstorians hashtag.
  • If you start a profile on Twitter and there is a hashtag relevant to your field, include that hashtag in your bio. 
  • Follow your peers, relevant academic & professional organizations, and media outlets (broad or relevant to your field).
  • Attending an upcoming conference? Use the conference hashtag to engage with other attendees and to follow along with key panels/events.
  • Set up Google Alerts on topics (and even people!) that are of interest to you so that you can share the latest news via social media, as well as engage with it. This is also just, generally, a great way to keep up with specific people and topics. 
  • Don’t only use social media to promote your book, conferences, etc.; engage with others – social media is a reciprocal world.
Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or your website, these are key things to keep in mind:
  • Speak to a public audience. No jargon.
  • The Internet is forever - don't post anything on impulse or that you may regret after a night's sleep. You can delete a Tweet or post, but that doesn't mean someone else hasn't screen-shot it for eternity.
  • Is it clear who you are, what you’re an expert in (or focused on) and what matters to you?
  • Does your web presence make it easy for people to take the actions you’d like them to take? For example, if you'd like people to purchase your new book, is that book linked in your Twitter bio or linked in a pinned Tweet (pinned Tweets exist as the first Tweet anyone sees).
  • Is your information current?
  • Would you want to follow you?
  • Want to control who has access to your social media? Make your profile private.

Case studies

The following are a few examples of successful social media campaigns conducted in partnership with Humanities Communications:

Resources