We think social media is a place to have conversations, a place to tell the stories of our diverse community. We strive to tell helpful, fun and relatable to impact our students, the wider community and future Spartans (and we’re not afraid to use hashtags and emojis to show it.) With eight main institutional accounts - including the largest university Pinterest in the nation - we have the ability to reach thousands of Spartans and friends of MU. Learn how we can help you join the conversation!
Promoting Events
The Manchester University social media team is a great resource for promoting and recapping events. If you have an on-campus event coming up and want it covered,
use this form to request coverage from the social media team.
Another way to promote your event is by including students who are involved! Know a student who should host the
@OurViewofMU Instagram or the ManchesterUniv Snapchat? Email
socialmedia@manchester.edu.
If you're promoting an event from your department social media account and will have a lot of content or will have user-generated content, having a special event hashtag can help organize and collect posts and photos. Check out our
Best Practices for Using Hashtags to see if there's already a hashtag for your event or for tips on creating a hashtag for your event. You can also email
socialmedia@manchester.edu for help creating one!
Starting New Accounts
Social media is more than an outlet to push updates; it's a tool for creating conversations. If you want to make a connection with a specific audience and have stories, photos, student experiences, or helpful information to share, you might want to consider creating a social media account for your department.
Before you create your account, look over the
University Social Media Policy. You'll want to consider who in your department will be delegated to post and you'll want to
check if your username is available. Once you have an account name, you'll need to fill out a
Social Media Account Registration Form on ChetNet.
Help with Content
When planning and creating content for your department social media page, it's important to keep in mind what networks you'll find your target audience on and what content works best on each channel.
While strong writing skills are important for content creation (don't forget to spell check!), photos, videos, graphics and links to websites are an also an important part of social media posts. Profile and cover photos are the first impression viewers will have of your account. When choosing your profile photo, make sure it reflects your department or organization and is recognizable in a small, mobile view. If you need help creating a profile or cover photo for your Manchester account, contact
socialmedia@manchester.edu.
Here are the right dimensions for social media visuals (updated 1/20/2017).
Facebook- Profile Image: 180 x 180 px
- Cover Photo: 828 x 315 px
- Shared Images: 1200 x 630 px
- Shared Link: 1200 x 627 px
Instagram- Profile Image: 110 x 110 px
- Square Image Size: 1080 x 1080 px
- Landscape Image Size: 1080 x 566 px
- Portrait Image Size: 1080 x 1350 px
LinkedIn- Profile Image: 400 x 400 px
- Background Image: 1400 x 425 px
Pinterest- Profile Photo: 165 x 165 px
- Pin Sizes: 238 px in width
Twitter- Profile Photo: 400 x 400 px
- Header Photo: 1500 x 500 px
- In-Stream Photo/GIF: 440 x 220
YouTube- Profile Photo: 800 x 800 px
- Channel Cover Photo: 2560 x 1440 px
- Custom Video Thumbnail: 1280 x 760 px
- Videos must maintain a 16:9 pixel aspect ratio
Social Media Power Users
Measuring your success is important in social media; you need to be able to share the success, or struggles, of your efforts. To know what to measure, you need to know your goals first. Do you want followers (popularity) or do you want interactions (impact)? Tracking and comparing followers is easier, but analyzing interactions gives you more information about what you are doing. Remember: It doesn’t matter what you want to say, it matters what your audience needs/wants to hear. Click here to read about social media analytics.