Social Media
Support for those who use, or are thinking of using, social media in their work at the university.
Please contact socmedia@su.se if you cannot find what you are looking for or if you want to discuss how you can use social media for your organisation.
Why be active on social media?
Social media is a major part of today's communication landscape. It allows us to share research and university events that are of interest to our target audiences. The features of social media platforms also make it possible to interact with and engage our community.
By following what is happening in different channels, you can also learn more about your target audiences, pick up on current topics of conversation, participate in debates and keep track of new formats, trends and behaviours.
How to get started with your channel
As with all communications, it is important to consider whether you have the resources to manage a channel over the long term. When starting a new channel, you need to keep the channel under constant review, produce engaging content, interact with target audiences, monitor results and ensure that questions and comments are addressed.
How to handle comments on social media
Public authority responsibility in social media
Important to consider before setting up a channel for your institution or equivalent:
- Why should you be in this channel?
- Is your target audience in the channel?
- What is the purpose of your presence in the channel? Formulate what you want to achieve with the communication.
- What activities will you carry out to get there?
- Do you need to take photos, film, what types of posts do you want to make?
- Do you have the time and resources to run the channel?
Successful social media communication requires time to familiarise yourself with how the platforms work, to monitor the world around you, to produce content that fits the channel and takes into account current formats, to moderate the channel and respond to incoming questions, and to manage comments regularly. - Are your manager and other relevant people within the organisation informed or involved in the work?
- Are other organisations within Stockholm University already using this channel? Can you learn from each other's experiences?
- Have measurable objectives and procedures for evaluation been developed?
- Have you gone through the procedures for handling comments, archiving and sifting? And set up your own procedures for how this should be followed?
- Have you reviewed the procedures for handling illegal or offensive content? And set up your own procedures for how to comply with this.
Guidelines for account name, profile picture and account description
How to handle comments
Responding to questions and comments, as well as interacting with posts where you are mentioned, is a big part of social media. Creating dialogue on the channels also shows the platform that you are an active user, which can increase the reach of your content.
Important things to consider as a public authority in social media
As a public authority, we have a duty to keep our channels under review, to be clear about who is the sender and to respond to direct questions.
Guidelines for account name, profile picture and account description
It is important that our users recognise our presence in social media and that we as an authority clearly show who the sender is. Through the account name, profile picture and account description, it must be clear that Stockholm University runs the channel.
Guidelines for account name, profile picture and account description
How to reach your target audience
Before you start producing content for your channel, it's important to think about the audiences you want to reach. There is a lot to tell about our business, but our followers are usually only interested in a fraction of it, and then only a small part of it is suitable for social media. Targeting content means understanding what content our audience wants to see and what we want them to do after they see a post.
How the algorithms works
On each platform, the algorithms determine what you see in your feed, and this is something that is constantly updated.
A rule of thumb for all channels is that all forms of interaction and engagement are rewarded. Posts that no one reacts to or even stops at will quickly be de-prioritised by the algorithm, resulting in very low reach.
By creating content that is attractive, adapted to the channel, and that makes users stop and interact, you have the best conditions for the algorithm to work in our favour.
Measuring results and monitoring
To know if you're really doing the right content in your channels, it's very important to follow up on what's working and what's not delivering the results you want.
Some common metrics to keep track of are:
- Reach - how many accounts you reached
- Views/Exposures - how many views your post has received (a post can be viewed multiple times for the same accounts)
- Link clicks - how many people clicked on your link
- CTR (click-through rate) - what percentage of impressions led to a link click
- Engagement rate - what percentage of views have led to some form of interaction
When analysing your channel, it's important to look at both the big picture and individual posts. This way you can easily see how your channel is performing on average, and then think about how you can do more of the posts that are doing best, but also do less of or tweak the posts that are doing worst. Set clear goals so you have something to aim for: each post should reach at least xxxx people, we should have x% follower growth every quarter, each post should have xx% engagement rate.
Remember that platforms regularly tweak their algorithms, and content formats that have performed well in the past may no longer have the same impact. A smart trick to test is that when platforms launch new content formats, the algorithm always rewards them a little extra at the beginning so that more people start using them.
By testing, learning and continuously adjusting the content plan according to what gives the best results, you will develop your channels to the next level.
Advertise on social media
All major platforms offer the possibility to advertise for a fee. This is a way to increase your reach and target very specific audiences who might otherwise miss your content. When you advertise, you also get to choose what goal you want to achieve (more link clicks, more video views, higher reach, etc.) and the tool will try to deliver the best possible results given the conditions.
Usually when you talk about paid advertising on social media, it is divided into two different formats: sponsored posts and dark posts.
A sponsored post (also known as a boosted post) is a post that you first put up organically in your feed and then choose to use as an advert. It could, for example, be a post that has gone well and that you want even more people to pay attention to, or perhaps a job advert that you want to get more applications for. A sponsored post remains in the feed even when the advert is over and any interaction that took place will still be visible.
Dark posts are posts that are created directly in the advertising tools and are therefore not visible in your regular feed. These adverts are then only shown to the people you set as your target audience, but they can still interact with and share the advert just like a regular post, which can mean that even a dark post can spread organically. Dark posts are used when the content may not be suitable to be seen in the feed, or you may want to test many different variations of the same post.
The cost of advertising depends entirely on the platform, target audience and campaign objectives. If you need help with advertising, our contracted suppliers are on hand.
How to secure your account
Losing access to your account can be very problematic and something you want to avoid at all costs. Here are some tips on how to best protect access:
Link the account to a common email address that more employees have access to, such as a functional address. Some platforms require you to log in with your personal profile even on a company account (e.g. LinkedIn), but make sure there are at least two people with administrator access.
Enable two-factor login in all places where it is possible.
Change your account password regularly, and make sure it is stored in a secure place (e.g. on a locked document on your server).
Do not give more people than necessary access to the account, and remove profiles that no longer need access.
How we communicate on social media
The University's visual identity, tone of voice and language guidelines should be followed across all channels, regardless of who has content responsibility or is the editor. See guidelines below:
Writing for social media
Under Text production you will find guidelines on what to consider when writing for social media. There is also information on hashtags: