Social Media Recommendations For Clubs: Getting Started & Best Practices (Last Updated January 26, 2015) General LinkedIn is like a business networking event, Facebook is like a backyard barbecue, and Twitter is like a cocktail party. The Association encourages all large clubs to establish and maintain Facebook and Twitter accounts to engage with local alumni, promote upcoming events, and encourage Association membership. The Association encourages smaller clubs and spirit groups to establish and maintain Facebook and Twitter accounts to the extent their leadership and volunteers have the time and resources to effectively maintain these accounts. The Association does not recommend that a club or spirit group create its own LinkedIn group. Rather, we encourage clubs and spirit groups to connect local alumni to the Association s LinkedIn group so conversation and recommendations can be provided by tens of thousands of alumni. While the group is large in size, many of the conversations revolve around region-specific requests and comments. For general tips on enhancing your club s social media profiles, click here. The pages that follow include specific recommendations for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you have any questions regarding social media recommendations or best practices, please contact Lily Jong, the Association s Digital Engagement Coordinator, at njong@umich.edu or 734.763.9709. 1
Facebook Starting Your Club's Facebook Page Facebook Pages vs. Groups: Facebook allows an organization to create a group or a page, depending on its needs. A Facebook page allows your club to communicate broadly with Facebook users who like and follow the page. The emphasis is on branding, and a page better allows a club to make announcements and optimize reach and awareness. Page information and posts are generally available to everyone on Facebook and anyone can like a page (i.e., no administrator permission is required). Only posts by the club appear above the fold, whereas information posted by others is relegated to a small box ( Posts To Page ) that a user must click on to view in full. Page posts can appear in the News Feed of users who like the page, but whether it does or not depends on Facebook s algorithms and the particular user s settings. A Facebook group provides a space for members (alumni) to communicate about shared interests. The emphasis is on conversation, and a group better allows a club to optimize dialogue and networking amongst alumni. A group may be open/public or closed/private. In the latter circumstance, posts are only visible to group members and you can require members to be approved by group administrators. Members receive notifications by default when any member posts to the group. We recommend that each club maintain at least a Facebook page assuming club leaders and volunteers have the time and resources to effectively maintain it. A page is visible to more alumni and better creates a connection between the club and the Association. We are not opposed to your club also having a group to the extent you believe it can be effectively maintained and would be helpful to furthering the goals of your club and the Association. If your club does maintain both a page and a group, they should cross-reference each other in their respective About sections (e.g., Thank you for joining our club s group. Please also like our club s official Facebook page, located here: To engage with other alumni, please visit our club s official Facebook group here: ). The remainder of this section will cover establishing and maintaining your club s Facebook page. If you have questions about establishing or maintaining your club s Facebook group, please contact the Association s regional relations team. Name and URL: When creating your page, make sure you use your club s official name (e.g., University of Michigan Club of Greater Chicago ) so alumni can easily find it. It is important to note that you can only change your page s name once. We recommend you also create a custom username for your page (e.g., www.facebook.com/umcgc or www.facebook.com/uofmclubofgreaterchicago). Profile & Cover Photos: Use your club s official logo as your page s profile picture (download your logo here). Please choose a relevant photo (e.g., your city s skyline) for your page s cover photo. If you are having difficulty properly sizing your photos, please contact the Association s regional relations team. Page Setup: Complete the About section of your page, including guidelines for engagement and the blocking policy contained on the Association s page. You can also customize tabs and navigation in a way you believe will be most helpful for your audience. 2
Best Practices for Your Club s Facebook Page Post Events: Post your club s upcoming events as Facebook events that link back to your website for additional information. This is another opportunity for your content to be visible in a user s News Feed because events populate based on geographical location Post Ideas & Questions: To increase engagement, consider asking questions like Who was your alltime favorite U-M football player or Who was your favorite professor at U-M. You may also wish to periodically ask followers what they would like to see and learn from your club in the future. Share Michigan-Related News: We encourage clubs to share news about the University and Ann Arbor, including sharing posts by the Association, U-M, and U-M s many departments and schools. Include Images and All Necessary Information In Updates: Your followers are more likely to view your updates directly from their News Feed than by going to your page itself. When posting your update, be consistent, include all necessary information, and include an image when possible to garner attention. Insights: Page Insights allows your page administrators to better understand how people are engaging with your Page, including the type of posts (e.g., status updates, photos, videos) people engage with most often, the days of the week and times of day your audience is most engaged, and the number of followers/likes your page has accumulated over time. Advertising: Due to changes made by Facebook, unless your page purchases Facebook advertising, most of your posts will now reach only 5% or less of your followers in their News Feed. The Association does not financially support clubs paid advertising on Facebook; we do, however, intend to promote club pages via existing channels and making the best use of updates to reach the desired audience. If your club is considering advertising via Facebook or have questions, please contact Lily Jong at njong@umich.edu. Best Practices for Club Leaders Personal Facebook Accounts Setup: First, make sure your personal privacy settings are updated. Consider creating lists, including a list of your friends who are U-M alumni, so you can choose whom in your audience sees particular posts. Liking & Sharing: Follow ( like ) the Association s Facebook page and the page of your particular club so you are connected. Share relevant posts so your connections can see what s happening. Like a post and it has a great possibility of showing up in your connections News Feed. Connecting With Other Alumni: Only friend request alumni on Facebook if you have an established relationship with them. Casual acquaintances may or may not want to connect on Facebook depending on how they use it, so don t be offended if someone doesn t accept your friend request. If you want particular alumni to see a specific update, you can tag them or post to their wall. You can also invite them to a club event if you think it may be of interest to them. When reaching out to other alumni, please use common sense and be mindful of how often you are communicating with them. 3
Twitter Starting Your Club's Twitter Account Name and URL: If your club has not yet created a Twitter account (or you are thinking of establishing a new account), please contact Lily Jong at njong@umich.edu to assist you. You will need to establish a username or handle (up to 15 characters; appears in your profile) and a real name (up to 20 characters; used as a personal identifier). We recommend that you use UMClub for your username if your city or region fits (e.g., @UMClubChicago, which has the following URL: twitter.com/umclubchicago) and a similar real name. Acronyms (e.g., UMCGC) are less searchable and take longer for users to understand. Twitter does not currently limit how many times you can change your name. Profile & Header Photos: Use your club s official logo as your account s profile picture (download your logo here). Please choose a relevant photo (e.g., your city s skyline) for your page s header photo. If you are having difficulty properly sizing your photos, please contact the Association s regional relations team. Profile Settings: Include your club s full official name and bio in your profile settings. To allow your account to be easily located by search engines, you may also want to include relevant hashtags in your bio (e.g., #umalumni #umichalum #sanfrancisco). For more information, view Twitter s getting started guide and the Twitter Glossary. Basic Twitter Definitions A Tweet is a user update containing photos, videos, links, and up to 140 characters of text. A Retweet is a Tweet that forward by a user to his/her followers. It always retains original attribution. A hashtag is any word or phrase immediately preceded by the # symbol. If you Tweet with a hashtag on a public account, any who searches for that hashtag may find your Tweet. A username is how all users are identified on Twitter and is preceded immediately by the @ symbol. A reply is a Tweet in response to another user s Tweet. A reply begins with @username (where username is the actual username of the person you re replying to). You can reply by clicking the "reply" button next to the Tweet you'd like to respond to. A mention is the inclusion of one or more @usernames in a Tweet (including but not limited to a reply). Each user s mentions are stored in their personal Mentions tab. Direct messages are private communications between users who follow each other. Each direct message has a 140-character limit. 4
Best Practices For Your Club s Twitter Account Follow other Twitter users, including the Association, other clubs, and U-M. Use Twitter s Advanced Search to find alumni near you and mention @MichiganAlumni and your club s @username when connecting with them. Tweet information about your club, including news, upcoming and past events, and photos, as well as Association membership. Use relevant hashtags such as #UMalumni, #GoBlue, and #LeadersandBest (Twitter recommends no more than two hashtags per Tweet). The Association recommends using #UMalumni when speaking generally to the U-M alumni audience and using #umalumjobs when promoting career-related content and job opportunities in your area. We encourage clubs to converse (reply and Retweet) with the Association, the University and its departments and schools, U-M alumni, and others they hope to build a relationship with. For instance, please share interesting news articles, photos, and updates about the University and Ann Arbor from any of these sources. Do not protect your club s Tweets such that only approved followers can view them. This feature is fine for personal use, but Tweets from the club s Twitter account should be public. Use tools such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite to keep track of multiple areas of interest. Both have free versions and can be used to stream multiple Twitter columns on a single screen. For example, you can stream who you follow, stream a particular hashtag (e.g., #UMichAlumsNYC), and stream a particular list. Hootsuite also allows you to shorten URLs for character-count optimization. Several twitter tools also allow you to schedule your posts to automatically publish in the future, but please be mindful of current events if you use this function (e.g., an automated tweet may reflect poorly upon your club during a national crisis). Best Practices for Your Club Leaders Personal Twitter Accounts Liking & Sharing: Follow the Twitter accounts of the Association and your particular club so you are connected. Retweet and reply to relevant Tweets so your followers can see what s happening. Connecting With Other Alumni: If you want particular alumni to see a specific update, you can mention them in your Tweet. When reaching out to other alumni, please use common sense and be mindful of how often you are communicating with them. 5
LinkedIn Starting Your Club's LinkedIn Group Prior to establishing a LinkedIn group for your club, you should understand that managing a group requires a fair amount of time, resources, and content. A group without conversation is merely a collection of contacts. For this reason, we recommend that, instead of creating your own group, you connect local alumni to the Association s LinkedIn group so conversation and recommendations can be provided by tens of thousands of alumni. While the group is large in size, many of the conversations revolve round region-specific requests and comments. If your club does wish to pursue a local group, we recommend the following: Name and URL: When creating your group, make sure you use your club s official name (e.g., University of Michigan Club of Greater Boston ) so alumni can easily find it. LinkedIn does not currently support customized URLs for groups. Open vs. Members-Only: Click here to read about the difference between members-only groups and open groups. The Association recommends your club host a members-only group if and only if your club has the capacity to manage requests to join the group, in which case we recommend you utilize the group as a space to promote your club s upcoming career events and facilitate career-related discussion amongst your members. (For examples, please see the members-only groups of our Washington DC, New York, and Chicago clubs). Profile: Include your club s official name and a bio in your profile. Please also include a link to the Association s LinkedIn group. Group Photo: Add your club s official logo to your group. If you are having difficulty properly sizing your photos, please contact the Association s regional relations team. To learn more about managing a group, including inviting alumni to join, sending announcements to group members, and editing group information and settings, please visit LinkedIn s Help Center or contact Lily Jong at njong@umich.edu. 6