Creating a social media presence

Social media isn’t just about posting content; it’s also about developing a connection you’re your audiences. However, given the high-profile nature of Oxford University and the content of our work, it is likely there may be some people who will have questions or criticisms.

Day-to-day management

On a daily basis, you should be monitoring the comments on your social media platforms to see the sentiment towards your content and organisation. 

Here are a few things you should monitor daily:

• What’s being said on your feeds via the comments?
• The sentiment towards your posts and feeds – are people engaging and leaving positive comments or are they leaving negative comments?
• Does anything need to be flagged to management? If so, who does the comment need to be shared with?
• Are there any comments or conversations that need to be reviewed?

If you have the capacity, we recommend monitoring your social channels as soon as you start your day for around 15-30 minutes. You can then catch up with any issues which may have emerged in the evening or overnight and flag them to the relevant stakeholders.

During the day, we recommend checking in on your feeds every 1–2 hours. It is also worth scanning your feeds before you finish your day to see if there is anything brewing which could potentially take off in the evening.

We also recommend monitoring your feeds for around 10 minutes after you post content – so you can review any questions that come in and respond promptly. Prompt responses are an effective way of building a community, as they show your audience you are active and looking to build a relationship with them rather than just broadcasting messages.

Tips on replying to people on social media

• Reply as you would like to be replied to – kindness can be an effective tool on social media.
• Be relatable – you want your audience to feel like they are talking to an individual rather than a bot.
• Avoid going into too much detail – if there is a website or other place for more information, it is best to link to the source.
• Use the ‘like’ button when someone is praising our work.
• If you like, you can sign off your comments with your name. However, please only include your first name. Do not include your surname or job title.
• If you feel the need to respond privately rather than publicly, ask the user (if the conversation is happening on X/Twitter) to direct message (DM) you. Or ask them to email the department – we always recommend sharing a joint email address rather than an individual’s personal work email address.

Dealing with criticism or issues on social media

On social media not everyone is going to agree with what we say. Some of the criticism could be genuine questions or concerns while on other occasions it could be people looking for arguments online.

Our policy is if the person commenting doesn’t appear to want to have a constructive conversation we would avoid replying to them. However, if the person is asking a genuine question this is something we would reply to.

When replying to a challenging comment, here’s some brief guidance we use:

• Stay professional with your reply.
• Avoid going into too much detail – if there is a website or other place for more information, it might be best to link to there.
• Can the conversation be taken to a private space? Sometimes taking the conversation away from the public sphere can be beneficial and stop the momentum of the conversation. You could ask the user (if the conversation is happening on X/Twitter or Instagram) to direct message (DM) you.

How to spot someone looking for an argument on social media?

Aside from people who don’t understand or disagree with your research, there could be individuals or groups who ‘troll’ you by posting deliberately offensive or provocative comments, which may be about your research or yourself. Social media can quickly become a relentless environment.

Warning signs include:

• They will use an aggressive tone or offensive language.
• They will try to provoke a heated and emotional response from you and others.
• They will continually post the same type of message (spam).
• They will make their criticisms personal towards academics.
• They will make clearly misleading comments or statements.
• They will frequently Quote Tweet replies in order to broadcast them to a wider audience.
• They may tag or get their followers to spam message you.
• Review their social media feed and bio – are they pushing a particular agenda? 

How to deal with ‘trolls’

• Remember, you don’t have to respond to them.
• Report trolling accounts and messages to the social media platform.
• If you feel threatened or believe a criminal act has taken place – always report to the police.
• Discuss with your communications lead. They may be able to provide you with further support and guidance.
• Mute trolling accounts – this Twitter feature is useful as it hides the troll from your feed without them being aware they have been ‘muted’.
• Hide their comments on X/Twitter and Facebook. Please note on X, the platform has a section on each post which shows hidden tweets.
• Block trolling accounts as a last resort. This stops them from seeing your posts, and vice versa. However, the blocked account will know they have been blocked, and may take offence.

When should you delete comments?

There are times when comments need to be removed from our social media posts as they could be extremely harmful to our online community and could have potential legal ramifications.

We delete comments such as:

• Spam: any type of sales, buying or selling, or self-promotion, legal or illegal, will be removed.
• Problem comments: any type of repeated comment, explicit comment, unrelated comment or misleading comment will be deleted and users may be banned. If an accusation has been made and a name used this will be hidden, and could result in legal repercussions if the person or entity named decides it is libellous.
• Hate speech: racism, sexism (this includes leaving disrespectful or explicit replies to other users), religious discrimination, homophobia and trolling are all completely unacceptable to the University of Oxford. Users who engage in any of these activities will be banned.

On platforms such as Facebook, there is an option to hide comments as well as deleting them. We recommend hiding comments unless the comment is grossly offensive or spam. When you hide a comment, it is hidden from everyone else’s feeds with the exception of the person who posted it, and their friends.

When developing social media channels, it is essential you have social media strategy in place. Your strategy should guide your approach and tone, as well as the content you produce.

Your strategy should have clear objectives of what you aim to achieve with your channels. Always start by identifying the role you want social media to play across your department and ensure your objectives are measurable and attainable.

• What should your profile say?
• What platforms should you use?
• Who’s responsible for posting on the channels?
• Who will be providing you with content?
• How often should you post?

A strategy is simple and actionable; it tells you what to do, how to do it and when to do it for maximum results, as best fits your purposes. Set aside some time to work through the questions above, and you’ll have the basis of your social media strategy.

1. Identify your target audience

Make a wish list of who you would like to talk to on social media. You don’t need to make your target audience overly specific. Consider asking yourself the following questions:

• Who are you trying to reach?
• Where are they?
• What are they talking about?
• Who are they talking to and interacting with?

Furthermore, if there are certain individuals who typify your target audience on social media, analyse their social media channels. Look at what they post about and who they interact with. This will give you a great insight into the type of content which appeals to them, and therefore the type of content to create for your intended audience.

2. Define your message

In order to create a message that matters to your audience, you need to talk about what they care about and things they are interested in, as well as the overall objectives of the University.

• What is your audience interested in?
• What is your unique selling point? How can you add value to the conversation?
• How can you communicate your unique selling point and most effectively appeal to your audience?
• How can you approach social media with a solution to your audience’s problems, or to add value to their experience?

3. Determine your goals

Goals can be anything from ‘build an email list’ to ‘get more people to attend events’. They will depend on how you use social media and your website to interact with your audience. 

• Why are you using social media?
• What do you hope to gain out of it? (Be specific.)
• What counts as a successful conversion? (Is it clicks onto your website or an increase in followers on social media?)
• How do those conversions achieve your goals?

4. Brainstorm your offerings

Offering value is what will make you stand out on social media. Adding to the noise isn’t a good strategy; adding new insights for your audience is. Consider asking yourself the following questions:

• What can you provide via social media that will help/ interest/ entertain your target audience?
• What kind of content will you produce?
• What content will help you achieve your goals?

5. Set a budget and schedule for needed resources

Define your resources in terms of money, time and personnel, then put those resources to work.

• How much time, talent and energy can you dedicate to social media?
• Do you have a budget for social media?
• Who is in charge?
• Do you have to manage your social media channels as well as carrying out other communications responsibilities?
• What can you outsource or delegate? 

6. Set limits and benchmarks

You can’t do it all on social media. It’s better to be measured and focused in a certain area than to try and reach every space. Always refer back to the objectives within your social strategy.

• What social media platforms will be most effective for you?
• What content will you put on social media?
• How often will you post per week?
• When will you produce this content?
• How will you measure its success?

7. Apply, wait and test/tweak

Set a time limit (several months, at least) and stick to your strategy for that amount of time before you start making major tweaks to it.

Keys to success

• Start with a focused approach. Don’t spread yourself too thin. Instead, choose one or two platforms and a primary message.
• Be patient. It takes time to build a social media audience. You have to work to create a rapport with them – it won’t happen overnight.
• Stay consistent. Consistency conveys authority and builds trust.
• Follow the etiquette of social media (be polite; respond to people; don’t spam; and give credit).
• Don’t rely solely on automation. Engage, respond, talk to people, help them, have conversations.
• Be personable. Your audience are more likely to engage with you if your account comes across as approachable.
• Keep an eye out for social media trends and awareness days. This can be a great way of promoting your expertise on topics that your audience are already talking about.  
• Don’t let it take over all your time at work. Instead, designate a daily block of time to do your social media work.
• Study your social media analytics when possible. It’s important you know what success looks like on your channels, what content isn’t excelling and where improvements could be made.

Social media takes time, but it’s worth your time – just not all your time. Adopt a simple strategy so that you use social media effectively without it taking time away from the rest of your work.

This social media strategy template should help you to get started.

Social media measurement

If you’re using social media, you should be measuring your performance. But don’t measure just for the sake of having metrics. Instead, measure your social activities so that you can learn what’s successful and what isn’t, as well as how you can improve.

When getting started with social media measurement, you should aim to address these questions:

• How do you know if your social media activities are effective?
• How do you decide what metrics you should be monitoring?
• How do you calculate those metrics?
• How do you interpret the numbers once you have them?

The two main types of social media measurement are:

• Ongoing Analytics – ongoing monitoring that tracks activity over time;
• Campaign-Focused Metrics – campaign or event analytics with a clear beginning and end.

Ongoing analytics are necessary for keeping up with the overall pulse of the performance of your social channels. Here you can see how your channels are growing, where you can improve and any potential trends.

Campaign-focused metrics help you understand the impact of targeted marketing initiatives and will vary from campaign to campaign, depending on their goals.

An effective social media measurement programme will likely include both ongoing and campaign-specific measurement.

Step 1: Determine your social goals

Before you jump into measuring every single tweet, photo and Facebook comment posted about your brand, first think about your goals for social media. What are you trying to accomplish or gain through these social channels? And which channels are most relevant to those goals?

The first step in your measurement plan should be to generate a list of what you’re trying to achieve from your social media efforts. Social media can serve a variety of purposes, from broadcasting news and information to answering questions and engaging with a community.

What do you want your audience to do with your content? Are you trying to get them to read, share, reply or click on a link? List all your business goals for social media (refer back to your strategy).

Step 2: Create metrics to measure these goals

The next step is to match your goals to actual metrics and behaviours you can measure. For example, if you’re trying to measure engagement, then what is the practical form of engagement you want to track? Is it retweets or reposts? Replies or comments? Clicks? Here are a few suggestions of behaviours to measure, based on a common social media goals:

• If you want to measure awareness, then use metrics such as volume, reach, exposure and amplification. How far is your message spreading?
• If you want to measure engagement, then look for metrics around retweets, comments and replies.
• If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, then track URL shares, clicks and conversions. Are people moving through social media to your website and what do they do once they’re there?
• If your goal is to find advocates and fans, then track contributors and influence. Who is participating and what kind of impact do they have?
• If your goal is to increase your brand’s share of voice, then track your volume relative to your closest competitors. How much of the overall conversation around your industry or product category is about your brand?

Step 3: Measure

After you’ve listed the metrics you want to focus on, you need to find tools that actually capture these metrics, and then start measuring. In some cases, social media channels themselves provide some form of analytics; for others you will need to use third party tools; or you can build your own using APIs.

If you’re not sure which tools to use for which channels, we recommend starting with the analytics tools already on the platform. However, be aware that some platforms have a certain shelf life for some data. For example, there are platforms that will not be able to analyse data from a year ago today. We recommend storing data on your key metrics so you can successfully compare and contrast your performance.

You should make time to gather data from social media platforms as well as to analyse it. The process can be time consuming depending on your objectives, but if your objectives are clear it is worth measuring the success of your performance.

Step 4: Monitor and report

The fourth step is to report your results. Use your initial findings to set a baseline or benchmark for future measurement and share these early figures with your important stakeholders. Three important questions are:

• How do your numbers compare with what you expected?
• Why are the numbers up or down?
• How do they compare to your competitors’ or related products and campaigns?

A common question we are asked is how regularly you should report on your social media data. It depends on what you are using the data for. If it’s a routine performance review, checking every month is sufficient. For campaigns, it is dependent on when your stakeholders want the data and when you feel it is suitable. Some may want weekly stats, or monthly, while others are happy to see the reporting insights once the campaign has finished.

We recommend suggesting a reporting schedule that works for you as well, especially as collating daily or weekly reports can be time consuming. Depending on your schedule, monthly or quarterly reporting may work best. No matter the schedule, make sure you’re checking in regularly on your metrics. Don’t let your effort up to this point go to waste! Let your metrics accumulate over time; you’ll see how valuable this data will become after a few months have passed and you have older data to compare to your new data.

In your reports:

• Provide an overview section with contextual information so that your stakeholders can quickly understand what all the figures mean.
• Consider including visualisations of your data; graphs can help communicate your results quickly and clearly to your audience.
• Keep your graphs simple and clean.

Step 5: Adjust and repeat

The final step is to carefully review your measurement programme. How are these metrics doing? Are you missing anything? Are any of your data points providing information which isn’t relevant? Figure out what you can improve, make your changes and then measure some more. Check back in with the goals you set initially and make sure your new metrics help you address those goals.

If you’re contributing to or responsible for social media channels, you really need to understand how you’re doing. Is your content having the impact you want? Are you meeting your company’s goals with social media? This is why monitoring and measuring your social media activities is crucial – you need reliable and consistent analytics that help you track your success on channels like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.