SOCIAL MEDIA & BRANDING

The Alumni Relations Office generally handles social media and branding for alumni groups, but we encourage participation from volunteers. Please do not make any social media groups or pages without submitting a request first.

Volunteer Social Media Tips

Please see the below Facebook and Instagram tips if you are controlling the social media for your alumni group. The Office of Alumni Relations must have administrative access to all social media pages.

Facebook Best Practices

Facebook pages/groups increase awareness and engagement because the page’s status updates will appear on fans’ news feeds.

Updating regularly signifies to potential new fans that the content being posted is fresh and relevant and that the page is active

  • Post a few times per week
  • Posts should be kept relatively short — about 2-3 sentences in length
  • Drive traffic to Rice Alumni website and encourage followers to take an action
  • Encourage fan commenting and engagement through photos, videos and questions
  • Share posts directly from the @RiceAlumni page to share information

To increase content visibility, you can periodically mention other relevant pages that are aligned with Rice University. In order to do this on Facebook, type “@” and proceed with the page name you’re mentioning and then choose the page you specifically want to insert. Mentioning other pages supports organic growth because the mention will appear on the receiver’s page.

You can also share information on your own personal page and tag friends to increase awareness to your alumni group page and posts. Using specified hashtags, like #RiceAlumni, will also increase your post’s visibility within the platform.

Photo and video content are accredited to a very large percentage of page views. Users are more likely to engage with this type of multi-media content because it is entertaining and dynamic. Engaging content includes liking, commenting, sharing and more. Followers are attracted to albums and wall photos. This is a great way to encourage people to visit the rest of the page’s content.

Instagram Best Practices

Instagram is a mobile app for sharing and finding beautiful visual content. You can take photos and short videos, use filters and effects to further stylize them and publish directly to Instagram or to other social media sites. Owned by Facebook, Instagram uses a similar algorithm to show you posts that Instagram thinks are most relevant to you, rather than what was most recently published by those you follow.

  • Be active and post at least once a week
  • Do not get text heavy. Post visually appealing items
  • Use hashtags (ex. #RiceAlumni)
  • Don’t use links in captions because they are not clickable
  • Encourage conversation (ex. Respond to comments)
  • Tag other profiles in your posts, if applicable
  • Repost others’ posts if you are tagged with their permission to do so

Instagram Stories are a series of videos or photos posted by a user that are only available for 24 hours. You can add text, icons and drawings to them. Visuals posted to an Instagram Story do not appear in the regular Instagram feed nor on a user's profile (sometimes called "the grid").

Recommended photo sizes:

  • Square Post: 1080 x 1080
  • Vertical Post: 1080 x 1350
  • Story: 1080 x 1920

Resources: Wesleyan University Communications

Branding

  • The alumni office can create additional designs as requested. For the creation of collateral designs, please contact your alumni office regional/affinity officer.
  • Utilize Rice University Brand Standards when posting.

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