Columbia Law School’s presence on public-facing social media platforms are considered official communications from the School. As such, Law School accounts are subject to the same guidelines as other institutional messaging and are aligned with school-wide strategy and best practices to maximize effectiveness.
Law School social media accounts are operated solely by Communications Office staff members; Communications Office staff are the only ones permitted to create posts and share via our channels. Posts must adhere to department editorial and style guidelines. The Communications Office has discretion over which stories to post on social media, as well as full control over content and style.
If you have any questions or would like to suggest content for consideration on Columbia Law School’s official Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or YouTube channels, please contact [email protected] or [email protected].
Thinking about setting up a social feed for your office, group, or center? Please contact [email protected] for help crafting a social media strategy to meet your goals. Below are some helpful tips:
Social media sites run on algorithms that are built to favor active accounts that post at least a few times each week. To be effective and build an audience, you should post on a regular basis, ideally with varying types of content (text, photos, videos, links, etc.).
- Facebook: Once or twice per day
- Twitter: Three to ten times per day
- Instagram: Once or twice per day
- LinkedIn: Once or twice per day
If you have just one event per quarter or sporadic announcements, we recommend that you instead consider sending your news to us ([email protected]) for promotion via the central social media accounts and through digital signage on campus.
Creating a social media account won’t ensure an audience. Accounts must be kept up to date with frequent posts to attract, grow, and maintain an audience.
You don’t have to be on all platforms. In fact, it’s better to be selective so that you can focus your efforts on a specific audience.
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Twitter is a hub for the press, influencers, and thought leaders.
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Facebook has a broader audience, attracting many alumni and some current and prospective students.
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LinkedIn is a professional network, skewing more toward alumni and established professionals in the field.
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Instagram requires engaging, high-quality images and is used by younger audiences (current and prospective students).
Don’t be overly promotional. Listen as much as you “talk.” Ask questions, respond to messages and mentions, and “like” posts to let your audience know you’re listening.
- Use @ tags, hashtags, and trending topics to make your posts as dynamic, inclusive, and timely as possible. (Bonus: Sites like Facebook and Twitter reward posts that use tags, showing them to more people than posts without them).
- Tag sources. Sources will get a notification when they’re tagged in your post and may re-share to their followers.
- Reuse successful posts. The Twitter audience changes every 10 to 15 minutes. That means an article you tweet at 9:00 a.m. will be seen by different people than that same article tweeted at 2:30 p.m.
- Use eye-catching photos whenever possible.
- Use tools like Buffer or Hootsuite to make it easy to schedule posts ahead of time, shorten links, and track performance. You also can find a lot of useful data right on the platforms themselves, in Facebook Insights and Twitter Analytics. Reviewing analytics will help you identify your best-performing tweets, the time of day your Facebook posts get most engagement, and other information that can be used to fine-tune content you develop and share.
If you have a large following on Facebook, a live video stream can be an effective way to engage and grow your audience. The Communications Department will sometimes live stream events from our Facebook page.
Here are the criteria we use to decide whether to live stream:
- The event focuses on a relevant or trending topic likely to have broad interest.
- The event features notable or prominent figures.
- The event is co-sponsored or supported by an organization(s) that would cross-promote the stream on their social channels.
- Interest in the event exceeds venue capacity.
If you’re hosting an event that you believe meets these criteria, please send us an email ([email protected]) with the date and time of the event, the location, the name of the sponsor, and your contact information.
Please use the subject line “FACEBOOK LIVE REQUEST.”
NOTE: Due to AV requirements and necessary preparations, live stream requests must be submitted at least three weeks in advance. If you would like to live stream from your own Facebook page, please contact us for guidance.