The VCUarts Communication Office works to ensure that all School of the Arts-affiliated social media accounts operate according to university policies, channel-specific best practices and within recommendations for data security and legal compliance.
New social media accounts
All new social media accounts must be both approved by the Communications Office and registered with VCU University Relations. Please contact VCUarts Interim Executive Director of Communications Ryan Sprowlbefore starting any social media account. You must share the account credentials with the Communications Office after the account has been approved and created. Additionally any social media account manager must complete the VCU Social Media Accessibility Training.
Browse the section below for more answers to frequently asked questions.
Before starting a new social media account, ensure that you have established a strategy for why an account is needed. You should know the answer to these questions:
Why have you chosen this social media channel?
Who is your audience and how does this social media account connect with them?
How will you reach your audience through this social media account? How will you build your followers?
What content do you plan to share on this account? Who will create it and how frequently will you be posting?
Who is in charge of maintaining the social media account?
First, any new account affiliated with the School of the Arts must be approved by the VCUarts Communications Office. Additionally, new accounts must be registered with VCU University Relations. New social media account managers must also complete the VCU Social Media Accessibility Training. Account managers should familiarize themselves with all VCU Social Media Guidelines.
Posting consistently is important to social media success. While you may not need to post every day, depending on the social network – you must be able to continuously support the efforts of your account.
Take advantage of opportunities to post timely content. Capitalize on the moment by posting in real-time with posts from shows, students working in the studio, events, and lectures sponsored by your department. (For instance, posting images of a show installation with details about the opening could bring out more people.)
Frequency will vary by department. However, units should post relatively often to ensure subscribers stay engaged.
As a benchmark, the main VCUarts channel aims to post on:
Instagram: daily
Twitter: 1–3 times/day, unless doing a takeover or covering an event
Facebook: daily
For departments we recommend:
Instagram: 3–5 times/week
Twitter: 3–5 times/week
Facebook: 2–3 times/week
The best way to ensure that your content is compliant is to have account owners complete the social media accessibility training and review VCU’s Social Media Guidelines. Remember, photos and videos must be appropriately captioned.
Great! Please contact the Communications Office at artssocial@vcu.edu for assistance. We have Department-specific instructions on how to manage an Instagram takeover.
Yes, it is important that the Communications Office maintains access to every channel associated with VCUarts in the case of a security emergency or a change in account administrators. If your username or password has changed, you must contact Communications.
To best represent your department on social media, the same profile image must be used across all platforms for consistency.
Select an image that is a good representation of your department, featuring either:
a high-quality image of student work that demonstrates the department’s teaching
or a high-quality image of department facilities
Consider how this image will look at various sizes. Keep in mind it will be formatted as a square or a circle depending on the site.
Do not create a profile image which includes your department’s name or use a photo with logos or graphics over it.
Try to use at least one hashtag on each post. The main VCUarts hashtags are #VCUarts and #VCUartsDepartmentName (e.g., #VCUartsMusic). Avoid using too many hashtags; we recommend no more than ten.
VCU and VCUarts both follow “Camel Case” style, so “#VCUarts” instead of “#vcuarts.”
Additional VCU Resources
VCU provides many more resources for social media administrators, including training, guidelines and recommendations and a social media administrators group.
