About the Platform
Launched in 2004, Facebook is an online social networking service that connects people with the ability to share content and see what those in your network are sharing.
- According to 2021 Pew Research data, Facebook is used by 69% of U.S. adults.
- Only 51% of people aged 13 to 17 use Facebook (compared to YouTube at 85%, Instagram at 72%, and Snapchat at 69%). (2018 Pew Research)
- Though Facebook use is declining for 16-30-year-olds, 2021 data from Noel Levitz still lists Facebook as the third most useful social media network for teens to research colleges and universities (behind Instagram and YouTube).
- For UNLV’s main Facebook account, 38% of our followers are ages 35-34 (the largest age group) and 23% of followers are 35-44. Only 8% of our followers are 18-24–meaning Facebook is not a primary platform to reach a large portion of our student audience; however, it can be useful to reach families, parents, and nontraditional students or graduate students.
About the Facebook Algorithm
The algorithm is intended to serve Facebook users with the content they are most interested in. It tends to prioritize posts from family and friends (or people that a particular user interacts with the most) more than content from a page or organization. It may also prioritize content that could spark conversation or comments. In terms of types of content, Facebook tends to give more attention to videos, then photos, then links to websites or news articles. (Source)
How can you use this to your advantage? By understanding what your audience wants to see, you can work with the Facebook algorithm to create and share content that is meaningful to those who follow you. And, the more you do this, the more you can grow your audience. Start by analyzing the topics or subject areas that seem to get more engagement–do people tend to interact with posts about students or faculty more? Then take a look at types of content–do people tend to engage with links to the website, photos, or videos? As resources allow, try to create more of the content people engage with as often as you can to better serve your audiences.
Facebook is best used to
- Share university news and events that apply broadly to students, faculty, staff, alumni, fans, and the community.
- Promote what UNLV is like to prospective students by showcasing what current students are experiencing.
- Share engaging content that creates a sense of Rebel Pride for prospective students, current students, alumni, and stakeholders.
- Connect with the Southern Nevada community.
- Interact with your audience by responding to comments, answering questions, and participating in discussions.
Target audiences
- Alumni, donors, and fans
- Prospective and current students and their families
- Research community
- Las Vegas and the greater Nevada community
Post Frequency
Post when you have engaging content to share. Generally, if you can share as often as once a day, you’ll steadily grow an audience. However, refrain from posting just to meet a frequency goal and rather focus on creating valuable, engaging content. You can post the same types of information more than once as long as they are timely and relevant and take on different content types (for example, post a link to a News Center article and then at a later date, create a photo post summarizing information).
Sharing content and tagging accounts
We will create new posts tagging other UNLV pages or re-share their content. Phrases such as “Like this page,” “Follow this page,” etc. will not be used to promote other university pages. When referencing another college or department, the account tag should be worked into the content of the post so it reads like a natural sentence.
When using hashtags, always follow camel case and capitalize the first letter of every word (for example use #RebelsMakeItHappen rather than #rebelsmakeithappen). This is a better accessibility practice for people using assistive technologies.
Accessibility:
Always make sure that you provide a caption file for videos to meet accessibility guidelines. You can upload your own transcript or modify the automated captions to make sure they are correct. Add alt text to any photos or graphics that you upload.
About the platform
Created in 2006 as an SMS-based service to share topic-based messages, Twitter - now X - continues to make headlines social media industry. Messages are short and concise with a strict limit of 280 characters (including links to websites).
- 23% of U.S. adults say they use X on a daily basis according to 2021 Pew Research.
- 27% of students use X daily and it’s the fourth most common platform for them to use to research colleges and universities. (2021 Noel Levitz Survey)
Recent changes in leadership at X have plunged the platform into uncertainty with adjustments to some of the platform's most important rules and long-lasting strategies. Despite the uncertainty, X is still a way to share news and events, participate in relevant industry discussions, and converse with your target audiences.
About the Twitter algorithm
Users can choose their algorithm option. By default, they can view “Top Tweets” based on X's algorithm or change their timeline to reverse chronological order known as “Latest Tweets.” X's algorithm bases content on location, virality, a user’s personal interests (for example, if someone reads tweets about UNLV frequently, they will get more and more UNLV-related content), and types of media (photos, videos, or GIFs). (Source)
How can you use this to your advantage? Knowing your audience is key to optimizing your reach for any algorithm, and that applies to X as well. Start by analyzing the topics or subject areas that seem to get more engagement–do people tend to interact with posts about students or faculty more? Then take a look at types of content–do people tend to engage with links to a website, photos, or videos? As resources allow, try to create more of the content people engage with as often as you can to better serve your audiences.
On X, you can also make sure your tweets are relevant (the more relevant to trending conversations a tweet is, the higher chance it will be served to more people) so by seeing what trends are popular on the platform at a given time and tailoring your content to that, you can increase the reach and engagement of your tweets.
X is best used to
- Post urgent messages–X continues to be useful to notify a large number of people quickly.
- Share university news and events that apply broadly to students, faculty, staff, alumni, fans, and the community. X is a great choice for sharing in-the-moment content (for example, reminding people of events or live streams that are starting soon).
- Monitor dialogue and manage conversations by replying to tweets that mention UNLV via hashtag or within the text, retweeting UNLV-related content, and answering questions or concerns.
- Interact with UNLV athletics and participate in discussions about what's happening in the Las Vegas and Southern Nevada communities.
- Share engaging content that creates a sense of Rebel Pride for prospective students, current students, alumni, and stakeholders.
- Connect with the Southern Nevada community.
Target audiences
- Alumni, donors, and fans
- Las Vegas and the greater Nevada community
- Research community and industry experts
- Local and national media
- Prospective and current students and their families
Post frequency
Post when you have engaging content to share. Generally, if you can share as often as 2-3 times per day, you’ll steadily grow an audience. However, refrain from posting just to meet a frequency goal and rather focus on creating valuable, engaging content. On X, you should be monitoring conversations and retweeting reliable accounts on sources to increase your engagement and build an audience.
Sharing content and tagging accounts
When referencing another college or department, the account tag should be worked into the content of the post so it reads like a natural sentence whenever possible.
When using hashtags, always follow camel case and capitalize the first letter of every word (for example use #RebelsMakeItHappen rather than #rebelsmakeithappen). This is a better accessibility practice for people using assistive technologies.
Accessibility
Always make sure that you provide a caption file for videos to meet accessibility guidelines. You can upload your own transcript or use the automated captions, but it is best to make sure they are accurate and correctly transcribed. Add alt text to any photos that you upload to meet accessibility guidelines.
About the platform: Instagram is one of the most popular social media apps and focuses on photos and video content.
- According to 2021 Pew Research data, 40% of U.S. adults use Instagram, and 71% of 18- to 29-year-olds use Instagram.
- 70% of college students use Instagram daily, and 47% report using it to research colleges and universities. Instagram is the top platform that students use to learn more about a particular college. (2021 Noel Levitz Survey)
About the algorithm: Like most algorithm-based platforms, the concept behind Instagram’s algorithm is (in theory) simple–to serve users with the content they want. Instagram attempts to match up people’s interests with the content that they are most interested in, based on a number of factors like what types of content they regularly interact with, what could be related to that, and who they interact with the most. For example, if a user often searches for hiking trails, they’ll see more and more content related to hiking. If a user interacts with an account every time they post, they’ll tend to see their content higher up on their feed. (Source)
How can you use this to your advantage? Knowing your audience is key to optimizing your reach based on any algorithm. Start by analyzing the topics or subject areas that seem to get more engagement–do people tend to interact with posts about events or student profiles more? Then take a look at types of content–do people tend to engage with links to a website, photos, or videos? As resources allow, try to create more of the content people engage with as often as you can to better serve your audiences.
Instagram also prioritizes accounts that post consistently and use multiple types of Instagram features–feed posts, Stories (temporary posts that last up to 24 hours and can be saved to your profile), Reels (any video post), and live videos. So if you create a Reel, share it to your story so more people can see it.
Instagram is best used to
- Share about student life so prospective and current students can see what their UNLV experience could be like.
- Promote events, activities, and resources to prepare students for success.
- Highlight our campus and the benefits of being located in Las Vegas.
- Share engaging content that creates a sense of Rebel Pride for prospective students, current students, alumni, and stakeholders.
- Interact with your audience by responding to comments, answering questions, and participating in discussions.
- Connect with the Southern Nevada community.
- Create conversations with your target audience by using interactive Instagram features like going live, polls, and question-and-answer boxes.
Target audiences:
- Prospective and current students and their families
- Alumni, donors, and fans
- Las Vegas and the greater Nevada community
Post frequency: Post when you have engaging content to share. Generally, if you can share as often as 3-5 times per week, you’ll steadily grow an audience. However, refrain from posting just to meet a frequency goal and rather focus on creating valuable, engaging content.
Instagram’s algorithm values consistency (and Reels–any video posted to the feed) more than anything else–so if you can post on a consistent schedule each week you will grow your audience.
Sharing content and tagging accounts: When referencing another college or department, the account tag should be worked into the content of the post so it reads like a natural sentence whenever possible.
When using hashtags, always follow camel case and capitalize the first letter of every word (for example use #RebelsMakeItHappen rather than #rebelsmakeithappen). This is a better accessibility practice for people using assistive technologies.
Accessibility: Always make sure that you burn in captions to your videos with narration or make sure captions are turned on for your account. Make sure all images and graphics that you upload contain alt text.
About the platform
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. It’s primarily used to showcase career highlights, participate in discussions pertaining to professional interests or industries, connect with organizations or businesses, and build a professional network online.
- According to 2021 Pew Research data, 28% of U.S. adults use LinkedIn.
- There are more than 850 million members on LinkedIn, and more than 80% of users on LinkedIn also use Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. It’s most popular for adults aged between 25 and 34–nearly 60% of users fall in this age bracket. (Source)
- Users spend an average of 7 minutes on the platform per visit (compared to 10 minutes for Facebook and 5 minutes for Pinterest. (Source)
This is best used as a platform to connect with alumni, UNLV employees, and the Southern Nevada community–especially community partners and business connections or those we serve through outreach or development efforts. Though students may use LinkedIn to prepare for their future careers, they are not one of our primary audiences on LinkedIn.
About the algorithm
The factors that make the biggest impact on LinkedIn’s algorithm are similar to many other platforms–topics and interests, relationships, and types of posts. Additional indicators that are unique to LinkedIn are quality of content–so making sure your post is clear and concise, prompts a question, and uses three or fewer hashtags can help give you a boost. (Source)
How can you use this to your advantage? Knowing your audience is key to optimizing your reach based on an algorithm, and that applies to LinkedIn as well. Start by analyzing the topics or subject areas that seem to get more engagement–do people tend to interact with posts about students or faculty more? Then take a look at types of content–do people tend to engage with links to a website, photos, or videos? As resources allow, try to create more of the content people engage with as often as you can to better serve your audiences.
LinkedIn is best used to
- Share university news and events that apply broadly to students, faculty, staff, alumni, fans, and the community.
- Interact with your audience by responding to comments, answering questions, and participating in discussions.
- Share engaging content that creates a sense of Rebel Pride for alumni and employees (especially faculty, staff, student, and alumni accomplishments and achievements).
- Connect with the Southern Nevada community.
- Showcase content that supports fundraising and scholarship or campaign goals.
Target audiences
- UNLV faculty and staff
- Alumni, donors, and fans
- Las Vegas and the greater Nevada community
- Research and business community
Post frequency
Post when you have engaging content to share. Generally, if you can share as often as 3-5 times per week, you’ll steadily grow an audience. However, refrain from posting just to meet a frequency goal and rather focus on creating valuable, engaging content.
LinkedIn values consistently, so if you can make a posting schedule work for you (for example, posting every Monday and Thursday in the morning), then over time this will benefit you in the algorithm.
Sharing content and tagging accounts
When referencing another college or department, the account tag should be worked into the content of the post so it reads like a natural sentence whenever possible.
When using hashtags, always follow camel case and capitalize the first letter of every word (for example use #RebelsMakeItHappen rather than #rebelsmakeithappen). This is a better accessibility practice for people using assistive technologies.
Accessibility
Always make sure that you provide a caption file for videos to meet accessibility guidelines. You can upload your own transcript or use the automated captions, but it is best to make sure they are accurate and correctly transcribed. All images and graphics that you upload should contain alt text.
YouTube
About the platform
At its core, YouTube is a (mostly) free, global video-sharing website where you can stream videos and like, share, and comment on the content. It is one of the most visited websites online, and people collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos every day.
- According to 2021 Pew Research data, 81% of U.S. adults use YouTube. YouTube is one of the only platforms to show statistically significant growth in the annual Pew Research study since 2019.
- 95% of adults aged 18-29 and 91% of adults aged 30-49 say they use YouTube while only 49% of adults over 65 use it.
- 62% of students use YouTube daily and 38% of them use it for researching colleges and universities–rating YouTube as the second most popular social media platform for learning more about college (second to Instagram). (2021 Noel Levitz Survey)
About the algorithm
Depending on content strategy and resources, the YouTube algorithm may not directly apply to how you use the platform like it would on Facebook or Instagram. Many of our colleges and units use YouTube as a place to store videos to distribute on other platforms–like newsletters, websites, articles, and more. While knowing how the algorithm works can be important, it may not have an impact on your strategy.
If you are looking to optimize your videos to reach a wider audience, you can do that on YouTube by understanding SEO. YouTube’s search function relies on keywords and performance, so selecting the right broad and specific keywords for your video is crucial. Using an interesting video thumbnail, adding relevant end screens and cards, cross-promoting your video, and creating content specific to YouTube are all ways to optimize your videos for the algorithm to reach more people. (Source)
YouTube is best used to
- Post videos that share university news and events that apply broadly to students, faculty, staff, alumni, fans, and the community.
- Embed videos that will play on the main UNLV website.
- Share videos that promote the UNLV experience or highlight a program, event, activity, or resource.
- Share engaging content that showcases UNLV to a broad audience.
- Create highly discoverable content that could be accessed by many different audiences–prospective and current students and their families, alumni, community members, or researchers across the world.
- Interact with your audience by responding to comments, answering questions, and participating in discussions.
Target audiences
- Prospective and current students and their families
- UNLV faculty and staff
- Alumni, donors, and fans
- Local and national media
- Las Vegas and the greater Nevada community
- Research and business community
Post frequency
As needed.
Hashtags
When using hashtags, always follow camel case and capitalize the first letter of every word (for example use #RebelsMakeItHappen rather than #rebelsmakeithappen). This is a better accessibility practice for people using assistive technologies.
Accessibility
Review the automated captions (subtitles) provided by YouTube to make sure they are accurate. You can also use a service to transcribe a video for captioning. All videos posted on the UNLV website must have accurate captioning. If you are sharing a YouTube video to other platforms, you can download a .srt file to upload to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.
About the platform
TikTok is a video-sharing social media platform that emphasizes short, vertical videos, often based on trending audio or concepts. TikTok has drawn attention over the past few years due to privacy and data concerns, but it remains one of the most popular social media apps for Gen Z.
- According to 2021 Pew Research data, 21% of U.S. adults use TikTok, but roughly half of 18- to 29-year-olds use TikTok daily.
- TikTok is used by 41% of prospective college students daily (high school juniors and seniors), but only 20% use it to research colleges and universities. (2021 Noel Levitz Survey)
About the algorithm
The TikTok algorithm is highly personalized to a user’s specific interests and interactions. The algorithm (a user’s “For You Page”) will serve both highly popular or trending videos but also niche videos based on what a user searches for, interacts with, and views. (Source)
One of the reasons TikTok grew in popularity so quickly is because the personalized algorithm (For You Page) quickly learned a user’s interest and served appealing and relevant content. This means that you didn’t necessarily need any sort of existing audience to gain thousands or millions of video views as long as you created content that people found captivating. This technique can still work to increase your reach and audience on TikTok, but it can be challenging to find the right trend, concept, or execution that resonates with audiences. Similar to creating content for other platforms, it continues to be crucial to learn about your audience and find ways to create content that both accomplishes your goals and engages their interests.
TikTok is best used to
- Engage student content creators in becoming ambassadors for UNLV by creating and posting content.
- Share videos that promote the UNLV experience or highlight a program, event, activity, or resource.
- Interact with your audience by responding to comments, answering questions, and participating in discussions.
- Share engaging content that showcases UNLV to a broad audience.
- Create highly discoverable content that could be accessed by many different audiences–prospective and current students, alumni, community members, or people across the world.
Target audiences
- Prospective and current students
- Alumni and fans
- Las Vegas and the greater Nevada community
Post frequency
3-5 times per week, but as often as once per day if resources an time allow.
Hashtags
Using hashtags on TikTok is key to making your content discoverable by those who would engage with it (like a search engine). Be sure to use relevant hashtags that people may use when searching for similar content or find trending hashtags that apply to your videos. Use 3-5 keywords per post to make sure your content is discoverable through the algorithm.
Accessibility
Always make sure captions are turned on for your videos. You can easily use TikTok to transcribe a video and add and edit captions through the app.
Content Creators: UNLV Marketing and Communications leads a student content creator team that helps create videos for UNLV’s TikTok and can work with colleges and units across campus to make content for TikTok. Reach out to us directly if you are interested in collaborating with our student team.
Other Platforms
Snapchat: Snapchat is a mobile app used made popular by the ability to send disappearing photos and videos to your contacts. Users can also create a Snapchat story, which is a combination of photos and videos set to display for 24 hours.
- According to 2021 Pew Research data, 25% of U.S. adults use Snapchat.
- Though Snapchat is used daily by high school and college students, it’s not necessarily used to research colleges and universities, so it can be difficult to build an active and engaged audience there unless you have a very specific student-focused mission.
WhatsApp: WhatsApp is a free, global messaging tool that you can use to make video calls, voice calls, and send text messages to people across the globe. Generally, it’s used to communicate with those in your network directly, especially in other countries.
- According to 2021 Pew Research data, 23% of U.S. adults use WhatsApp.
Because it is primarily based on a personal network of connections, WhatsApp is not typically used the same way as algorithm-based apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. However, it can be used as a communication tool for questions and discussions in certain cases.
Reddit: The community-driven website Reddit is user-generated content aggregator with its own rules and guidelines. Reddit is organized into different subsites (Subreddits or subs) based on a topic or common interest. Subs are moderated by users (mods) that set up rules and guidelines specific to that subsite.
- According to 2021 Pew Research data, 18% of U.S. adults use Reddit.
At the core of Reddit is a community that regularly participates in discussion, posts content, and comments on activity in each sub. Because it is driven by the digital community, the (unofficial) UNLV subreddit is not a primary platform for marketing. Rather, it’s a place where our community can host user-driven discussions answering questions about UNLV student life, athletics, and more. We regularly monitor conversations on Reddit for insight on concerns and feedback.
Pinterest: Pinterest is an application that prioritizes visual, photo/video sharing in a way that allows users to organize saved content (pins) into user-created categories or topics (boards).
- According to 2021 Pew Research data, 31% of U.S. adults use Pinterest.
Though Pinterest is a place to share content that could be highly discoverable, it is not necessarily used by our target audience to research colleges and universities or learn more about UNLV.
Discord: Similar to Reddit and WhatsApp, Discord is a platform organized by different topics or communities. However, users interact on Discord more like an instant message service, rather than a discussion board service like Reddit. Discord can be a popular place for students to collaborate, make friends, or discuss their interests.
BeReal: One of the recent trending platforms, BeReal is an app that sends a notification once per day giving users the opportunity to post what they are doing in exactly that moment. When taking a photo, the camera will capture what’s in front of the camera and behind the camera (essentially take a photo on both sides of your phone at the same time). If you post outside of the two-minute notification window, your post will be marked as late. Posts disappear after one day. Add us by searching for “UNLV.”