Photos & Events

Photos

There's no doubt about it: People. Love. Photos. On the W&M Facebook page photos are far and away the most popular content; so if you can include a photo with your post, do it. The photo doesn't have to be a professionally staged shot, just a well taken image with good composition and lighting and an in-focus subject. If you think the photo is of interest to your community and is something they'd like to see, add that visual element!

Another great use of photos is to freshen up your profile and banner photos. Change up your Facebook or Twitter banner to reflect the change of seasons, or a campus event. Merely changing your banner often spurs folks to comment and reminisce about the location or event that is the subject of the photo.

Keeping in mind to always tailor your content to each channel (as mentioned earlier) be sure to upload your photos (or videos) separately for each site you're sharing on. Sharing an Instagram photo to Twitter via Instagram's share feature results in just seeing a link on Twitter, not the actual photo. You will get more engagement by taking the same photo you used in Instagram and re-uploading it to Twitter directly (this way you also can ensure the caption does not get cut off).

Regardless of where you use your images, make sure to accurately caption and credit them, attribute the photographer if appropriate (and known) and provide a description of the photo to offer context (and avoid any confusion as to what the photo is).

You can find more ideas for using photos on social media, as well as image and graphics creation tools, in our Additional Resources.

Event Publicity

Social media is a great place to publicize events that are occurring within your organization. By creating a Facebook Event you can:

Collect a rough RSVP count and encourage attendees to share the event with their friends
Tease the event with videos or photos from previous years
Create polls to get attendees involved and invested in the event (vote for music, types of food at the reception, etc.)
Post exclusive information like early ticket access or behind the scenes photos of the event
Create a hashtag for the event in order to track discussion and gather feedback via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. After the event you can collect and save these posts via a service like Wakelet so you can use them to document the event and use photos and video as promotional material for future years.

Also be sure to add your event to the W&M Events system so it can be included on the main W&M calendar (which appears on the W&M homepage and myW&M among other places).