Twitter

The email account associated with the Twitter profile should use a group mailbox so that several members of the department or program can check rather than an employee’s personal UHCL email address.

When setting up a Twitter account, incorporate the university name such as UHCL Department name, UH-Clear Lake Department Name or University of Houston-Clear Lake Department Name.

Note that a username and a name are two separate items. For example, @uhclearlake is the username and UH-Clear Lake is the name. Usernames are character-limited.

Identify your department, office, or unit in the description and briefly state what information your followers will receive from your account. For example, UHCL Career Services Twitter account states: “We offer online and in-person services to UHCL students/alumni and employers. Find & post jobs on Jobs4Hawks”

 Follow the official University of Houston-Clear Lake Twitter account, @UHClearLake. If you’d like the UHCL account to retweet your tweet, include @UHClearLake in your tweet or tag the tweet with #UHCL. You may also email socialmedia@uhcl.edu with information you’d like shared by the university.

Aim for short sentences when posting. Keep posts within the 280-character limit. 

Twitter is microblogging site, and the nature of it requires frequent updates (multiple tweets per day) to drive engagement and keep the university in your audience’s newsfeed. For example, Twitter accounts created to promote one-time events or for internal audiences are not appropriate for the microblogging format. 

Use links in your tweets drive followers to the UHCL website. Inbound links also improve your page rankings with some search engines. Shorten links using https://bitly.com/  to optimize your link for Twitter’s 280-character limit. 

A hashtag (denoted by “#”) is a keyword used to help categorize tweets. Hashtags are an easy way to categorize your tweets and can help people locate tweets that reference a specific subject or event. Use #UHCL in postings to promote UHCL social media growth. If you are creating a specific hashtag for your office, department or event, use “UHCL” in the hashtag to promote the university.

Examples:

#UHCLOH (for UHCL Open House)
#UHCLCareerFair
#UHCLGRAD

Tweet relevant and appropriate content posted by another Twitter user to disseminate university news, or relevant information for your audience. If you have questions about what should/should not be retweeted, email socialmedia@uhcl.edu .

Tweets with photos are more likely to be clicked on than status updates without photos. Note that images must be a certain size to be shared on Twitter. The standard is 1024 x 566 pixels. Photos/videos require a signed release form from students, faculty, staff or visitors who are visibly recognizable in the image. These rules apply to photographs intended for use in university publications of a marketing or promotional nature, as well as university web pages/social media sites, videos and other media. Photos of crowd scenes where no single person is the dominant feature are exempt from this requirement.

Use the “@” symbol to tag another Twitter user in your Tweets. This is helpful in letting followers know what accounts they should follow and generates interest in other areas of the university.

Lists on Twitter are a way for you to group similar accounts you follow together in one list so that information is easier to find and share. You may follow another user’s list if it is publicly viewable. For example, the UHCL Twitter account features a “UHCL Twitter Accounts” list of all known campus accounts, and a “Resources” list for higher education news and organizations. Create lists specific to your area for industry news, resources, etc. 

Because Twitter has a character limit, linking accounts to Twitter can cause posts to be cut off in awkward places and do not include images, which limits information for followers and can cause confusion.