UC Santa Cruz’s social media guidelines are designed to empower divisions, departments, programs, and clubs to establish and manage their own social media networks, and are applicable to all official UCSC social media accounts. Social media is a vital resource to positively promote and communicate news, events and other information about your organization or area of interest to our campus community.
Managing and Creating a UC Santa Cruz Profile
If you are setting up a social media profile for your department, division, area, club, or activity, please let us know about it so we can support you. Contact us at
socialmedia@ucsc.edu. Review our social media best practices to help you make the most of your profile.
A few quick tips:
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Decide who your audience is and who you are trying to reach. Then pick the platforms you want to use on social media:
- Instagram: Students, alumni who have graduated in the past two decades, prospective students
- Facebook: Parents, alumni who graduated from 1967-2000
- Facebook Group: Students
- Linkedin: Alumni, Graduate students, higher ed institutions
- TikTok: Students. Only consider a TikTok account if you have enough content to post a minimum of 2-3 days per week. You can always collaborate with the official UCSC TikTok account for one-off videos.
- Twitter: Students, alumni, academia. Twitter is great for touting research and academic accolades. There is a large academic community on Twitter. Make sure you have enough content to be posting and engaging 3-5 days a week.
- If you need help determining what platforms you should use contact socialmedia@ucsc.edu
- Include “UCSC” or “UC Santa Cruz” in your profile name and handle.
- Stick to one handle for your entity. For example, if you are creating an account for the history department, name your Facebook page “UCSCHistory” and your Twitter profile “UCSCHistory.” Be as consistent as possible.
- Use a distinctive logo as your profile photo that will be visually recognizable to your audience and will set your profile apart from other UC Santa Cruz profiles. You should use the same profile photo and cover photo throughout your social media properties. Make sure you are designing profile photos and cover photos in the correct dimensions for each platform. Refer to the cheat sheet link in the sidebar.
- Make sure you link to your department, area, club or activity in the profile’s “About” section. Adding a link will turn your bio/about section into a potential source of referral traffic.
- You should be posting on a consistent basis. If you are only posting once a month, your profile will not get any engagement and will have no chance to grow. We recommend posting 3-5 times a week on Facebook (once per day), once per day on Twitter, and once per day on Instagram. Need help deciding what you should be posting? Contact us!
- Interested in Facebook/Instagram ads to grow your profiles or feature your events? Contact us for help.
Any social media page you manage that is associated with UC Santa Cruz needs to be held to certain guidelines. Remember, your page represents the university as a whole!
Follow UC Santa Cruz Branding
We strongly encourage all divisions, departments, programs and clubs that launch official social media presences to follow the UC Santa Cruz identity guidelines. In order to leverage the full strength of the university’s name, fame and reputation we recommend that your social media presence be consistent and complementary to our overall brand.
Respect Others
Remember you are representing UC Santa Cruz in all your posts. Review the UC Santa Cruz
Principles of Community for guidance around campus values. Be prepared to see comments you don’t agree with and comments that may disparage your program, or the university.
Never use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity or engage in any conduct that would not be acceptable. Only post accurate and honest content, and if you offer your own opinion, it should be identified as such. If there are comments that indicate the safety of a student or other person may be at risk please immediately contact the UC Santa Cruz police department.
Commenting Policy
Those who comment on posts from UC Santa Cruz social media accounts are free to discuss and disagree with others regarding topics relevant to the purpose of the social media platform. Users should not use ethnic and racial slurs, hateful speech, personal attacks, abusive language, nudity, or pornography.
UC Santa Cruz reserves the right to block or remove the content of any post that may violate state or federal law, and University of California and UC Santa Cruz policies.
For your own personal safety, please refrain from posting personally identifying information, as your comments are visible to the public.
Comments posted to UC Santa Cruz social media channels do not represent the opinions of UC Santa Cruz.
UC Santa Cruz abides by Instagram, Twitter, Google, Facebook, Reddit, TikTok, Discord, LinkedIn and TikTok’s Terms and Conditions and asks you to do the same when participating in these communities.
Quality Control
The speed of social media is a great feature, but it also means that time to edit or reflect must be self-imposed. Take time to check spelling and grammar before publishing your content. If you are uncertain about a post, you may want to have someone else review it for an outside perspective.
Don’t Spam
We encourage you to use your online platforms to share information about your department, division or organization’s work at the university and achievements. However, overtly commercial advertisements, solicitations and promotions are not allowed. Exceptions are made for university events and community events of interest to the campus.
No Endorsements
Do not endorse or promote any product, political party, candidate or cause.
Obtain Permissions
Get permission from your supervisor before you set up your sites. Get appropriate permission before you refer to or post images, copyrighted material, intellectual property, etc.
Keep it Legal
There are legal issues, such as relating to intellectual property and privacy that are inherent to social media. Do not disclose anything that contains confidential or proprietary information about UC Santa Cruz, its employees, students, affiliates, vendors or suppliers. It is also critical that you comply with the laws governing copyright and fair use of copyrighted material owned by others. It is good general practice not to post art or other works of others unless you have the copyright holder’s permission (there are some exceptions to this rule, such as fair use, so please contact
socialmedia@ucsc.edu if you have questions).