MarCom Studio

Voice

Social media platforms enable real-time engagement, allowing people to become more deeply connected. By using the right mix of channels in an effective way, you can strengthen your unit’s relationships, build brand affinity for UTSA and raise awareness of how the university is advancing toward its strategic goals.

Determining the people you want to speak with will help shape the voice you want to use on social media. Ultimately, your goal should be to proactively engage your audience in authentic, productive and transparent conversations. This means that you need to be unbiased and empathetic to your audience.

Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are used by a young demographic that generally includes prospective and current students as well as recent alumni, so you can use a more informal voice on these channels. On the UTSA channels, we aim to be informative, proud of the UTSA brand and community, personal and friendly.

Facebook skews older than Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. Here you’ll find nontraditional students (especially working adults and grad students) and their families, faculty and staff, older alumni and community partners. The goal on Facebook is to use an informative and friendly voice that makes UTSA accessible. Your Facebook followers and fans should feel like they’re part of a close-knit family - not a bureaucratic institution.

Twitter is where you’ll find the broadest cross-section of the general public. Twitter users include current and prospective students and their families, UTSA student organizations, alumni, faculty and staff, community, government and military partners, the UT System, elected leaders and the news media. Your Twitter voice should be informative. Twitter is a new and information channel.

LinkedIn is a professional network, so the voice here tends to be more formal. We aim for persuasive posts, informative posts and a voice that shows pride in the university.

On each channel, it’s important to remember that you are representing a public research university. Pay attention to your grammar and punctuation. When you use humor, do it in a way that lets your followers know it was deliberate and not sloppiness or a mistake. Also, double check all of your links and handles after you post to ensure they work properly.

Hashtags

Hashtags are a powerful social media tool. Hashtags propel your message, engage your audience and help you maximize your appearance in search results. Below are some of our favorite UTSA hashtags to share at the end of a caption:

General

• #UTSA (This always goes first on every post.)
• #BirdsUp
• #Rowdy
• #UTSASuccess
• #UTSAAcademics
• #UTSAResearch
• #UTSAExcellence
• #FutureRoadrunner

Date-specific

• #UTSAFall21 (for the Fall 2021 semester)
• #UTSAGrad21 (for Commencement)
• #UTSARRDays21 (for Roadrunner Days)
• #BirdsWhoServe (for service events)
• #UTSAHC21 (for Homecoming)
• #UTSAHHM21 (for Hispanic Heritage Month)
• #UTSABHM21 (for Black History Month)
• #UTSASummer21 (for sharing your summer travels)

Athletics

• #BirdsUp
• #210TriangleOfToughness
• #DefendTheDome
• #GoRunners
• #FearTheBeak

Miscellaneous

• #BabyBirds and #UTSAKids (for pictures of young Roadrunners)
• #UTSAPups
• #UTSA25, #UTSA26, #UTSA27… (for each incoming class)

Capitalize UTSA in all hashtags. Additionally, to enhance accessibility, UTSA uses camel case when it display hashtags. This means that the first letter of each word in a hashtag is capitalized.

Handles

We encourage you to amplify the reach of your posts by strategically tagging the social media handles of UTSA units, partners and others who are integral to your success. These handles should go after the hashtags you use, starting with @UTSA-related handles then finishing with the handles of those outside the university community. Again, use camel case and always capitalize UTSA in handles.