Frequently Asked Questions

CAHNRS Communications can create custom newsletter and email templates tailored to your needs. This is considered a paid service.

For a free consultation on the best options for your specific needs and budget, please contact us by:

• Submitting a ticket to our web team
• Email: cahnrs.web.support@wsu.edu
• Phone: 509-335-7963

It is possible to keep multiple social media accounts so that you can separate your personal thoughts and posts from your professional ones. If you want to do this, we advise making your personal account’s name or handle unrelated to WSU. But this is purely a personal choice. There are faculty who use their personal account to share thoughts on many topics, some who only post about their research, conferences, etc., and those who combine them.

Social media is very dynamic and can be used to suit your particular needs. Twitter makes it very easy to establish multiple accounts and to switch between them quickly on their phone app. If you plan to manage multiple accounts, just be careful: posting the wrong thing to the wrong account can be a hassle.

I wish I knew! We’re trying to encourage faculty and staff to use social media by providing trainings. Some people are intimidated by the openness of social media, so we’re trying to help them feel more confident. We’re also trying to explain the benefits of using tools like Twitter, one of which is to spread the word about the science they’re doing and the impacts they’re making.

We’ve begun social media trainings (our first explained how to get started on Twitter and how to brand yourself), and we plan to offer them regularly. All trainings are archived and available on our website: Virtual Office Hours.

If you have ideas or suggestions for a training, please let us know! Email cahnrs.social@wsu.edu.

The best way to drive traffic to your website using Twitter is to include links to your website in your posts and to build your audience/followers. Website traffic will increase if you post links and post often. Try not to post a link to the same page on the site each time, but link to different aspects or sections of your site. People following your account do so because you have information that’s relevant to them. And keep in mind: Twitter moves VERY fast, so don’t worry about posting too much. While I wouldn’t post links to the same page multiple times a day, I would post at least once a day, at different times of the day. It can’t hurt!

You can retweet your own tweets, but most people don’t. We often tweet about the same topic multiple times in a week or month, but I always write a different tweet each time. Tweets are very short, so you can only include so much info in a single tweet. That said, it’s standard and simple to reconfigure a message or include slightly different info for multiple tweets on the same topic. Also, remember to use different images if possible.

Best practices for reusing content depend on the platform and the topic. Generally on Twitter, it’s difficult to overuse content (unless you’re tweeting the same exact tweet multiple times every day). Vary your message, and vary the times you post it, and you’ll be fine.

On other platforms, like Facebook or Instagram, it’s better to post fresh content. These platforms don’t move as quickly as Twitter does, so the content you post remain on people’s feeds longer and don’t refresh as often.

We use both Tweetdeck and Hootsuite but for different purposes.

Tweetdeck is owned by Twitter, so its functionality is a little more smooth. We use Tweetdeck primarily to schedule tweets. The drawback to Tweetdeck is that there’s not much flexibility in composing your tweets. For instance, you can’t schedule a tweet if it has more than one image, and it’s harder to use things like gifs.

Hootsuite is owned by a third party company, and we use it to monitor Twitter topics. It does a pretty good job of constantly updating searchable topics on Twitter—sort of like the Google of social media. In Hootsuite, you can enter a search term and it will tell you anytime anyone posts a tweet using the words or phrases you’re searching.

While tools exist to generate or monitor hashtags (such as hashtagify.me), we’ve never used them; we just create our own. But we do search Twitter before using a new hashtag. In general, avoid using hashtags that are associated primarily with other groups, especially if any negative use can be detected.

Our most used hashtags are #GoCougs and #WSU, and those are easy to incorporate. We also created the hashtag #WSUBees, which was easy one to establish and unlikely anybody else would appropriate it for something else.

No. Once you delete a tweet, it’s gone from your twitter feed. However, it could still show up in another twitter user’s feed for a short time, until their feed refreshes. They won’t be able to retweet it, but they can do a screen grab.

All of them! Integrating communication efforts across social media platforms is the best way to expand the reach of your messaging. That said, every social media outlet has its strengths and weaknesses.

• Twitter is great for quick and short items that you can re-post multiple times. Twitter goes so fast, so it’s very easy for users or your followers to miss something. As a result, there’s virtually no concern with posting a lot.
• Instagram is great for when you have a really good photos and want to reach students.
• Facebook changes their focus regularly, but they like to emphasize video. Posting videos on Facebook can get some good traction. But, since posts linger longer on this platform, posting too much can negatively affect your reach.
• Snapchat is especially effective for reaching students.

The most important thing is figuring out what your goals are, and integrating the platforms that best fit those needs. Then, the task is to keep constantly updating with new content.

Social media is a good way to promote resources and work with other communities and organizations. Many agencies and Extension offices have Facebook or Twitter pages that you can use to interact and cross-promote workshops, activities, or new publications.