For higher education institutions, social media marketing was about sharing key information and communicating with their target audiences. However, two other elements are becoming increasingly important in today’s hyper-competitive higher education landscape: brand amplification and differentiation.
Speaking at our Higher Ed Virtual Conference, Carrie Mills – Social Media Manager at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville – shared strategies for ensuring your social content reflects your institution and resonates with your audience. Read on for her key takeaways, including:
- The importance of strong branding to an integrated marketing strategy
- Defining what makes your institution unique
- Identifying elements that reinforce your brand’s identity on social media
Let’s get into it.
What Is Branding (And Why Does It Matter)?
We usually start with the colors, typography, and logos when discussing branding.
Sure, those are important. But before you can put any of that stuff into place, you need to define what makes your institution unique besides your visual identity. For example, at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, they love the color orange.
But then so do lots of other schools. Carrie explained that figuring out what sets them apart is crucial to effective branding, which shapes and influences your institution’s reputation.
“It’s how we present ourselves and how we’re perceived by others. It creates loyalty, institutional pride, and community awareness, and it helps recruit prospective students and fosters affinity with your alumni.”
This doesn’t mean your messaging should be identical regardless of where you’re posting (or who you’re speaking to). Images, voice, and tone may vary by platform and audience, but they should all look, sound, and feel like they come from the same university.
So, how do you figure out what you want to look, sound, and feel like?
How to Define Your Brand
Carrie said three distinct elements that go into forming a coherent brand – your visuals, tone of voice, and brand persona. Let’s take a look at how to make them your own:
Brand Visuals
As we’ve already noted, visual identity is often the first thing that springs to mind when discussing branding. Things like your:
- Color palette
- Logos
- Photos
- Graphics
- Typography
Everything you create here should be in line with your brand standards.
To be clear, that doesn’t mean you have to add your school’s logo to every image you post on Instagram. But if your content appeared on a follower’s social feed, would they recognize it as yours after a quick glance? If the answer’s “no,” you need to think about the types of visual elements that make your institution unique. This could be things like:
- Colors
- Recognizable buildings
- Statues on campus
- Plants or wildlife
For example, Carrie’s team often shares visuals incorporating the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Ayres Hall building with its iconic clock tower:
View this post on Instagram
Tone of Voice
Beyond the visuals, remember that everything you write also reflects your brand.
Think about two brands that get it right: Dove and Southwest Airlines.
View this post on Instagram
View this post on Instagram
“They’re drastically different in the tone of voice and choice of words that they use, but their words still align with what you know and think about the brand,” said Carrie. “It should be the same for your institution.”
Brand Persona
According to Carrie, the single most important element of defining your brand is figuring out your brand persona. It’s so important that her team recently created a dedicated brand persona guideline document to explain who they are (and how to communicate this identity). Take a look at some of the traits that inform their social media messaging:
Carrie said she likes to think of these as a kind of recipe. “While most cake recipes use flour, the other ingredients that you add will really determine whether you’re going to get a red velvet cake or a carrot cake.”
While other schools might share some of those traits, their combination makes the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, unique.
“Your persona is your brand,” Carrie added. “If you focus on just the visuals, you may lose out on some really great opportunities to tell the story of who you are as an institution.”
How to Work Your Brand Into Social Media Content
Once you’ve defined all those elements of your brand, repeat them consistently to build familiarity and help your audience identify your content.
For example, it’s fair to say Carrie and her team use a lot of orange in visual social media content:
“We’ve invested in orange props, and we’ll ask people ahead of time to wear orange or Tennessee gear before we take their photos,” said Carrie. “I honestly used to kind of hate the color orange, but now close to half of my wardrobe is orange – that’s not because I like the color orange more now, it’s because I’m proud to be a volunteer and that color represents our university.”
The more you incorporate your unique values and traits into your content, the more you’ll build a feeling of community among people who identify with your brand.
However, consistency doesn’t mean doing the same thing repeatedly, regardless of platform or audience. “We can be energetic, authentic, bold, and innovative on TikTok, and we can also be that way on LinkedIn – but the way we execute will be different based on those audiences.”
Once you’ve started identifying and using your visual and written brand elements in social media content, the next step is to look for authentic brand storytelling opportunities.
For example, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is leading a project to develop the best turf pitches for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which allowed Carrie and her team to boost national perception of the school’s key academic and research strengths.
“Even though the pictures don’t have a lot of orange, we still made sure to represent our brand through the way we wrote the caption and by the locations where we shot the photos,” Carrie explained.
How to Foster a Culture of Brand Awareness
Every member of your campus community has a crucial role to play in strengthening your school’s reputation. But branding isn’t always at the front of everyone’s mind, and keeping control of your branding is tough.
If you’re part of your institution’s central marketing and communications office, you can make your life easier by creating resources and guidelines that help campus communicators use your branding.
“Clarity and specificity go a long way in getting people started,” said Carrie. “Remember that this is meant to make our jobs better and easier, not to be a gotcha tool or an opportunity to become the brand police.”
Her advice? Start with baby steps. Help your campus communicators understand why branding matters, then give them the support and resources to make it happen. And remember – slow progress is still progress.
Also, practice what you preach by ensuring your own content adheres to brand guidelines.
One other tip: think of fun ways to reinforce your branding. For instance, a couple of years ago, Carrie’s team created stickers featuring the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s brand colors and the corresponding CMYK, PMS, and RGB codes. “They’re so cute and a lot of people, including myself, put them on their laptops. It’s a great resource and a good reminder to keep branding in mind.”
How to Create Content With Branding in Mind
Ideally, branding shouldn’t be something you think about once you’ve already come up with a content idea – it should be a key part of the ideation process.
With that in mind, Carrie shared a behind-the-scenes look at her process for creating on-brand content every time, based around an imaginary on-campus family day.
Disclaimer: Chances are, you have your own preferred ways to create content, so don’t feel like you have to follow every step; it’s more about guiding your thinking.
Step #1: Define Your Audience & Goals
As with anything social media marketing-related, the first step to creating on-brand content should be to consider your audience and the objectives you’re trying to achieve.
In our imaginary scenario, we’re targeting current and prospective students and their family members, and we’re aiming to deliver two goals:
- Build brand affinity
- Foster a sense of community
Step #2: Decide Where to Post
You can figure out where to share your content based on your audience and goals. In this case, Carrie said she would likely post on:
- Facebook and Instagram to reach family members
- Instagram and TikTok to reach current and prospective students
Step #3: Choose Your Content Type
Now you can start thinking about what the post in question will look like. First, you need to define the content type. This might vary by platform. For instance:
- On Facebook, you might want to promote a news story that recaps the event, so you’d just need to share a link and a caption.
- On Instagram, you might share a carousel rounding up your favorite pictures from the event.
- On TikTok, you need a video, which might require enlisting an intern or student ambassador to capture content throughout the family day.
At this point, consider your branding. For instance, for the Instagram carousel, Carrie would look out for images containing plenty of orange, along with people smiling, hugging, and generally having a good time at iconic spots around the school’s campus.
Step #4: Consider Other Stakeholders
Outside of your team, are there any stakeholders who should be involved in the content creation process? For instance, maybe your photography team wants to have a say in which photos you use. Or perhaps your student life office wants to review your captions and/or be tagged in the final post.
Step #5: Bring it All Together
Finally, it’s time to create your content!
Let’s take a look at how Carrie and her team created dedicated assets for different platforms around a recent, real-world family fun day at the university:
While each visual is different and tailored to the specific platform’s audience, they’re still clearly on-brand.
Also, note how Carrie customized each caption to the audience. For instance, the TikTok caption is super short. Still, it includes hashtags, while the Facebook caption is the longest because Carrie assumed a lot of people won’t click the link to read the story, so she crammed as much detail into the caption as possible.
Beyond this, you might have picked out some of the shared elements that run through each piece of content, such as:
- The color orange
- The use of recognizable landmarks around the university
- The phrase “Rocky Top,” in reference to the school’s fight song
All of these ensure that all three posts have a similar feel. “This is our brand persona come to life,” Carrie explained.
TL;DR
Finally, Carrie shared her main takeaways to ensure your brand shines through on social media:
👉 Remember that your brand is more than just a logo; don’t forget your written communication and brand persona!
👉 Be consistent with sharing on-brand elements in content.
👉 Customize content for different audiences and platforms.
👉 Add personality and key messaging into your content through storytelling.
👉 Encourage and support your campus community to take ownership of your brand.
👉 Embrace what makes you unique, from your brand colors to your traditions and values.
“You have a unique combination of characteristics,” Carrie added. “I hope that you’ll embrace that, tap into it, and own it.”
Are you seeking social media marketing tips, insights, and best practices for higher ed social media? Register for our next social media conference!
Featured image by Pexels.
