Facebook

Whilst Facebook has declined statistically in usage from certain generations within the UK, as other social media platforms are banned abroad it’s still very popular for the international market. Many of our agents are on Facebook and are often sharing posts. It’s also great for group sharing.

Make sure to go through the feed every so often and share posts from our partners, or business which are relevant to our industry to push our reach (for example the Pie, UUKI...)

Everything you need to do, to keep our accounts healthy!

Make sure to use the invite to like function often. This is how we ensure those interacting with out content, can continue to see if by following & liking our page.
Make sure profile pictures are kept up to date, and cover photos replaced every few months. It’s great to keep these in tune with the time of year or recent events.
Make sure to pin popular posts.
Share posts into relevant groups to increase the organic reach of our pages.
Create events for anything happening that we’re hosting to showcase the scope of what we offer, and to increase our visibility.

Creating Captions

You can typically use the same caption from Instagram, as long as it adheres to sensationalism and click-bait guidelines for Facebook.

Emojis can be seen as sensationalism. For short captions, do not use more than 2 and make sure they’re relevant to the post. Ensure they are in line with accessibility.
QAHE captions containing course descriptions must be written in 3rd person, you cannot say 'our course' it must be 'the course'. For NUL & UULB you can say 'our course'
Do not use ‘OMG’ over exaggerated language, this will be seen as sensationalism and will affect distribution. Colloquialisms may also be misunderstood by international students.
Facebook will lower the distribution of posts where the caption is seen as click bait, whilst this isn’t typically something we post, it’s still very relevant. Using terms such as you’ll never guess what or misleading taglines to entice viewers to read our posts will lower distribution.
Our tone of voice is friendly and informative. Imagine you’re speaking to your friends and are giving them some helpful advice.
You need to include about 8-11 hashtags which cover o The target audience for that post o The topic of that post o The target audience for the page (but if it’s a home focused post, don’t include international specific hashtags) o Popular search terms or questions relating to the post o Popular search terms or questions relating to the target audience for the post
Our captions tend to be quite long but try to keep them as short and to the point as possible.
Include an ‘inspire to action’. This could be a suggestion, a direct call to action, a question, etc. If you’re talking about a link to a course or blog post, make sure to link it and make this your CTA. Limit the uses of links where possible, and encourage students to instead comment or message us to increase engagement.
Make sure to run your caption through Grammarly, before uploading it to Trello to be copy-checked.
Make sure to run your caption through a readability checker to make sure it’s easily accessible by international students who may not speak the same level of English as us.
Make sure you’re always tagging other business and staff members who were at an event or appear within the caption. This will organically help increase the reach of our page.

Banning and Reporting Members

We only ban people from our Facebook pages in extreme circumstances. When you ban someone, make sure to include the option of banning them and any profiles they make.

Extreme and consistent violation of community and our guidelines
Constantly posting/commenting about being able to do student assignments for them or being able to get students visas.

Groups

All our pages are a part of some groups. These groups can be used to monitor what students are saying, if there’s any free local activities students can take part in, or to share our posts in to increase reach.
Make sure you do not violate group guidelines before you share your post into the group.
Some groups with international students in have a lot of spam from people offering to write students assignments for them, on any posts with such comments, delete the comment straight away and report it.

Imagery

Keep the imagery the same size as Instagram, 1080 x 1350, this works best for us!
Do not include our logo. Imagery that need a logo for a partnership, must go through creative services
Ensure REELs have a thumbnail
Either duplicate the post for a story, or ensure the post is shared to our story.

Comments

Where possible respond to all comments and encourage a conversation
For complaints, unless it’s directly harmful or in violation of community guidelines it cannot be removed. If it is in violation, screenshot it and delete the comment.

Ulster University London & Birmingham Branch Campuses

All QAHE posts are re-worked for UULB, in-addition to new posts created.
Designed graphics don’t tend to work well for them, and plain imagery works better.
There is an Ulster Facebook group which is being run by a past students and often contains promotional pieces which violate university guidelines. We're working to get the group removed, but in the mean time please delete any posts you have access to or report the page.
Quick wins for posts include sharing items from the QA Higher Education page, agents or main campus (where relevant)

Northumbria University London

All QAHE posts are re-worked to be shared on their page where possible.
They have a branding pack for social media, which includes templates for Facebook. Any changes made to them, will need approval.
Using our imagery or approved stock imagery is the fastest way to create posts without needing approval.
If thumbnails contain wording, approval is needed.
Only respond to messages and comments using Orlo. All written responses go through Orlo. Only use Meta as a last resort.
There is an unofficial Facebook group being run for the London campus, it’s quite tame but make sure to keep an eye on it.