Administrative Oversight

All social media accounts affiliated with a Missouri S&T are required to grant administrative access to social media staff in marketing and communications. While units are responsible for posting and monitoring content on their social media accounts, this administrative oversight by marketing and communications is intended to allow intervention in the event of inappropriate postings and content. Additionally, all social media admins are required to take our social media training course. 

All managers of social media accounts affiliated with S&T must abide by the terms of our social media training directed by marketing and communications. It is the responsibility of the unit’s supervisor or director to ensure compliance. To add a marketing and communications staff member to a social media account or to the social media training, contact our Social Media Coordinator at 573-202-1545 or at social@mst.edu.

Social Media Directory

To further ensure our university-related social media accounts are visible and easy to find, account owners should add their social media accounts to the social media directory. This can be achieved by emailing social@mst.edu or contacting our Social Media Coordinator.

Inactive Accounts

Web and interactive reserves the right to disable or unpublish inactive or dormant Missouri S&T social accounts. An inactive or dormant account is one on which the account holder has not posted any information for three months or more. Social media is a way to humanize our university, and dormant accounts reflect a lack of consideration for the audience and indicate a page is stagnant, and is therefore no longer an audience resource.

Defunct Page Administrators

When page owners, including faculty, staff and students, leave the university, they no longer need or require access to social media platforms associated with Missouri S&T and will be removed. It is your responsibility to immediately remove anyone who had previous access to the page upon their departure from the institution. Please alert our Social Media Coordinator at social@mst.edu when administrative access changes.

Digital Accessibility

Missouri S&T leverages social media for engagement, fostering connections, and communicating emergencies. Utilizing accessibility features on social media platforms is crucial for ensuring posts are accessible, alongside creating accessible content from the outset.

Brand Personality

Between what we say and how we say it, we create a recognizable style that is distinctively S&T. When we interact with our audiences, they need to know there is a real person posting and engaging with them.

Our distinct brand personality shines through when we communicate, which is an expression of our values and a vehicle through which our story will be told. As we communicate with a variety of audiences and convey different messages, it is important that we do so through one consistent brand voice. Learn more about developing our voice.

Brand Identity

It’s more than our name or logo. It’s the way we look, act and speak. It’s what we’re all about. When you execute our brand, there’s a reason behind every visual or verbal decision. The Missouri S&T brand guidelines will help you make those decisions. It reflects the thought process that went into creating the brand and provides guidelines for making it consitent.

Visual Identity

Before you build new content, it's important to know how messaging and choice of graphics fits with our visual identity. Learn more about our official Missouri S&T colors, lines and patterns, photography, logos and fonts.

Best practices

When you are posting to a university account, you represent Missouri S&T. The following are best practices to ensure the best engagement with your audience.

Think of yourself as a referee, and your audience are the players. You are an observant spectator until a violation occurs. Do not insert yourself into post conversations or remove posts or comments unless the content is disrespectful, profane, egregious, or violates any terms of agreement set forth by the social platform you are using. Do not remove posts or comments that are respectful but at odds with your personal opinions or critical of your posting.

Comments to remove would include obscene or threatening language or discrimination (hate speech) based on race, sex, gender, religion, national origin, age or disability. It is your responsibility as the social manager to report discriminatory language on any university-affiliated site to Equity and Title IX.

Digital Accessibility on Social Media

Ensuring our social media content is accessible to everyone is essential. At Missouri ST, we follow best practices to include alternative text for images, caption videos, use plain language, and check all posts for readability and contrast. For detailed guidance on how to make posts inclusive and compliant, please refer to our official resource: Social Media Best Practices – Digital Access.

Social media is often the first experience a user will have with our university; complete the following steps to ensure your audience is engaged and informed.

Know Your Audience

Ensure the content you are posting is relevant to your user. While some audiences and their interests overlap due to the close-knit community of S&T, no two audiences are exactly alike. The audience for a student organization is not the same as the audience for the Miner Alumni Association, for example. Understanding your audience will help you develop appropriate content.

Define Your Goals

Before you post, ask yourself what you want your audience to do with the information you posted. Do you want them to sign up for an event? Go to your main website to see course offerings? Inform them of new faculty research? Think through your goals before posting.

Explore Social Media Platforms

Determine which social media outlet you should use, depending on the user persona (demographics), to increase audience engagement. Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Instagram have very different audiences. If you maintain more than one social media site, make sure to tailor your message in each medium.

Ensure Consistency of Tone

Social media pages can have multiple administrators; make sure your posts have the same tone. KMNR and the College of Engineering pages are not going to have the same tone because the audiences are different.

Determine When and What to Post

Users want your page to add value to their online experience and to be a source of information. Avoid posting outdated content. A good rule of thumb is to post every other day unless there is time-sensitive news that needs to be included. Users do not want to be inundated with information, but at the same time, too little information makes the page look dated or abandoned.

Use Visuals When Applicable

Optimize content by adding strong visuals. Posts with visuals receive significantly higher engagement than text-only posts.

Know When to Use #Hashtags

• Instagram: Use a mix of popular and niche hashtags (3–10 is ideal) to reach new audiences and appear in topic searches.
• Facebook: Use sparingly — 1–2 focused hashtags improve visibility without distracting from the message.
• X (Twitter): Hashtags help posts appear in trending topics and search results — 1–2 is best for readability.
• LinkedIn: Use 2–5 professional, relevant hashtags to increase reach within your industry.
• TikTok: Hashtags power the algorithm — combine broad tags (#fyp, #trend) with specific ones related to your content.

The key: keep them relevant, specific, and intentional. Overusing or using unrelated hashtags can reduce engagement.

Grammar Counts

Run all your posts through spellcheck and, if possible, have another set of eyes review your content prior to posting.

Monitor and Assign Responsibility for Posts

Make sure your links work prior to posting and that language used in the post and in comments does not violate terms of use. Identify the administrator or administrators of the accounts and any others involved in the monitoring or posting of social media content to ensure timely posting of relevant content, consistency of voice and tone, and timely responses to messages received from your audience.

If your audience cannot find you, you cannot meet the goals of your social media pages. Ensure your social media pages are in-brand with Missouri S&T.

As social media administrators and members of the Missouri S&T community, it is our job to display the name of our university correctly: Missouri S&T or S&T on second reference. When social media pages do not use the correct brand terminology, it weakens the brand.

A page titled “Science and Technology Research” is not easily identifiable as being part of the greater S&T brand. Users will also have a harder time finding and following your page if you do not follow established naming conventions. All university pages must begin with Missouri S&T followed by department, program, student group, etc.

In-brand examples for Facebook:

• Missouri S&T Computer Science
• Missouri S&T Ballet and Dance Club
• Missouri S&T Street Team

In-brand examples for Twitter (please note Twitter does not allow ampersands):

• SandTSSC (Student Success Center)
• SandTCASE (College of Arts, Science and Education)
• SandTCEC (College of Engineering and Computing)

In-brand examples for Instagram (please note Instagram does not allow ampersands):

• https://www.instagram.com/sandtlibrary/ 
• https://www.instagram.com/sandtstuco/ 
• https://www.instagram.com/sandtadmissions/ 

Examples of Prohibited page names across all platforms include but are not limited to the following:

• MST
• MUST
• MS&T
• MO S&T

Administrative Oversight

All social media accounts affiliated with a Missouri S&T are required to grant administrative access to social media staff in marketing and communications. While units are responsible for posting and monitoring content on their social media accounts, this administrative oversight by marketing and communications is intended to allow intervention in the event of inappropriate postings and content.

All managers of social media accounts affiliated with S&T must abide by the terms of our social media training directed by marketing and communications. It is the responsibility of the unit’s supervisor or director to ensure compliance.

To add a marketing and communications staff member to a social media account or to the social media training, contact our Social Media Coordinator at 573-202-1545 or at social@mst.edu.

Social Media Directory

To further ensure our university-related social media accounts are visible and easy to find, account owners should add their social media accounts to the social media directory. This can be achieved by emailing social@mst.edu or contacting our Social Media Coordinator.

Inactive Accounts

Web and interactive reserves the right to disable or unpublish inactive or dormant Missouri S&T social accounts. An inactive or dormant account is one on which the account holder has not posted any information for three months or more. Social media is a way to humanize our university, and dormant accounts reflect a lack of consideration for the audience and indicate a page is stagnant, and is therefore no longer an audience resource.

Defunct Page Administrators

When page owners, including faculty, staff and students, leave the university, they no longer need or require access to social media platforms associated with Missouri S&T and will be removed. It is your responsibility to immediately remove anyone who had previous access to the page upon their departure from the institution. Please alert our Social Media Coordinator at social@mst.edu when administrative access changes.