Sample Social Media Messages

Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, You Tube, and Instagram, are powerful tools for sharing news of your institution with a potentially large number of people and engaging them in an interactive way. Using social media can be economical; the sites require only an email address to establish your presence. To maintain them, however, requires an investment of time because visitors expect content that is timely and new.

If you already have social media presence on at least one platform, use it (or all the ones you have) to amplify your news to a broader audience. IMLS will be sharing your award on our social media platforms – and you should comment on and share our posts, as well as create your own native content and share it yourself. Be sure to let key groups in your community know about the news so they will like and share it to their followers too! Pictures are worth 1,000 words, so use pictures as much as possible, and since video is so easy to generate now with just a smart phone, consider doing a quick, one-minute video to announce the grant and thank everyone involved or talk about how it will be applied.

 Twitter

Great news! [your institution’s name that received a grant] just received an @US_IMLS grant! [insert link to the IMLS press release listing your grant award] #IMLSGrant

[Your institution’s name that received a grant] is excited to announce that we received a grant from @US_IMLS! [insert link to the IMLS press release listing your grant award]  #IMLSGrant 

 Facebook

Facebook fans, I am excited to announce that [your institution’s name] received a grant from @USIMLS! We are looking forward to [briefly explain what your grant will be used for]. [Insert link to the IMLS press release listing your grant award] #IMLSGrant

We have great news! [Institution that received the grant] just found out that we received a grant from @USIMLS to [explain what your grant will be used for]. Read more: [Insert link to the IMLS press release listing your grant award] #IMLSGrant

 Instagram

[Institution that received the grant] just received a grant from the @US_IMLS! #IMLSGrant

So excited to announce that [your organization's name or I] was awarded a grant from @US_IMLS! #IMLSGrant