When this article was first published, Twitter was growing quickly and many schools treated an active account as an obvious part of their social media strategy. A great deal has changed since then. Twitter is now called X, audiences are spread across more platforms, and an institution can no longer assume that maintaining an account is automatically the best use of its time.
One principle, however, has aged very well: schools build stronger online communities when they publish content that is genuinely useful, interesting and human rather than relying on a steady stream of self-promotion.
Before committing staff time to X, confirm that the people you want to reach are actually there. Review referral traffic, campaign results, social listening, direct messages, event conversations and the platforms your current students use. Your institution does not need to be everywhere. But if X remains relevant to your audiences, its fast-moving public conversations can still support news, community engagement, thought leadership and student recruitment.
Whether your account is new or well established, the following seven content ideas can help your school create an X presence that is worth following.
1. Make Sure Your X Profile Reflects Your School Brand
Your school’s profile page is still a hook. It is the first “content” many visitors see when they encounter your account, so the profile image, header, name, biography, website link and pinned post should work together to explain who you are.
What do you want people to associate with your institution?
A strong profile might emphasize a distinctive campus, a specialized program, student work, research impact, community values or an upcoming priority such as an open house. Avoid filling the header with small text that will become unreadable on mobile devices, and do not assume that a beautiful campus photograph communicates your academic value on its own.
X currently recommends a 1500-by-500-pixel header image and a 400-by-400-pixel profile image. It also allows a biography of up to 160 characters and a pinned post at the top of the profile. Use that pinned space deliberately: feature a current intake, an important event, a useful student resource or a piece of content that clearly introduces the institution. Review X’s current profile guidance before updating creative assets.
What keywords and feelings come to mind when you look at your school’s profile today?
2. Keep Students in the Know with Practical Updates
No matter what type of institution you represent—K–12 school, university, language school, career college or graduate program—an X account can be useful for timely campus information. Registration dates, application deadlines, open houses, weather notices, service changes, examination support and graduation reminders are all natural fits for a short public update.
These posts demonstrate that your institution is tuned in to the practical needs of its community. They can also promote programs and events without sounding aggressively promotional. A career fair reminder, for example, communicates an event while reinforcing the school’s connections with employers. A scholarship deadline post helps prospects while drawing attention to an important recruitment offer.
Make every practical update complete enough to act on. Include the date, time, time zone, audience and a link to the authoritative page. If details may change, make that page—not the social post—the source of truth.
X should not be the institution’s only emergency or operational communication channel. Urgent notices should also appear through the systems your school has formally designated, such as email, text alerts, the website and campus safety tools. A social post can reinforce the message, but it should not leave students depending on an algorithm to receive critical information.
Helpful updates show that your institution cares. They also give followers a practical reason to keep the account in their information mix.
3. Aim to Intrigue and Inspire Your Personas
Your institution is a place where ideas are debated, skills are developed and new work is created. Your account should reflect that intellectual and creative energy, using the same audience-first principles described in HEM’s guide to promoting a school on social media.
Share a pertinent article written by a faculty member, an explanation of a timely issue, a student project, a useful application guide, a short research insight or a piece of content connected with the school’s city and community. Curated content can also be valuable when it comes from a reliable source and you add enough context to explain why your audience should care.
Free from constant self-promotion, this kind of content can start conversations, demonstrate expertise and reinforce a positive brand. The key is relevance. A career-focused college might share practical employment guidance; an art school might spotlight a creative process; a research university might explain the significance of a new finding.
Do not publish the same caption across every platform merely because it is efficient. X is built around concise, searchable public conversation. Adapt the opening, context, link and media to suit that environment. X also advises against repeated duplicate posts, unrelated trending hashtags and automated behaviour that creates a poor search experience. Its search guidance is a useful reminder that relevance matters more than volume.
Whether you are creating content yourself or curating it from expert sources, useful stories and educational insights help establish your account as a place people choose to revisit.
4. Open Your Campus and Classroom Doors
Your X account is an extension of your school community. Use it to show followers and prospective students what life and learning actually look like.
Highlight classroom activities, laboratories, studios, performances, student organizations, community projects, residence life, professional development and campus traditions. A short series can often tell the story better than one polished promotional post: a faculty member explains the task, a student shows the process and the final post shares the result.
This content can resolve practical concerns as well as build excitement. A prospective student may want to see the equipment they will use, how a hybrid class works, whether commuters have places to study or what support is available during examinations.
Keep accessibility in the production workflow. Add useful image descriptions, use sentence case, write multiword hashtags in CamelCase, and provide accurate captions or caption files for video. X’s accessibility guidance notes that image descriptions can support people who are blind or have low vision, use assistive technology, live in low-bandwidth environments or simply need more context. Review X’s accessibility features and author recommendations.
Schools should also confirm permission before featuring identifiable students, especially children. In the United States, whether a photo or video is an education record under FERPA depends on whether it is directly related to a student and maintained by the institution or someone acting on its behalf. The determination is contextual, so schools should follow their own privacy, consent and records procedures rather than assuming that every campus image is automatically available for marketing. The U.S. Department of Education provides detailed guidance on photos and videos.
5. Share Student and Alumni Success
When institutions celebrate student and graduate success thoughtfully, everybody can benefit. Current students feel recognized, prospective applicants see what learning can lead to, and the wider community gains a clearer view of the school’s contribution.
Success content may include:
- A student research presentation or competition
- A portfolio, performance or capstone project
- An award, scholarship or community contribution
- A graduate career step presented with appropriate context
- A student explaining what they learned through an internship, placement or practicum
Specific stories are usually more persuasive than a generic congratulatory post. Explain what the person accomplished, what work was involved and why it matters. Link to a fuller profile, project or program page when readers may want more detail.
Obtain permission, verify names and claims, and avoid presenting one exceptional result as the experience every student should expect. Employment, salary, licensing and placement claims require particular care. The same principles apply when you repost student-created content: confirm that the person is comfortable with institutional amplification and preserve the meaning of their original post.
A strong student story should feel like recognition first and recruitment content second. HEM’s guide to student testimonials provides more detail on consent, interviewing and ethical editing.
6. Promote Staff, Instructors and Institutional Expertise
Sharing news about instructors and staff can reinforce the credibility of your programs by showing that students learn from knowledgeable and engaged people.
Highlight:
- New research, publications and creative work
- Expert commentary on a current issue
- Industry activity and professional recognition
- Community partnerships
- Teaching innovation and professional development
- Faculty-supported student work
Translate specialist achievements into language that a prospective student can understand. “Professor Lee published a paper” is less useful than a short explanation of the problem addressed, why it matters and how the work connects with learning opportunities at your institution.
Visuals often help these posts stand out, but the image should add information rather than act as decoration. Include image descriptions, captions where needed and a link to the authoritative source. Do not reveal confidential research, private student information or sensitive operational details in the effort to make a post more interesting.
Your faculty and staff give the institution a human voice. Their expertise is part of the school’s story, but it should be communicated in ways that are clear, accurate and relevant to the audience.
7. Create Focused Branded Hashtag Campaigns
A well-chosen branded hashtag can help collect posts around an open house, orientation period, anniversary, research initiative, acceptance season or community campaign. It gives students, alumni and staff a simple way to participate and makes related public posts easier to find.
The hashtag should be:
- Short enough to remember
- Distinctive enough to avoid unrelated conversations
- Written in CamelCase for readability
- Checked for possible unintended meanings
- Supported by a clear prompt and examples
X recommends using no more than two hashtags per post as a general best practice. Hashtags can help categorize content, but adding a long string of broad tags does not create a community. X’s hashtag guidance emphasizes relevance and searchability.
Plan how the campaign will be moderated. Decide who will respond, which posts may be reposted, how permission will be handled and what the team should do if the hashtag attracts criticism or unrelated content. Participation should be invited rather than manufactured.
When community members tell the story in their own words, the result can feel more credible than a campaign built entirely from institutional claims. The school’s role is to provide a meaningful prompt, recognize contributions and connect the conversation with useful next steps.
Measure Whether X Is Earning Its Place in Your Strategy
Followers, likes and reposts can help describe activity, but they do not show whether X is supporting institutional goals.
Review a balanced group of measures:
- Qualified impressions and engagement
- Profile visits and relevant follower growth
- Link clicks and website sessions
- Event registrations and adviser bookings
- Useful questions received through replies or direct messages
- Applications or inquiries influenced by tagged campaigns
- Response time and community-management workload
X’s public view count is not a count of unique people; repeat views and the author’s own views may be included. It is therefore a reach signal, not proof of audience size or recruitment impact. X explains how view counts are calculated.
Use campaign naming and UTM parameters so website analytics can distinguish posts and initiatives. Connect social activity with CRM and admissions outcomes when possible, while recognizing that social media may assist a decision without receiving the final conversion credit. HEM’s guide to setting goals and KPIs for university social media provides a broader measurement framework.
Protect the Account and the People Behind It
A useful content calendar needs equally clear governance. Document who owns the account, who approves sensitive posts, how comments and direct messages are handled, and what happens during a crisis. HEM’s guide to creating a school social media policy can help formalize these responsibilities.
Use individual access controls where available, maintain a current list of authorized users and remove access promptly when roles change. X recommends strong unique passwords and two-factor authentication as core account-security practices. Review its account security guidance.
The final takeaway remains much the same as it was when this article was first written: cater to your audiences’ interests, questions and aspirations rather than treating the account as an institutional noticeboard or advertising stream.
If X is where part of your community gathers, helpful, relevant and human content can still strengthen the school’s reputation. If your evidence shows that the audience has moved elsewhere, the same seven ideas can guide your content on the platforms that now matter more.
How does your school create a social community that students and prospective students want to join? Which content has proved genuinely useful—not merely popular?
Frequently Asked Questions
Should schools still use Twitter now that it is called X?
Schools should use X only when audience research, analytics or community needs justify the investment. It can still support public updates, thought leadership, media relations and real-time conversations, but it should not be maintained simply because the institution has always had an account.
Should the article and page use the name X or Twitter?
Use “X” for the current platform and “X, formerly Twitter” where additional context helps readers. Retaining “Twitter” naturally in the title, metadata and body can also preserve recognition and existing search relevance without presenting it as the current brand name.
What should a school post on X?
Useful options include timely updates, application guidance, student work, faculty expertise, campus life, graduate stories, event content and focused community campaigns. Every post should have a clear audience and purpose.
How many hashtags should a school use on X?
X recommends no more than two hashtags per post as a general best practice. Use only tags that clearly categorize the content or support a specific campaign.
How can schools make X posts accessible?
Add accurate image descriptions, provide captions for video, use CamelCase hashtags, write in sentence case, avoid excessive emoji and make linked pages accessible as well.
Can a school post student photos and videos?
Schools should follow applicable privacy law and their own consent, directory-information and records policies. Permission is particularly important when an identifiable student is the focus of a marketing post or when children are involved.
How should schools measure X performance?
Combine platform measures with website and admissions data. Review engagement, profile visits, link clicks, registrations, qualified conversations, inquiries and downstream outcomes rather than relying on followers or public view counts alone.
