Giving Back to the Community Generating Content for You

User-generated content is about as authentic as it gets and it’s what our audience craves, especially in higher education. I use it as often as I can because our community captures the essence of who we are far better than I typically can and their perspectives are valuable to us and the audiences we hope to reach. In doing so I interact with a lot of great people, most often students, and one of the parts I most enjoy about the work I do is finding ways to provide just as much value back to those people sharing their content and work as we get out of sharing it.

This has become somewhat of a mantra for me. And as much as I hate to admit it, it has plagued me since launching our student-run Instagram account @herewegosaints, arguably our most successful social media endeavor yet. As an institution, we get so much out of having an this account, but after the students had completed their week, I had nothing to give them except a big thank you. I really struggled with this. They had done a lot of work (whether they realized it or not). It never felt like enough and I knew it wasn't enough, but I had no money to do anything special for them. So what could I do?

In October, I found a decent answer. A recent graduate who ran the account as a student visited and mentioned he had talked about his work with @herewegosaints during job interviews but he didn't know how to really talk about it beyond "taking over Instagram for a week."

I reminded him about the meeting we had before he took it over and how he spent 25-30 minutes visualizing and planning his week with me. What did he have going on? What were some cool ways to capture his life that would fit on Instagram? We had talked about Instagram as a platform and the kinds of content he liked and didn’t like on there and that had inspired some ideas on what to do and what not to do (I like when they realize these things on their own, rather than me telling them). We had done a lot of what I do as a social media manager in my head every day in terms of content creation and planning. I thought to myself there’s a lot of value in helping students run through those same questions and exercises.

After our visit, he left my office with a much better sense of how he could talk about @herewegosaints in a meaningful way. I was left knowing that a big value for the students who had run the account was giving them the ability to discuss @herewegosaints with potential employers.  

So, I went back and created a @herewegosaints Storify account that catalogs each individual week. Now when a student takes over the account (“Fun! Exciting! I’m #SLUfamous!”), I follow up their week with an email and their Storify link and briefly outline all the cool things they can do with it, along with some insights on how they can share and discuss their takeover experience:

• Share with family and friends
• Add the Storify link to LinkedIn (This has proven to be rather difficult – does anyone know why LinkedIn doesn’t play nice with Storify links? I currently advise students to add it as a project.)
• Tell employers about being trusted with the University’s brand and reputation
• Tell employers about the planning it required and the reasons for capturing what you did the way you did (PS: All that planning you did before the week started? That’s called a strategy and employers want to hear you did that so they know you have a deeper understanding of using social media beyond personal use)
• For students studying the sciences or fields that may appear unrelated to communications: the power of the liberal arts, yo! Creative and thoughtful communications are important in any field
• Tips on how to include it on a resume
• Some data about their specific week 
•  “Did you know? This link will be a positive component to your digital identity!”
• Fun @herewegosaints facts (mission behind it, the targeted audiences, the awards it has won, etc.) to add context for employers

Yes, surprised student. Running @herewegosaints doesn’t just benefit St. Lawrence; it could benefit you well beyond those seven days. No, really. It can!

Our students need experiences they can include on their resumes and in discussions with potential employers. More importantly, we need to help students see the value in every opportunity they have, no matter the size of a project because it's not always as apparent to them as it is to us. We understand the broader context of what they're doing - many of them won't realize it until much, much later.

As I said in my presentation at Confab Higher Ed in Atlanta:

By doing small things like this (and it is small - it takes less than five minutes a week to do this!), students know I'm not just interested in them as content creators. I'm interested in them as humans, too.

Side note/Bonus: Thanks to the Storify account, I can now offer my Admissions and Development colleagues access to specific weeks that may help them in recruiting students or showcasing a specific aspect of campus life that an interested donor prospect might enjoy. Don’t you just love when one simple and FREE project gives you multiple ways to share content with varied audiences all at once?

Image via http://corelaborate.psesd.org/.

Alumni Engagement: One Student's Successful Idea

"What advice do you have for the Class of 20XX?"

This is one of those questions I see a lot of colleges and universities asking their social communities in the days and weeks leading up to students moving in. Alumni jump at the chance to reminisce and offer tips on classes, places to eat and things students must do during their years on campus. Even current students and parents jump into the mix and offer their own. It's a natural question to ask, but what do you do with the answers?

I've always wanted to do make sure the responses made their way to our new students, but also find a way to make sure those responded knew we valued their time and engagement and somehow make them feel included in the move-in festivities. Last year, we compiled a bucket list after we received over 100 responses which was wildly popular, but this year one of my students took it to another level.

Kelly Appenzeller, a member of our Class of 2015 and president of our student government, came to me a few weeks before students arrived on campus. She had the privilege of giving a speech to the Class of 2018 and their parents at Matriculation. She knew it wasn't going to be easy trying to keep hundreds of people engaged with her speech for 10 minutes, especially during such an emotional moment as parents and students prepared to say goodbye to one another. She wanted to find a way to bring our community into her speech and had a great idea on how to do it: crowd-source her speech.

She needed to get in touch with our alumni, parents and students so she could ask what advice they had for the newest members of our community. We posted the question on our main university channels, and Kelly interacted with those responding in the comments in order to make sure she got all of their pertinent information, including class year.

Kelly Appenzeller '15 (Photo by Tara Freeman, St. Lawrence University Photographer)

Her speech featured advice from 20 alumni and students. She included their names and class years as she read aloud their words of wisdom to an audience eager to listen.

Kelly's idea gave us a destination for some of the social content shared and it was a very direct way of making sure it ended up in front of the intended audience. A big bonus: people who were there not only listen, but absolutely loved it, which is evident not only in the comments when we shared the speech on Facebook, but also in our analytics - it was the fourth-most read story last week. An even bigger bonus? How excited our alumni were to find out their advice made it into the speech! It was a great way to bring our alumni into the fabric of one of the biggest events of the year.

Crowdsourcing speeches is nothing new, but I was really impressed with Kelly's enthusiasm and creativity for finding a meaningful way to include alumni and students during such a special occasion. In a moment where she could have shined all on her own, she wanted to include as many people as she could in the spotlight. It was a fantastic way to bring our community together to start the new year.

Make Social Media Part of a Strategy, Not the Only Strategy: A Case Study

"Can you post this on social media?"

This is a question I get asked a lot (and sometimes it's more of a statement than a question). A lot of people ask me to do this because they are trying to accomplish something and have people take some kind of action like attend an an event or read an article. It's in these moments that I enjoy my job most because I now have the chance to educate someone else on how social media and content work (read: not alone) and how they can work for them.

Posting to social media isn't the answer to achieving goals; social content needs to work in tandem with every other piece of communication as part of an overall strategy.  That's why I was excited when our research office reached out and wanted to use social media to connect with the Class of 2008 to complete an outcomes survey.

We met and developed a three-week content calendar that included various components that weren't limited to social media including an email campaign and utilizing individual members of the class to further our reach. The results from spending just 25 minutes crafting a strategy surprised all of us.

What We Did

• We sent 4-5 emails to the class over the course of the three-week period.
• Twitter: We focused on Twitter because we have a younger audience there and we have interacted with several members of this class in this space. I posted the link on Twitter three times, on different days and at different times compared to our email campaign.
• We established three waves of 'digital ambassadors.' We only had about 80 percent of the class' email addresses and needed to find a way to reach the other 20 percent. The first week, "we" (the university) did our social media push; the second week we enlisted the help of our Class of 2008 Committee, who volunteer to contact classmates about giving and volunteer opportunities, and finally we reached out to other class leaders not in the previous group to connect with their friends.

The Outcomes

• A 50 percent overall response rate (252 responses). Average response rates for this type of survey in years' past has ranged between 15% and 32% of only valid email addresses. This year's equivalent of just valid email addresses alone would have been 68%.
• Email campaign: In case you need an example that email isn't dead, we had a 40 percent response rate after the first week alone, which only included our emails and Twitter posts.
• According to our analytics, the three Twitter posts garnered just over 80 click-throughs. That's not very high, but it was such a small portion of our audience so we felt that was appropriate.
• Our ambassadors came through big for us, too. I saw a couple post the link on their Facebook pages and others said they personally emailed the link to their friends. 

What Else You Need to Know

• The survey format changed this year from a much longer one that required an individual personalized password to a shorter version without the need for a password. I imagine this helped get many more completed.
• Our director recalled an alumni survey from three years ago with a very different topic but that they had a 35% response rate - that was the highest she could recall for a survey before this one.
• Of course, there was something enticing alumni to complete the survey - a $100 Amazon gift card. But to be fair, that was also an incentive last year.

It might be a very small success story, but a powerful one that I have already used a few times to illustrate to others the power social media can have when it isn't viewed as a silted communications method. 

How have you educated people about integrating social media into their plans in order to accomplish goals?

What I've Learned Thanks to Our Student-Run Instagram Account

As I was flipping through my calendar a couple of weeks ago and realizing that yes, it is actually April (where did this year go?!), I started thinking back to all of the projects my student social media team and I have taken on since last August. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks: 28 students later, we’re more than six months in to @herewegosaints, our student-run Instagram account, arguably our biggest initiative that we took on this year.

I can still remember exactly how I felt as we geared up to launch this account and what itwas like those first few weeks. It was nerve-wracking and scary, but also exhilarating. We had a lot of questions: Would students love it? Would we get enough students interested? Would it be appealing to prospective students? Would it be different enough to warrant a separate account from the main university account? Six months later, the answer is the same to each of these questions: YES.

In the first month, we had more than 800 followers. Since, we’ve continued to grow our fan base and are closing in on 1,500 followers (it took our main account nearly 10 months to reach that number) and engagement per post remains steady. Interest hasn’t dropped off – in fact, I think it’s only increased over time. I still get emails every week from students who want to take it over and our students and followers are always looking forward to Mondays when we reveal who is running it next.

I could write a book about all we’ve learned and how it’s changed what we do and how we do it here at St. Lawrence, but in the interest of time – mine and yours! – I thought I’d share some of the biggest takeaways and lessons learned here from creating @herewegosaints.

The Need for Content Strategy
At first when I met with students interested in running the account, it was about filling weeks. Then as we got deeper into the fall semester and had more than enough interest, I was able to shift the tone of those initial meetings from “Thanks for being interested – we’ve signed you up!” to getting them to think strategically.

Here are some of the questions I ask when students inquire about running the account:

• What are you involved with on campus? 
• What week(s) are you busiest? How would you show off your busy week on Instagram? 
• How will your week be different than other weeks? 
• What is your St. Lawrence story and how will you plan on sharing that on Instagram?
• What do you love about Instagram? 
• Tell me about a recent post you saw that you liked and tell me why you liked it; then tell me about a recent post you didn’t like and why.

"A lot of my friends from home say that we are abnormally committed to St. Lawrence. I don't understand what they're talking about..." One of our most popular posts by senior John Balderston. John developed a comprehensive content calendar for his week (his own idea!) and the time he spent putting it together paid off - it was by far one of our most popular weeks.

I spend a lot of time on St. Lawrence’s social content strategy and I know from experience that planning posts and content out serves us extremely well. In asking these questions, I got students to think ahead. Treating them like the content strategists they were going to be for the week was critical and has helped tremendously in constantly providing our followers with engaging content and our students with an amazing experience.  In these conversations with students, they seem to really enjoy the fact that we're trying to make sure they're being thoughtful and be purposeful with what they are doing. 

Creating a Second Account

Only a small group of students knew that Matt Burr, a St. Lawrence graduate & drummer for Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, was visiting campus to give our student-run music venue a custom drum kit. Amy Yao, the student running @herewegosaints that week, happened to be one of them (an absolute coincidence - I had no idea!). She was able to capture an amazing moment because she had the keys to this account.

When we launched @herewegosaints, I talked with several people who wondered why we created a separate account. Internally, we had briefly discussed the pros and cons to this and decided a separate account could be something we share with prospective students and say it’s completely student-owned. Looking back, I don’t think this would have been nearly as successful had we done it through the main university account. Here’s why:

• It wonderfully complements the main university account. One thing that was missing from our Instagram content overall was content from inside the St. Lawrence experience - the day-to-day action on campus. This is difficult for me to capture because I'm not living it. @herewegosaints  is able to do that for us. The account focuses much more on taking people behind the scenes of life at St. Lawrence, whereas our main account focuses on highlights and showing off our campus.  We know we have a good amount of overlap in terms of followers between the two accounts (but we've found prospective students oftentimes engage with @herewegosaints first), so when a student is showing the @herewegosaints fans an event they are actively taking part in, we can be showing another so we don’t miss anything – for a one-person show like myself, this has actually helped me a lot. 
• Students trust the account. Now that we’re into our 28^th week, students who have run the account have told their friends about their experience. The word is out: it’s unfiltered, students have direct access and it’s a lot of fun. Because of this, students share the account with friends at other schools or high school students. It's real. It's theirs. They like that.
• Students understand – and love - the responsibility. At first, one of our concerns was giving students the password, but this is what has led to such buy-in from them. Every student I talk with about their week appreciates that we trust them with the account and that we’re letting them tell their own story in their own way.

What We Didn’t See Coming  

• Students are learning about opportunities they have at St. Lawrence through this account. I’m not sure why, but I never considered this account to be a resource. But in my many meetings with students, they’ve told me that they’ve learned about this class, or that research fellowship, or this club or that favorite meal through following this account. Students enjoy the different perspectives because they are learning something new about St. Lawrence, along with the rest of us. 
• Running the account is real-world experience. We have a lot of students interested in PR/communications/marketing and for them, running the account is something they can talk about in an interview. I've had students mention this to me and it reinforces why it's so critical to make sure I help them think strategically about what they are doing.
• It has shifted how our students think about their own content. This blew me away a little: I met with a student earlier this winter about running the account. After talking through the logistics, she casually said, “You know, every time I post to my personal account now I ask myself, ‘Would I post this if I were running @herewegosaints? Or how would I change this post if I were running @herewegosaints?’” She’s not the only one who has mentioned this either – I’ve spoken to four or five students who have echoed those same thoughts. And while this is anecdotal, I think the quality of the photos I see being posted by our community have gotten better and certainly the amount of content shared has increased dramatically. Our community is much more engaged.
• Students are proud to go to St. Lawrence, just because we have this account. When I meet with students, they tell me how great it is that we give them the chance to do something like this. They truly feel ownership over this account, which is exactly what I was hoping for. 

What Have I Learned?

I have thoroughly enjoyed learning about who our current students are, what they care about and what experiences are offered at St. Lawrence today. This account has given me the chance to see what our students are talking about and care about in real time. This helps me with the other parts of my job in creating content for publications and the web.

As the main social media manager on campus, I find I have limited time to test the waters and try different types of content to see what resonates. While running this account, students have done a little bit of this for me without realizing they are doing so! In a lot of ways, it has helped reshape our overall approach on Instagram.

Other Fun Awesomeness

Since we launched our account in September, I’ve spoken with several colleagues at different institutions who have thought about launching similar accounts or initiatives. Take a look at the great things they are doing!

Valdosta State University (@vstateexperience)
Humboldt State University (@livefromhsu)
Webster University (@mywebsteru)
Southwestern University (The Captain at the Helm)

Have you created a similar account or initiative? What have you learned?

Behind the Scenes: A Social Media Manager's Experience

My phone started buzzing at about 9:10 p.m. on Monday night. One notification, then two, then three... I checked in on Twitter and discovered that Rich Peverley, a St. Lawrence alumnus, had collapsed during the Dallas Stars game.

The messages began pouring in. Being St. Lawrence's social media manager is an absolute privilege, and of course I sent out a tweet from @StLawrenceU to show our support. But it's what everyone else was posting and sharing that meant the most - and more often than not, no one sees all of those posts except me.

One of my goals this year has been to find ways to let people into my little social media world when I could and share what I experience because sometimes, I feel a little selfish that I'm the only one that sees it and is able to feel the sentiments in real time. I knew I couldn't retweet everything from last night; but even if I could, those tweets on their own don't tell the same story as all of these posts put together.

So, here it is - an illustration of Laurentian pride and our spirit, all compiled into one place thanks to Storify and social media. Get better, Rich!

What One Prospective Parent Wants to See from Colleges on Facebook

You know that feeling you get when you get a long private message on your university’s Facebook page? For me, it’s mixed – is it going to be a request to post something? Did I do something wrong? Did I do something great? Is it some kind of emergency?

Last week, it was a message from a prospective student’s mother who had some questions about our university and wanted to know about our arts programs and hadn't found much on Facebook. I messaged her back, answered her questions and thanked her for her feedback. Then I asked if there was anything else I could help her with. She asked why some colleges post certain types of content and others don’t. I looked at this as a fantastic opportunity to pick her brain a little bit, and after telling her a little bit about what I try to do with our Facebook page, I asked her what she, a prospective parent, is looking at and for when she is researching a college on Facebook (because yes, this proved to me they are researching colleges on Facebook).

These are some of the highlights (in the order she mentioned them):

• What’s NOT in the glossy handouts: Like students, parents want a real-feel for our campuses, and that perspective often comes from anyone but the colleges themselves (even though we try!). She spends time reading comments to get a sense of how authentic a college is being based on their community’s reactions to their posts (and also noted how we, as a university, respond to those reactions and comments). She also looks at what other people post to the page – not just posts by the university.

• How a community responds to tragedy. How quickly do you post during an emergency or following a tragedy affecting your campus? She noted that some schools she’s looked at try to shy away from sharing tragic news and she took note of this in a negative way, but applauded others that did post - and did so in a timely manner. She also said she could get a sense of the college and its community by how people commented and responded to such news. Did a lot of people comment? How did they comment? Were they reacting negatively to the timing of the news being shared (was it posted too late)?

• Show me the student experience. This parent wanted to know more about what Orientation is like, the community service opportunities, the town (or city) the college is located in and where students could study abroad. Are sports popular? I read this as: Will my child fit in? 

• Current campus news. Who are your professors and what are they doing? What are your students up to? Is there construction? What does that look like? When will it be completed? I got the sense she’s looking for a college moving forward and that the college regularly showcases that through news and photos. (No mention of rankings.) 

• What are the hot issues? She mentioned she enjoys reading articles from the college’s student newspaper so she could get a real sense of what the college and students are like without the marketing/PR filters on them. (Do you see a pattern? Authentic content is critical.)

• Campus photos. We know this one. (No girls under trees, please.)

• Photos and videos taken by students. Again with the authenticity!

There aren’t many surprises here, but it was refreshing to get an outside perspective from a constituent I don’t often hear feedback from. It reaffirms our work in trying to be as authentic as we can be but was also a good reminder that it’s often what people are saying to us and about us - and how we respond to those comments - that tells people outside our community who we really are. 

A Thank You & 12 Cents Go a Long Way

A while ago, I blogged about some frustrations with Instagram and how it's not as social as I'd like it to be. I want to "retweet" a community member's photo so they can experience ALL THE LIKES instead of me! But alas, Instagram hasn't built this feature in yet.

So the question for me became, "How can we share these likes and this awesomeness with the people whose content we're sharing so they know they're appreciated?"

I started by sending emails to people thanking them, but that only goes so far. After all, how many emails do we get a day? When I expressed my frustrations with my student social media team, one member came up with a great idea: thank you postcards, featuring that student's Instagram post.

Um. Brilliant.


When I share a community member's photo on the main St. Lawrence account, I wait a few days until the vast majority of the likes have come in, then take a screenshot of the post as it appears on our account and open it in Photoshop on my PC.

I built a high-resolution 4" x 6" template in Photoshop that looks like the university's flag (shown), then take the screenshot and place it on top. (Note: I am no whiz in Photoshop, as you can see. Just think how much better you can do!)

I upload the finished product to my phone and head to the local drugstore, which has a wonderful Kodak kiosk that prints these for 12 cents a pop and has them all printed for me in under five minutes. They look fantastic, too!

Cards moments before being sent!

Once printed, I hand write notes on the back, thanking the user for letting us repost the photo. I always make sure I find something that makes the post unique - was it in the Top 5 liked photos ever? Top 10? Did someone leave a great comment on it? I share those tidbits in my note. I always sign it "@StLawrenceU" (word on the street is they love that!). I then send them via campus mail (we're a small residential campus) to their on-campus mailboxes.

This is typically the reaction I see when a student finds one of these in his or her mailbox:

We don't just do this for students - I've done this for faculty and staff, too. When the day comes and we share an alum's photo, they'll get one in the snail mail, too. Who doesn't enjoy getting a random love note in the mail from their alma mater?!

In terms of social media currency, I learned early on that "liking" a student's photo got us some great street credit (and helped us earn trust on the platform and elsewhere, too). When we started asking to repost, it upped the social ante and we found a lot more students using the hashtag and directly tagging us in their posts, hoping we'd share. Now students are posting these cards when they get them. They can hold in their hands how much we value them. This goes so much deeper than a mention or a repost - it's on a whole different level.

I know; doing this is just a little thing, a very, very small part of what I do. There are no analytics to measure here, no way to assign any "tangible" value or ROI. My only takeaway is that this little thing could be making someone's day. And I'm perfectly content with that being the only outcome.

A huge shout out to Lexi Williams, a student here at St. Lawrence University; I may be able to write this post and share it with you all, but she's the one who had this idea. I refuse to take any of the credit as it all needs to go to her and my student team (and in case you were wondering about the value of getting students involved with your work, here's a great example of why. They have the best ideas!).

What ways do you thank your community members for sharing content?

Lock the Door or Open It? Why My Digital Identity is Public

Who should I be in digital spaces? Should I friend or follow students I know and/or work with? Should I accept students’ requests? Should I make my accounts private so they can’t follow me? What are my boundaries when it comes to social media?

When I presented at a higher education student affairs conference several weeks ago, these were some of the questions I was asked. They are questions that, at one time or another, I’ve also asked myself. I don’t work in student affairs, but as the social media coordinator on my campus, I work with a number of students and meet more every day. Because of this, I had to stop and think about if it was appropriate to keep my personal accounts public for this potential audience to see.

After wrestling with these thoughts, I decided to be completely public in my personal social media use. Here are three reasons why.

I don’t post inappropriate content. We’ve seen the stories about people who share too much on social media and the consequences of doing so. If I’m using social media—public accounts or private ones—the content is still out there, it has my name on it and the consequences remain the same regardless of the type of account.

A big part of who I am is the work I do. The lines blur for me when it comes to social media. When I am reading through tweets and catching up on what people in higher ed are saying , I’m doing it because it’s my job but also because I thoroughly enjoy learning about it, often in my free time. Finding the time to manage multiple accounts to separate these aspects of my life seems disingenuous because it’s not who I am. I don’t turn off work and turn on life or vice versa, so why would I do that on social media? (This also potentially uncovers a work-life balance issue I may need to address, but that’s for another post.)

But my biggest reason for keeping my accounts public is that I see it as a chance to educate. How often are students getting real-world lessons on how to develop their social and digital identities? I want them to see me engage in weekly Twitter chats and live-tweet from conferences. I want them to see how I use social media to network and collaborate with colleagues from all over the country. I want them to see how passionate I am about the work I’m doing with them and for them. This is an opportunity for me to educate them on how to use social media responsibly in a world where this type of education is so scarce, yet so necessary. Who knows? Seeing how much I love my work might inspire one of them to pursue a similar career path. At the very least, they are getting ideas on how they can use social media beyond what the typical college student uses it for.

In the conversations I had with colleagues at the conference, I learned that many institutions have social media rules and guidelines for those who work in student affairs, guidelines which are also welcomed by staff members because they deal enough with students as it is! In the end, it all comes down to what you’re comfortable with. But the next time a student requests to follow you on Twitter or friend you on Facebook, consider how you use those spaces and how much they could learn from you about the work you do by letting them in. You just might inspire the next generation of higher education professionals.

How do you handle your professional and personal digital identities? What are your thoughts on interacting with students on social media platforms?

This article was originally posted on the CASE Advance blog.

Students Taking Over = Insta(gram)-Success

Over the summer, I was trying to get out of my own way. When you work in marketing and communications at a school you love, you want the stories and people who make that place great to be what shines through, not a bunch of marketing jargon. I'm lucky that our students love this place and more often than not, they're able to tell our stories better than I could. It was time to let them do that.

I looked at where we've been successful this year on social media and Instagram was the clear winner - it's the one place our students have really engaged with us and it was the first platform where they felt comfortable doing so with any of our "official" accounts. I'm a one-woman show when it comes to our social media efforts, so there's no way I could ever be at every event or game to capture those quintessential St. Lawrence moments for our main Instagram account. Our students often are. That's why @herewegosaints was born.

After talking with my colleagues and with the guidance of my student social media team, we launched our second Instagram account, which is taken over by a new student each week and open to any student who is interested in volunteering to do it. It would open up a lot of opportunities for us to tell the collective St. Lawrence story in an authentic way while celebrating the experiences of our students (and validating those experiences and them, which is something that is very important to me. Yay students! You're so wonderful). Our students are all over Instagram, love it when we like their photos, and like it even more when we ask to share them. This was our chance to show them we value and trust them.

Have I had concerns? Sure. It's always nerve-wracking when you're trying something new and doing so with students driving the project - but that's where you get the best results. I was nervous this wouldn't catch on or that we wouldn't get enough students interested in running the account. My team (five students) and I decided they would be the first set of students to run it so we could get a sense of the issues we might face and whether or not it would resonate with students. If it didn't work, we could just shut it down before anyone really knew about it. The first member of my student social media team took it over on September 30, just four weeks ago today.

We've done minimal advertising of the account. I posted a screenshot of the account on our main Instagram account a few days into our first week with it and each Monday when someone new takes over, I tweet the name of the student running the account. The lack of advertising has been deliberate to see if word-of-mouth was enough to propel this project forward. Was it going to be edgy enough to withstand our college's "cool" factor?

When I posted the screenshot on our account, the response to the post was minimal - 30-40 likes when our posts typically average about 200 likes. For a second I was worried, until I noticed they were following the new account instead. In four hours, the account jumped from 25 followers to over 200. Since that day, we've nearly tripled that number and reached 535 followers as of this post. For a school with just 2,400 students, this growth has been outrageous for us (I should note it took our main account more than three months to reach that many followers). On Friday, our student newspaper did a great feature on the new account - it's the first time any of our social media projects have gotten any ink. That's a win in my book.

My student team says there's been a huge buzz about it on campus since it was launched. A lot of students asked them what it was like to run it and how they could do the same. The rules are simple and I require each student who wants to take it over to meet with me so they know who I am and can ask any questions they have. My student team has made a lot of recommendations of people they know we could trust with it, and I've received several emails from interested students. They're excited, and that makes me excited.

Some interesting tidbits: My student team members are comprised of juniors and seniors, so I don't often remember they may have siblings or friends in high school. When one of my team members took it over for the week, she highly publicized her takeover of the account on her personal accounts. What I didn't expect was her sister, a high school senior, to share it. She created an image telling her high school friends to follow the account, too, since her sister was running it. (Mind blown yet? Mine was. I can't make that kind of awesome - and free! - promotion up.) On that one day alone, we gained more than 130 new followers. (In related news, who wants to hire this girl? I do.)

A few members of my student team are also admissions ambassadors and have been sharing this new account when meeting and communicating with prospective students. They love knowing they can follow an account run by students instead of an institution-run account. I'm interested to see where this goes as a recruiting tool for us - I know our admissions colleagues have started spreading the word about it, too.

I was also shocked by the incredibly positive reaction I've gotten from our alumni. One said, "Meg, I actually search for the account on Instagram to make sure I haven't missed anything." Who could ask for anything more in a new endeavor? All parts of our community audience are enjoying this, not just the people it was created for.

While I've enjoyed having a controlled group of students that I know running the account these first four weeks, I'm really excited to meet new students across campus and let them run with it. I think the fact that we have opened this up to people who are interested and not just my team is a critical part of its popularity. An account run by the team would be cool, but it would still be seen as "controlled" posts and messages. I'm excited to experiment with this approach. Do I expect hiccups? Yes. But I expect even more awesome (and that'll cure those hiccups any day).

Have questions? Want to learn more? I'll be presenting about this during the HigherEdExperts' Social Media Conference on December 4. Sign up (by Nov. 16!) and tune in to find out how this project has progressed - another plus is you'll listen to 11 of the people I admire most in higher education present on their own work. It's a win-win!

You can also reach me by leaving a comment below or by email: megan.bernier@gmail.com. 

Is Instagram Really "Social"?

I appreciate people who are taking the time to investigate social media platforms' Terms of Service like Karine Joly, who has started a weekly "Social Media TOS Tuesday." She recently blogged about Instagram's Terms of Service (TOS) and what we can and can't do on our brands' accounts.

One of the points Karine made was that re-posting other users' content on your account violates Instagram's TOS. I've seen many colleges and universities doing this and doing it well - many ask for permission to re-post and then credit the person behind the original post, which I think is a critical piece to going this route. But this is frowned upon by Instagram because it's not the brand's original content.

This is also true on Facebook. Creating a Facebook album of your community's best Instagram photos also violates the TOS, unless you're using an API or linking directly to the person's content. For our community, students don't want us necessarily linking to their accounts. In talking with some of our students, they'd love for us to post their content, but even though their accounts are public (since we can see their content), they don't want just anyone looking at them. 

Learning all of this was a real eye-opener for me as Instagram has become a very popular tool for us and where we've had a lot of success in the last 10 months. It's made me question Instagram: Does their TOS allow us to be truly "social" on the platform?  Karine's posts leave me extremely frustrated with Instagram (not with her, of course!) and thinking undoubtedly yes because in many ways, they don't allow us to foster a community of sharing and engagement like we've been trained to do with other tools. Rather, the platform focuses on metrics such as simply "liking" photos, something I don't think means much at all..

In higher education, many social media "teams" and managers are actually one-person shows who can't be everywhere at once and not always around to grab that perfect sunset photo or events that students are capturing every day. Re-posting photos is a way to show your community the bigger picture of your brand (and crowd-sources, which often yields much better content!) and I'd think would make the content creator feel really good about what they're doing and feel even better about your institution.

I'm all about giving credit where credit is due, which is what this all comes down to - I don't care about likes or comments on our own posts, but pushing out great content that reflects who we really are -that's what social media is all about. I think linking to a person's Instagram account in the caption/comments, you're linking people back to the original content creator. Should that violate anything?

If we choose to follow Instagram's TOS, it really limits us in what we're doing for our community. If they created a re-post option where the person's work that was re-posted received all the likes and comments, then great! I actually like that better than the idea of a brand getting all the engagement for another's work. They should be the ones seeing and relishing in that. Then they'd see how valued their work is and be really proud. Our community wants that and in my fantasy social media world, I'll hope for a resolution of some kind as Instagram evolves - either in creating a re-post option or amending the TOS.

Until then, for those schools or brands who have found success in re-posting, will you continue doing so? What are you doing to stay in check with Instagram's TOS, if anything?

The Most Valuable Share

It's hard to admit this, but I'm a hoarder. 

Okay, so maybe not one in the A&E sense, but when it comes to content I've come across on social media this last year, I've been really selfish. 

As the main social media manager on campus, I get to see what prospective students, current students, faculty, staff and alumni say about us every day and oftentimes engage with those people. At the end of the day, unless I retweet or share the posts, the only people seeing these interactions are just those involved - often me and one, maybe two other people -  and a few followers. And it only exists in these social media vacuums.

So one of my goals this year is a rather simple one - share more of our awesome content, but not necessarily in terms of sharing on Facebook and Twitter; my goal is to do more sharing outside of social media.

This is something I've been thinking about since the spring after I printed out a couple of our Facebook posts about staff members and alumni that received a ton of positive, encouraging comments and physically shared the post with those staff members and alumni. These people, who wouldn't have come across these posts otherwise, got to see they were valued. It was sharing this information beyond the confines of social media platforms that generated (what I would argue to be) the most exciting and emotional kind of engagement I can provide in the work I do.

This goal was solidified during an experience I had this week. A first-year student posted an Instagram photo of a gift our Alumni Council gave him and his classmates at Matriculation. The caption thanked the Alumni Council specifically, so I shared the post with the staff liaison on campus in hopes she would share it with some members of the Council. She shared it with everyone and moments later, a Council member commented on the photo, "On behalf of the entire Alumni Council, you're most welcome." 

I'm sure I'm not the first social media manager making a commitment to doing more of this kind of sharing. I work on a small campus and in a tight-knit community so it's a little easier for me to do this. It may take some extra time, but when you're putting a smile on a staff member's face or allowing alumni who volunteer to see a student cherishing their efforts, it can only do good things for them, us and the communities we're so proud to be a part of.

These shares won't do anything to boost our EdgeRank or post reach, but I'm guessing they will be appreciated by those on the receiving end. No analytics report could ever assign a number or statistic to that.

Ensuring Value and Purpose in a College's Instagram Contest

Knowing Instagram was the most popular platform our students were using on a daily basis and getting inspiration from several colleges (most notably Elizabethtown College and Donna Talarico's work),  my student social media team and I decided it was time to do something fun on the photo-sharing platform. So in April, we hosted our university's first ever social media contest - an Instagram photo-a-day challenge.

We joined Instagram in late October. I spent the first five months listening to, learning about and educating our audience on there, so I was excited to try this. But I didn't want to do it just to do it, or to get more followers, or something else that didn't mean anything. So how could we do something fun AND have it be valuable for both our audience AND the University?

Strategy

For our audience, it was a game: post a photo every day using #SLUphotoaday that correlated to that day's theme. For my team and myself, it was strategically planned. We chose April for a few reasons:

• April is the first month in Northern New York that you  might - MIGHT - see signs of spring and not a whole lot of snow.
• Our University's birthday is April 3.
• It's a busy month on campus with Springfest Weekend, sports contests, end-of-year concerts, etc.

While these factors definitely played a role in why we chose April, the biggest thing for me was that April is a critical month in the admissions cycle. Why not encourage students to post content every day that you can feature all over the web at the same time high school students are making their college decisions?

The other part of the strategy was deciding on each day's theme. (I should note - they had the best ideas. Another reason to get students involved!). The pride our students and alumni have in this place is incredible; playing off that was going to be key to making this 'cool' and something our students would participate in.

Promotion

We started promotion just five days before April 1. We printed a 120" x 45" banner and hung it in our student center with each day's theme. We posted the contest on Instagram and Facebook. We made fliers for the residence halls. Other than that, I charged the team with sharing the news word-of-mouth.

What happened?

The next month was a whirlwind (hence the month-long delay in posting this). I could go day-by-day, but this post is already long enough. Here are some highlights:

• We had more than 135 people play (I know there were people I couldn't see playing because of private accounts) and close to 1,200 submissions.
• In the first seven days, we had over 500 submissions. On Day 3 (our university's birthday), I tallied over 100 photos posted - the most of any day.
• Our followers grew 27.3% in that one month.
• Not only did students play, but several alumni played (a few played every day!) and we even had a parent take part in the daily fun. That was a surprise, since the daily themes were really geared toward those on-campus. I was blown away at the lengths some alumni (and the parent) went to play every day! 

Why was it valuable for us?

In my opinion, I think this project was the first time our audience saw us giving them something fun to do and in return, it gave us some street credit with our students and younger alumni. While I've seen increased engagement since taking over our social media efforts in August, it's been more so on the alumni side than with our students. That has slowly changed, but April was sort of a mini social-revolution for us.

Since the beginning of the contest, students have been interacting and talking with us much more frequently. They are tagging us in their photos and posts. We are communicating and sharing together! When we've asked our audience for photos or content, I've seen a jump in the number of submissions we get. For me, it was a great way to end a year of social media growth on campus and I think set the stage for an even bigger social media 'boom' here this upcoming year.

I think it's important to point out here that while we saw an exciting jump in followers, this was not a goal for us. We didn't get 230+ new followers because we ran a contest; we earned the trust of 230+ new followers because we provided exciting and relevant content in an engaging way and encouraged others to join us in doing so.


Other Fun Points to Note

• When sharing photos on Facebook and Twitter, I saw a jump in new people playing or others playing again.
• I saw a slight increase in new followers on Admitted Student Days, most likely because students visiting saw the large poster in the student center and heard tour guides talking about the contest.
• Really thinking about the daily themes and how they could help us share St. Lawrence with others paid off incredibly for us in terms of re-purposing content. For instance, on our university's birthday, the theme was "What I love about SLU." We had more than 100 posts and shared the best in an album on Facebook later that week as it was the perfect way to capture why our audience loves us, instead of us preaching about why we're so great.
• Remember that "official" Instagram hashtag I spent a long time educating our audience on? Before April 1, less than 350 photos used the tag. By the end of the month, we were close to 700. Far more students are now using the hashtag than they were before, which means I'm finding their awesome content faster and easier (and others are, too).
• We've had several requests to do it again - so people liked it!

Why was it valuable for them?

You mean besides the prizes? We used a ton of student content we got from participants on other platforms and a number of students took to social media to express their happiness about it. By liking their photos, commenting on them and sharing them, we validated their efforts. They felt appreciated, which was great - because they were (and are).

People also enjoyed seeing how others saw St. Lawrence. Why did their friend love St. Lawrence? Where is everyone's favorite view? Our community learned more about each other in a fun way.

Again, I think because we spent the time to make sure the themes were centered around what makes SLU special and because it was done at the end of the semester, it offered our audience a chance to reflect and appreciate this place. We even heard as much from participants on the last day.

For the Next Time

Of course, this wasn't perfect. We will definitely make adjustments, but based on the number of requests I've gotten from students and departments to do something similar, we'll be doing more things like it - keeping in mind the value to us and the value for them.

Another lesson learned? The weather gods are never on your side. We chose our daily themes six weeks in advance and we picked one day to be themed "Today's Weather," hoping it would be a gloriously sunny day. What we did was jinx ourselves.

Technically, our contest had 15 winners, but I think St. Lawrence and - more importantly - our audience won.

Have questions about what we did? Insights on other successes? I'd love to hear them! Feel free to reach out to me or leave a comment.

More Ways to Use Social Media During the College Search

It's almost May 1 and deposits are rolling in at colleges across the country. The yield period has become an important part of my year even though I don't work in admissions. As our university's social media coordinator, this is a critical time in the year for me, too. I know students are watching, listening and deciding based on our posts and interactions. It's honestly one of the best parts of the gig.

That's why when I was perusing Twitter for the 127th time yesterday and came across this USA TODAY College article, "5 ways to use social media to choose a college," the social media nerd in me got excited to read it. "Am I making all of these things happen?" I thought before reading it. "Am I helping students in the ways they need to be helped?"

But by the end of the article, I found myself a little frustrated for the students who are really trying to look for ways to use social media in their college decision-making process. For me, I felt the list encouraged students to turn to social media in the eleventh hour to help them make a decision and that shouldn't be the case. While the writer made some good points about different sites to look through, here are some additional points I wish the article had mentioned.

Build Social Media into Your College Research at the Beginning
There are two points in the following sentence I want to emphasize: Students should be using social media as just one of the many tools in their arsenal during the entire college process.

I might be biased, but I'd tell prospective students to consistently check in with the colleges and universities they are interested in on social media throughout the 2+ years they are researching them. This doesn't necessarily mean you have to like a college's Facebook page or follow their Twitter account, but check in regularly to see what's going on - don't wait until April 1 when you have a month left to decide to start listening to what the college is promoting and doing on social media. Plus, if you're following along for a while, you'll be clued in to other really cool things the school is doing and might find a channel or avenue worth following before you make a decision.

Connect with Current Students
This is the first point the article makes and it's a good one, though I think it missed out on some key opportunities to mention some great ways to do this. Prospective students should be looking for ways that the colleges they are interested in are helping them connect. Just because a college hosts these things doesn't mean you're not getting an authentic view of life at that college. Painting the wrong picture for admitted students doesn't help them and it doesn't help the college.

Some great examples: I've been really impressed with how Connecticut College does this with @ConnCollegeLive, what St. Mike's does with their student blogs and Oberlin's most recent endeavor with a Google+ panel. It might take a little time and some research on websites and social media to find these types of outlets, but it's worthwhile if a student is able to make a connection.

Look for Ways to Connect with Potential Classmates
Is it important for students to get a "real" sense of campus life from current students? Of course. But it's the accepted students who will enroll and ultimately shape the next four years of the college's story who are really important. Get to know them.

By now, a lot of colleges and universities are creating class hashtags on Twitter and open, closed and private groups on Facebook. Some schools are even creating their own homegrown communities for accepted students. Once a student is accepted to a college or university, they should search for these groups and opportunities.

One thing I loved about our closed incoming group was that one of the first posts by an admitted student was a "10 fun facts about myself" and now everyone does it when they join. This happened organically and some posts have 40+ comments of students talking with each other about similar interests. This is their space to get to know each other - after all, these are the people they'll be spending the next four years with!

Ask Questions
Throughout the college search process, ask questions. Do it on social media, during your interview, during your campus tour and continue doing it until you don't have any more. If a prospective student is still trying to make a decision with 24 hours to go, they can reach out on social media or call the Admissions office and see if they can help. Don't be afraid to do this - we all want to help students make the best decision for themselves. [Side note: My best advice is to go with your gut instinct.]

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Our incoming class has seen it all from colleges and universities when it comes to marketing and social media. What resonated with them? What helped as they researched? What didn't? What was missing? I work at a small school and am hopeful when the Class of 2017 arrives in August I'll find students interested in social media who might have some thoughts on this.

My note to admitted (and future) students: If you choose a school but wasn't overly impressed with their social media presence as you researched them, try and find the social media manager on campus when you arrive and talk to them. I'd set aside hours to hear from you about your thoughts and I'm betting others would, too. We're always looking for ways to make it better, and who knows? Your efforts to reach out and offer up your insights might land you some cool opportunities on campus. I'd add you to my student social media team in a heartbeat.

Did you think something was missing from the USA TODAY College article? What's missing from mine? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.