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/.

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?

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?

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.

Why I Invest Time in Instagram (And Why You Should, Too)

I've been responsible for our university's main social media channels for just over six months and I have had (and continue) to do a lot of listening and learning. One of the biggest lessons I've learned has been that our audience wants to know how we want them to use social media - and they're looking for us to guide them. One of the places I've been most successful in implementing this is on a smaller platform with big opportunities: Instagram.

I knew our students were using Instagram but before jumping on the platform, I wanted to look around and see what and how they were posting and figure out how we might use the platform to reach this particular audience. What I learned was:

• Their stuff wasn't terrible. In fact, a lot of what they posted was really awesome content I wish I had known existed.  (I'm sure the less awesome stuff is out there, just mostly on private accounts or not using any university-specific tags.)
• When they were trying to tag us, they used multiple hashtags: #slu, #stlawrence, #stlawrenceuniversity, #stlawu, etc. The list went on, and these were often hashtags used for a variety of other purposes, so they weren't strictly St. Lawrence.

Instagram is about more than posting really sweet filtered photos and getting a lot of likes; it's about building a community. I knew if we were going to be on the platform, we needed to find a way to create that. 

That's why when we launched our account, we created one hashtag we wanted people to use and actively started promoting it in our Instagram bio and on each of our photos. I didn't want our audience just adding the hashtags to their content; I wanted them to use it for what it's true purpose- to give people interested in St. Lawrence a feed they can follow for content collected from others, too.

I knew I couldn't just rely on people reading our bio and buying in to the hashtag; I was going to have to lay some serious groundwork if I wanted Instagram to work with and for us. I spent hours searching the hashtags they were using - liking and commenting on their (appropriate) photos. They LOVED us telling them we liked their stuff, which became evident as scores of them began following us... and they also started sharing more (and even better) content.

When They Bought In

During campus events (like this big snowfall), I actively promoted the hashtag across platforms like Twitter and Facebook, where I encouraged people to look at the hashtag feed - not our own - to see all the great things our contributors were posting, It helped that I went back into photos our account had liked, took a screenshot and posted that across all our platforms, like the one below:

When we did this, a lot of people figured out we didn't establish the hashtag just for us to follow along, but for everyone to enjoy. This specific post not only got more members of our audience to start using the hashtag on their photos, but they started browsing and some even went back through their own feeds and added the hashtag to older photos they had taken around campus. It was working! We had given our audience a little bit of help and they were really running with it.

What the "Other" Hashtags Gave Us: Prospective Student Engagement

When I was going through the hashtags our students were using, I noticed prospective students were using them when they got mail from us, visited campus or when they got accepted. Interacting with them opened up a lot of future engagement opportunities - they asked questions, followed us and sometimes went to Facebook and Twitter and followed us there, too. (Every so often they use our hashtag in later posts or add it to the one I've found and I simultaneously squeal with joy!)

Instagram is our fastest-growing platform and every minute I spend on there is giving me more information about our community and what it likes, but also what it needs from us. Instagram has illustrated how educating and guiding our audience on the ways we want them to use these platforms equals quality and meaningful engagement. 

If you've ever doubted Instagram's ROI for your college or university, I hope this shows you it can be - and is - worthwhile. What cool things are you doing on Instagram that are building your brand and resonating with your audience?

Making Changes: My Takeaways from SUNYCUAD

Last week, I attended my third SUNYCUAD conference. You can’t leave this annual gathering of some of the best minds in higher education without learning something. When I [sadly] checked out Friday morning, [reluctantly] packed up my car and navigated the horrible one-ways near Syracuse University in hopes of finding Interstate 81, I felt re-energized about my work and did a bit of self-reflecting on how I do things and what I could, should and need to be doing better – a lot better.

There was so much to digest – ideas, thoughts, quotes, a little beer and some Acropolis pizza – and I thought about it all weekend (the pizza was that good). Now, I’m putting my fingers on the keyboard to see what pours out. So here it goes-what I took away from SUNYCUAD 2012.

1.  Goals before tools. This seems logical, right? Of course we have goals before we move forward on projects and accept assignments. But for many of us we have large, overarching institution goals. Most of the time we don’t look at everything we’re putting out there and thinking, “Is this really worthy of a news release or would it be more effective as a video? Who am I trying to reach? What am I trying to say? How will I know if I’m reaching them? And if I’m reaching them, am I effective in doing so?” 

These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves and each other. Even when it comes to posting a Facebook update or sending out a tweet- are you doing it just to do it or is it a tool you’re using to reach your goals? And if it’s a tool you’re using, is it the right one – and why is it the right one? We need to be critical of what we’re doing and make sure we’re tracking progress and effectiveness. Planning, discussions, and communication need to take place much more often and then making the necessary changes to continue doing our work well.

2. Break down the barriers. We all get in a rut of working within our respective office or department. But if we’re going to be successful at what we do, we need to take the biggest eraser we’ve got and get those dividing lines out of there. We’ve got to think past ‘divisions’ and share what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and how it connects with the work of every single employee on campus. We need to change the way we approach projects and collaborate with everyone as a unit, rather than as several units under the same brand and name.

It’s time to look at our organizational charts and see the lines connecting each employee as channels between people -where views, ideas and opinions of everyone from the bottom up and top down are shared and communicated. Most importantly, everyone in the room should feel they have a seat at the table – no matter if you’re a VP or the newest employee. Listening to everyone and showing respect goes a long way – to quote presenter Alana Riley of Providence College, “it doesn’t take much to feel appreciated (or unappreciated).” 

3. Content is more than [written] words. Content is all shapes and sizes and is what is out there accomplishing our goals. Video, social media, photos, etc. are telling people our story and what it’s like to be a part of our community, our world. 

I’m not just a ‘writer’-I am a creator, sculptor, & artist with words, ideas, and images-and by doing all that, I am a storyteller. Georgy Cohen of Crosstown Digital Communications said, “Content is a process, not a project.” Effective content captures its audience with its tone and the story it tells and connects with them emotionally – it’s not just your average college-sounding jargon. One example Georgy gave involved admissions tour guides, how they often memorize a script to ‘welcome’ prospective students and their parents and maybe rethinking this.

Tour Guide I: “And to our left you see [insert name of building], which was built in 1932 and is home to our engineering school and newly-renovated science labs.” 
Tour Guide II: “This building on the left is [insert name of building], where I’ve taken a couple of science classes. This past semester I got to take part in a project studying [something science-y] and use x, y, and z in my research since we have new science labs loaded with all-new equipment. My friend even got to…” 

Don’t you want to hear about what the friend got to do? It’s because you’re engaged (I know, not the greatest example, but…). And you know what? So are the people on the tour.

Georgy also pointed out the value of adding story elements to all content, but what most intrigued me was adding it to news releases. If you’re talking about a new program being offered, immerse yourself in a couple of classes and tell the story through that perspective rather than rattling off requirements. Why is the program important? Why does it matter?I learned I need to think beyond the words I’m writing. I need to change my perspective on what I’m trying to say, and do so in a creative way that reaches people and connects them with my institution.

4. Your campus community exists in real life and online. But are you treating it this way? Are you thinking about your Facebook presence and use of Twitter as social communities? It’s called ‘social’ media for a reason – it’s a two-way street, not a one-way avenue for your news releases. Presenter Alaina Wiens from UM-Flint says to jump into conversations and show your audience you care about what they have to say, and I couldn't agree more. If someone in your office is ‘doing’ social media because ‘it’s their job,’ they’re doing it wrong. Put it in the hands of people who care and understand people join these pages because they want to be and feel like they are a part of the community. Our interactions and engagement with them in these mediums will only validate they are an important and a necessary part of the institution (because they are why we’re here!) and the relationship, connections and community grow. 

5. Do less better. Budgets get smaller every year, yet the world around us demands we do more every day. Higher education is no exception to this reality. There’s so much to be taken on- new content, new websites, new social media outlets springing up daily, going mobile… the list goes on. And we still have the same number of employees. So it’s important to establish goals, plan, figure out what we need to do to get there and who’s doing it. We don’t need to be on every social media site, but we need to be doing social media well on the ones we are on. Admissions doesn’t need 1,000 publications to reach enrollment goals, they need publications that are thoughtful, have a purpose and someone who looks at effectiveness vs. cost and is willing to be firm on making those sometimes tough decisions.  It all comes down to staying organized, motivated and being smart about what we do. Don’t be a ‘yes’ person and take on more than you can chew. It’s much more fun to enjoy what you’re doing than trying to cram everything in so you can’t even handle it.

Because of SUNYCUAD, I’ve developed amazing friendships and learned from people who will continue to inspire me in my work every day. You know why? Because they don’t look at higher education as a business. They don’t accept the way things have been done as the way they *should* be done and are looking at ways to do things differently and do them well with the resources they have available. They don't make excuses for why they can't do something, they find ways to make it work - or at least try. They are in love with and invested in the work they are doing to make fundamental changes to a higher education model that often doesn’t meet the needs of the complex and ever-changing world. They believe in stepping outside the box, trying new things, and sharing what they’ve learned in order to help me and us do the same.   

If you walked out of SUNYCUAD, or recently got the itch to shake things up a bit and make some real changes in what you do and how you approach it, I’m right there with you. So let’s tear down the silos, look at each other as friends and colleagues rather than competitors, and do it. Together.