Social Media Voices: 11 great social media moments from #highered professionals

Social media is all about the people, especially in higher education where our ultimate mission is to engage our great community around learning and growth.

That’s why I’m so excited by the upcoming Higher Ed Social Media Conference (Dec 4, 2013). I feel so lucky to have this fantastic opportunity to work with 12 social media professionals who have already accomplished a great deal for their respective institutions.

Not only are they all really knowledgeable, but they are all very passionnate by social media.

So, when I asked them to share one of their greatest social media moments, I got great examples of why social media is such a great fit for higher education.

Jaime Hunt, Director of Web Strategy and Interactive Media at Radford University

In April 2013, we “hacked” Radford University’s homepage and posted some of the popular “memes” themed for RU.

Throughout the day, we monitored social media to see the reaction. It was overwhelming! Students, parents, alumni, faculty and staff engaged with us on a variety of platforms to tell us how much they loved the show of a sense of humor.

Ma’ayan Plaut, Manager of Social Strategy and Projects at Oberlin College

My favorite social media moments involve interacting with our students, especially the newest members of our campus community. As one of the representatives on our incoming class groups, I get to absorb all their enthusiasm as it builds during the summer, and once that excitement collides with arriving on campus, it’s overwhelming in the best possible way.

I’ve taken that opportunity to drift around campus and introduce myself as “Ma’ayan, the girl from the internet!” as a warm welcome to our community. (And of course, we loop our students into our fun social projects right from the get-go, too. That’s always fun!)

Jackie Vetrano, Web and Social Media Coordinator at Genesee Community College

I was super excited to tweet about the upcoming campus renovations that were being talked about, and so I attached a link to some 3D renderings of the finished product.

Where did the link redirect to?

My online shopping cart on RentTheRunway.com… whoops! That’s what you get for shopping at work.

Tiffany Broadbent Beker, Social Media Coordinator at College of William & Mary

Getting unexpected interaction is the best part of the job, seeing the things that really resonate with your fans, and for W&M (and I expect many colleges and universities) it’s nostalgia. One example at W&M is a post from July mentioning that housing assignments had gone out to new students and asked fans where they lived and if they had any advice for incoming students.

We posted this along with a photo of one of the more eclectic/historic freshman dorms and had an amazing response, with nearly 300 comments on the post and 2,000 photo views and it was fantastic.

Andrew Smyk, Program Coordinator at Sheridan College

Some of the great social media moments are when incoming students share their excitement about joining the program. Tweeting students often capture the humor of the moment during labs or lectures that can be used to create future interactions with incoming students. Sample tweets:

Incoming students tweet: “T Minus 12 hours to the start of the school year! #IMM” can’t wait!”

or

an Alumni tweet: “I would be lying if I said I don’t miss @SheridanIMM lab. Best of luck to this year’s class; y’all are in for a real treat, for real #IMM”

Joshua Dodson, Web & SEO Analyst at EKU

From a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, one of my greatest social media moments was tweeting an infographic I just posted and seeing it indexed in Google within 20 minutes. There is an interesting relationship between search engines and social media. While much of that relationship may not be “official,” it is still clearly there. In addition to that, I always find it exciting when a post (on Facebook, for instance), gets a lot more engagement than I expected. This helps guide our next steps.

Erika Fields, Web Content Communications Director at Wellesley College

This summer we ran a social media campaign highlighting the accomplishments of our students and alumnae from the past year. We used #womenwhowill on both Facebook and Twitter along with the awards, internships, or other achievements our audience was being recognized for.

It was a HUGE success! We got high engagement all summer which typically is our quietest time of the year. Additionally, we were able to build our followers on both social media outlets, which was important given that we had only launched these outlets the summer before.

Meg Bernier, Assistant Director Social Media at St Lawrence University

My very first day running the accounts was Move-In Day for the Class of 2016 in August 2012. I wasn’t sure what to expect and didn’t have much of a plan, but after a post on Facebook and a few on Twitter, I realized bringing people who couldn’t be on campus into the event through social media was something we had never really done and our audience loved it and yearned for it. This was the moment where I finally believed I could do this and make a real difference in our university’s efforts to engage students, parents and alumni. I hope every social media manager has a powerful moment like that – I rode that high for a while and on days when I’m a little down, I think back to it and remember why it is I do what I do and how important it is to be passionate about what I’m doing – when you’re not passionate about social media, it shows.

Alaina Wiens, Web Content Strategist at University of Michigan-Flint

In 2012, the University of Michigan-Flint held its first 24-hour photo project, where all members of the campus community were asked to post photos of their “day in the life at UM-Flint” to Twitter, Instagram, or Flickr.

It was the first large-scale social media project we’d attempted, and we weren’t sure what kind of participation we’d get.

It was so exciting to see those photos come in throughout the day! Almost 1,500 in total from around 250 people.

Lisa Sherrodd, Website Strategist at University of Wyoming

We just launched our Facebook page less than a month ago. We had over 5000 likes in 24 hours!

It was terrific to just refresh the page and watch the likes climb. We were at 10K likes after less than 3 weeks.
Our “talking about this” stats were more than DOUBLE our likes which never happens.

This was hands down the most exciting social media moments I have ever experienced.

Bryan Fendley, Director of Academic Computing at the University of Arkansas at Monticello

For me, the greatest social media moment is when we film interviews of students and their families after graduation.

It’s an emotional time, and the excitement of the day is contagious. Being allowed into people’s lives during this time is a privilege. Combine this with the rush of posting the videos to YouTube as quickly as possible, it doesn’t feel like marketing. It feels like you are a superhero that helps people tell their story to the world.

What about YOU? What’s your best social media moment?

I would love to compile a few more higher ed social media moments on this page. Please, don’t be shy and share yours by posting a comment below!

And, if you want to learn more from these great higher ed social media professionals, make sure you sign up your team for the HESM13 conference (Dec 4, 2013).