Developing a Student Affairs Social Media Strategy

Originally posted on 2/12/2015 here.

Yesterday I had an opportunity to sit in on a webinar through studentaffairs.com and hosted by Josie Ahlquist and Jason Meriwether. As someone who's research interests revolve around social media and technology's impact on college students' experiences, I was interested in hearing more about Josie and Jason's perspective on developing a social media strategy. 

I wanted to share a few of my take-aways from the webinar, but if you're interested in what the conversation looking during the event, take a look at the #SASoMe hashtag on twitter.

Identify platforms which are manageable and relevant

As you are thinking about implementing social media interventions in your office or on your campus, first you must determine your goal for using social media tools. Is it to engage students in conversation? Share information about events? Tell your departments story? Whatever it is, you should avoid the idea of using every social media platform under the sun. Perhaps your goal is more suited for Facebook and Twitter as opposed to Instagram, Vine, Twitter, Pinterest, AND Facebook. Narrow down your scope so you and your team can actually manage the content and conversation and ensure what you're sharing is relevant.

Learn how to analyze data from social media interventions to tell your story

Telling the story of your department or campus is more than just sharing out photos and #TBTs of your campus 50+ years ago. Tie in your goals along with your identified platforms with some social media analytics to explain your impact. This idea of impact is huge when informing others of the importance of social media for your office. Some great examples of these kinds of tools would beHashtracking or Facebook Insights. This data will help prove your impact and inform your practice.

Abandon fear

For some reason there is a hesitation for administrators to adopt a practice of utilizing social media to engage with students. Danah Boyd and Rey Junco talk about this concept of fear and adult vs. youth perspective in their books Its Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens and Engaging Students through Social Media (respectively). In order to better educate our students on appropriate social media behavior, departments and administrators need to model what that behavior looks like. Take, for example, the faculty at Colgate University who flooded Yik-Yak with positive comments and support rather than negative and belittling remarks. We should not be afraid to interact with our students on social media. In fact, many of our students use these platforms as sources for coping with emotional challenges and we should build into our social media strategy a plan for acting on those types of posts when they are seen.

Be a champion, find a network, and collaborate

As we begin designing and implementing social media strategies, many of us will need to champion the cause for utilizing these tools in student interventions. You don't have to go it alone, however. Find others on campus who you can collaborate with to make the most impact social media intervention possible. The more we build bridges across departments, institutions, and functional areas, the more successful we can be at supporting our students.

Make sure to follow Josie and Jason on Twitter and check out their websites for more information (josieahlquist.com / jasonlmeriwether.com).