10 Digital Tools to Make Your Life Easier as a Social Media Manager

Here's a list of great digital and social tools to make your life easier as a social media manager!

• Hootsuite - analytics/monitoring platform 
• Enhance - App from Hootsuite for editing photos with watermark
• Canva - graphic design templates 
• Google Docs - Great for social calendars 
• Storify - Storytelling
• Boomerang - Video app 
• Layout - Photo Collage app 
• Repost - Great for reposting/sharing Instagram photos 
• Snapseed - Photo editing
• Facebook Pages - App for Facebook Page administrators/editors

Instagram Direct or Snapchat?

Instagram recently introduce Instagram Direct, their new feature to send disappearing photos and videos to groups or friends within the app. As you may recall, this feature is very similar to the original premise of Snapchat. Snapchat began as an app to send disappearing photos and videos to friends, before later incorporating the concept of Stories. Instagram has introduced these components in reverse order, continuing their insistence to look strikingly similar to Snapchat.

From my early experiments with Instagram Direct, you cannot choose the length of the photo you set as your Story or send to a friend. In Snapchat, you're able to choose it's length between 1 and 10 seconds. This is frustrating if you're sending a photo to a friend that requires them to look a bit longer. Several friends responded that they didn't have enough time to see an Instagram Direct photo I sent them.

While the lack of time length control is frustrating, the ability to send to groups is convenient within Instagram. You can develop groups of people to send photos or videos to, which are saved and only require one click to later send to that same group. You can also send a snap to multiple people in Snapchat, but those recipients have to be selected individually each time.

The ability to send content directly to individuals or groups may not directly influence your social media strategy at a higher education institution, but it's definitely something to consider as you analyze how your audience uses both apps. Where do you want them to view your university's content (most likely in the Stories feature of both apps)?

Social Analytics Platform Review

When I was shopping and pricing various analytic platforms a year ago, many of the top brands such as Brand Watch and Hootsuite quoted me with enterprise accounts for at least $12,000/year. I don't know about you, but our university doesn't have that kind of money to spend on one platform for only a year! We ended up going with Sprout Social last year, which ended up being about $89/month. It had some positive features to it, but we still couldn't do some things as effectively as we wanted, for example, monitoring was not easy in Sprout Social.  This year, the University of Nebraska system has a system-wide Hootsuite Enterprise account, meaning each individual using the account is a single seat as part of the the overall system's account.

The streams in Hootsuite are very useful to monitor many accounts and search queries at once. This allows you to monitor other campus accounts, in attention to mentions, and listen to social posts from certain locations, and hashtags. You can like, retweet, or respond to any of these posts directly in Hootsuite. The streams may be my favorite part of Hootsuite! You're also able to publish and schedule content here as well.

The campaigns have been great as well, as it enables us to create a number of different social features such as curated content streams or contests. These can be displayed or a variety of platforms, from embedded on a website as we have here: unmc.edu/iamunmc, to a big screen at a graduation ceremony.

The analytics and insights offered from Hootsuite are very in-depth as well, giving us a great look at our metrics across a variety of platforms. You can download customized reports as well detailing whatever data you wish. I would definitely recommend the platform to any institution, especially if you can obtain it for your who system and have several users split the cost.

Using Storify for Storytelling

Using Storify for Storytelling is a great way to show a series of social media posts... perfect for displaying Instagram Takeovers, which were mentioned in one of my posts last week! Here is a Storify covering an Instagram Takeover I did on the Higher Ed Experts account, showing a day in my life at UNMC, leading up to the Higher Ed Social Media Conference next week. How could you use Storify for storytelling at your institution?

Instagram Student Takeovers

Instagram student takeovers are a great way to showcase a day in the life of a student at your university. I started Instagram Takeovers at UNMC on a weekly basis about a month ago, and they've been going very well so far. The mission is to show the world what a day in the life of a UNMC student looks like.

But how do you implement this tactic without giving up control of your school's social account? Instead of establishing temporary passwords for each student, the students send me all of their content (4-6 photos and captions) and I post it to our Instagram account. This allows me to be the filter for all the takeover content, to ensure that all the posts are appropriate. Check out the further guidelines and rules I have in place below. I send these out to each student participating in the takeover each week.

Guidelines:

• Show UNMC love! Show off your school pride.
• What should the captions say? Write the captions in first person, as if you are actually taking over the account. 
• Use the UNMC social team as a resource. 
• Photo rights: We want to show the world what you’re doing, so your photo may be shared by others on other platforms. 
• Tag other accounts.
• Hashtags to be used: #IamUNMC, #TakeoverTuesdayUNMC
• Have fun! 

 Rules:

1. Send appropriate content only. No alcohol or drug use (Not in any capacity). If you send us a potentially inappropriate photo/video, we will contact you about replacing the photo. Your photos can be of whatever you want that depict your life at UNMC, but keep the photos and captions positive and appropriate. No alcohol or drug use (Not in any capacity). If you send us a potentially inappropriate photo, we will contact you about replacing the photo. 
2. Get verbal permission. If you’re taking pictures of your friends, classmates, professor, etc. GET PERMISSION from them to post this on UNMC’s public Instagram account. Every time. Even if you don’t think it’s necessary. (Unless they are unrecognizable in the photos, i.e. back of their heads, far in the distance, etc.)
3. Introduction and Conclusion. Don’t forget to introduce yourself in the first photo. Also wrap up your final photo/video in a way that is a clear indication that your Takeover is finished (through the caption). 
4. Order of photos. Please note what order you would like the photos to appear. It works best if it corresponds to how your day happens chronologically, starting in the morning. I can post the photos anytime throughout the day, whatever makes the most sense with your Takeover depending on your photos. (Breakfast would be during breakfast, for example) We typically get more engagement in the late afternoon or evening though. 

The best times to post on social media for higher education institutions

What are the best times to post on social media throughout the week at a university or a college? Based on my experience at UNMC, here is what I've found!

Essential Social Media Skills

Unfortunately, social media is often a small part of many professionals' jobs in higher education, as they may be expected to manage college or department accounts without much experience.

I've learned that patience is an important skill needed to thrive as a social media professional in higher education if advising campus stakeholders is part of your position. As the only professional working specifically in social media at UNMC, educating others on campus about social best practices is part of my job. This responsibility can call for a significant amount of patience, as others' prior experience with social media can greatly vary. Many individual may not use social media in their personal lives, so the idea of social content development and management does not come as naturally as it does for others who use it frequently. It's crucial that these smaller social accounts still adhere to your brand's social guidelines in order to project a consistent image for your university, so your patience and guidance as their mentor is very important.

Time management is also a crucial professional skill needed to thrive in this industry. It's easy to be pulled in several different directions at once when working in social media at a higher education institution, especially if you are on a small team. Many tasks in social media are brief compared to long-form projects like video editing. It is so important to have a strategy in place as to how you will tackle these tasks effectively and efficiently, as they are all key to your university's social media plan, but easy to lose track of.