Social Media Challenge: Community Management

I'm going to cover one of the challenges of working in social media for this post. Community management can be a challenging part of my job as the Social Media Specialist at UNMC. We are a professional health sciences academic institution, focused on educating future health professionals. Our hospital partner, Nebraska Medicine, resides on our main campus, offering amazing clinical opportunities for our students and faculty. There is a misconception in the Nebraska community though, that UNMC is the hospital, when it is technically the university. In normal conversation, calling the hospital "UNMC" is not a big deal. But on social media, we often get positive and negative comments and reviews on UNMC about the hospital's care from Nebraska Medicine's patients. It can get confusing when there is so much overlap between UNMC and Nebraska Medicine, but Nebraska Medicine has their own social media presence and team. So community management can be a challenge as I strive to make it clear who UNMC is through our social platforms. Fortunately, I am able to deflect many comments from patients to Nebraska Medicine's team, but I always emphasize the difference between both organizations to these misguided individuals.

Furthermore, we also receive regular inquiries about our academic programs through UNMC's social media accounts. This can be stressful because as social media community managers, it's easy to assume that our response should be immediate. But I often don't know the answer to these questions from prospective students, and in order to accurately respond, I must seek assistance from others on campus. It's definitely acceptable to tell those who inquire for more information about your university that you are gathering details and will respond soon. This lets the individual know that your school isn't ignoring the inquiry, but cares to take the time to collect the right information before responding.