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.

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.

#SnapchatStorytelling

I loved attending a session presented by Yusuf Omar on the effective use of Snapchat at the Mobile Me & You Conference this weekend. 

The conference took place at the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications in Chicago, IL. The conference focuses on mobile-first content in journalism and communications.

Omar is building the world largest’s mobile journalism team at the Hindustan Times, where he empowers over 750 mobile journalists to further the Hindustan Times’ success on small screens.

“Snapchat is becoming the biggest news outlet in the world, and is the fastest social app with more video views than Facebook,” Omar stated.

The future of content will be aggregating thousands of cameras, Omar explained, but Snapchat is already doing it. He also clarified that citizens are the reporters, and Snapchat is curating the content, making them the journalists.

Defining your purpose is crucial, according to Omar. The content on Snapchat must be exclusive and full of personality, giving your audience something that is not offered on other platforms.

He explained that Hindustan Times is utilizing Snapchat to hide the identity of individuals for sensitive stories with topics such as rape and sexual abuse. Victims use the filters from Snapchat to mostly disguise themselves while still giving themselves personality through their eyes and the filters.

He predicts that Snapchat is moving toward using their Discovery platform more, which is a professional segment of the app that delivers polished content from publishers on a daily basis. Making Discovery more open to consumers would allow for new types of content through citizen reporting.

Omar also sees Snapchat excelling at hyper local news, where they can build a story around snaps for a local event. Snapchat is already doing this in some respects, but the opportunity to grow in the area is significant. Snapchat is very secretive about their next moves as a app though, keeping the public mostly in the dark about what’s coming up.

Mobile Conference Recap!

I had the pleasure of attending the Mobile Me & You 2 Conference in Chicago, IL this weekend, learning about the latest innovations in mobile media. Several graduate students from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln were able to attend, as UNL was a sponsor of the conference. 

Andy Boyle, of NBC Digital, and Kurt Gessler, Deputy Editor of Digital News at Chicago Tribune, presented at the conference at the Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications in Chicago, IL on October 29, 2016. 

Boyle and Gessler presented about how to evaluate your new mobile app or product. “You need to have a plan. What is success? What is failure? How do you define success? Is it traffic? Impact? Money? Ads served? Downloads? Subscriptions?” asked Boyle. He explained that you generally need to know your metric for evaluation first before proceeding. Boyle stated that the ultimate goal for most project-level work, though, has to be impact.  

“Don’t assume you know who the audience is or what type of mobile device they are using,” emphasized Boyle. He gave an example of this when the Chicago Tribune thought they knew their audience didn’t use tablets, only to find out 50% of the app’s use was on tablets.  

Boyle and Gessler also offered more advice to the audience about mobile apps, such as the importance of giving fewer decision options to your audience, and updating your applications and website because the digital space changes so quickly.

They also talked about how crucial it is to offer your craziest ideas first, they don’t need to be grounded in reality. Pitch the ideas and other team members will think how they can build on it. Don’t be afraid to fail due to the risk that management could say “no” to an idea. To avoid rejection, getting buy-in from executives early on can help garner that support in advance.

Boyle closed the presentation with a quote from Bob Woodward on the timely topic of working with management to move ideas forward: “All good work is done in deviance of management.”