Angi Roberts, Information Services Manager at the University of Guelph, is one of the 15 higher ed professionals who presented at the 2nd Higher Ed Social Media Conference (now available on-demand).
Winning a CCAE award for Best Use of Social Media three years ago, set in motion her – and consequently, her office’s – headfirst dive into using social media marketing for higher ed. Angi is also a graduate of Higher Ed Experts’ professional certificate course on social media marketing for higher ed.
In this 3-question interview, Angi tells us about her most successful initiative with social media, her biggest challenge and shares some advice on how to cope with the 24/7 world of social media in higher education. Oh – and she also granted my request for a selfie!
1) What is the most successful social media initiative you’ve run over the past year?
#WherewillGryphshowupnext: we hand delivered offers to newly admitted students with our university mascot, a Gryphon. This campaign was covered across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We increased the number of followers, and our engagement.
2) What is the biggest challenge you face in your social media work? How do you cope with it?
I can’t decide if the biggest challenge is the number of hours required to make social media communication and marketing successful, or trying to get colleagues to buy in and understand its value.
3) Social media work never stops. How do you maintain balance in your life & work given this constraint? Any tips, techniques or tools?
Using an iPhone makes it easier because I can check content, updates, respond to questions/tweets/posts all while I’m on the go.
I hired 7 students: Social Media Ambassadors. They each have a day of the week assigned to them, and they are each responsible for posts on those days. We follow a theme (that was developed in advanced) each week, themes are usually relevant to what is going on in a student’s life and/or on campus.
