Karine Joly 3 Comments

tiffany broadbent bekerTiffany Broadbent Beker, Web Developer & Social Media Coordinator at College of William & Mary, is one of the 15 higher ed professionals who presented at the 2nd Higher Ed Social Media Conference (now available on-demand).

Tiffany is in charge of social media at her school.

In this 3-question interview, Tiffany 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?

We took a page out of Meg Bernier’s playbook at St Lawrence University and created a student-run Instagram account called “Life@W&M.” Each week a new student hosts the account and they’re encouraged to share anything and everything about life at W&M that they think folks would be interested in.

In just 10 weeks the account has over 450 followers and each photo gets an average of 30 likes, with no promotion from our official channels. We far exceeded the goals we had set at the beginning of the semester. This project has been a great way to see those hidden aspects of student life that, as a staff member, I’d never be able to share with the W&M community.

2) What is the biggest challenge you face in your social media work? How do you cope with it?

The biggest challenge is the temptation to be everywhere at once.

YikYak, Ello, Snapchat, Tumblr, LinkedIn…there are new social media outlets popping up all the time and the struggle is between the “Fear of Missing Out” and finding enough time to devote to each account to generate quality content and interacting with the audience there.

In the end, I realize that effectively engaging with the fans and followers I have on our existing accounts, rather than spinning off onto the dozens of one-off communities is the best use of my time. Don’t get me wrong, I will still keep an eye on all those other networks and what they’re saying about the institution but until we add a few more hours into the day, the focus is going to be on the channels where we already are.

3) Social media work never stops. How do you maintain balance in your life & work given this constraint? Any tips, techniques or tools?

I definitely struggle with the “always on” aspect of my job.

I love what I do and most of the time I am happy to jump online in the evening to put up a social media post or check work email on the weekends, but there are times where “turning off” can be really useful. Getting that reset away from the digital everything helps give me perspective on what I’m working on in the social sphere. For me that reset happens in the evenings when I go to the gym or play volleyball, or when I’m driving, I’m forced to focus on something else and that gives me perspective on what occupies the rest of my day.

I came across a new tool (courtesy of Ron Bronson) called Nuzzel that aggregates the links shared in your Twitter and Facebook feeds and shows you what articles are most popular, this has saved me a lot of time and helps with that “fear of missing out.”

Higher Ed Social Media Conference

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