Meet #hesm pros to follow: Tyler Thomas (@TylerAThomas) from @UNLincoln on social media success, challenges & tips

Tyler Thomas, Social Media Specialist at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, is one of the 15 higher ed professionals who presented at the 2nd Higher Ed Social Media Conference (now available on-demand).

Tyler is in charge of building social media communities for his school.

In this 3-question interview, Tyler tells us about his most successful initiative with social media, his biggest challenge and shares some advice on how to cope with the 24/7 world of social media in higher education. Oh – and he also granted my request for a selfie!

1) What is the most successful social media initiative you’ve run over the past year?

The most successful social media initiative launched this year was establishing a campus wide social media user group. This group connects social media users at all levels across campus to allow a way to share ideas, increase collaboration and stay informed on the latest trends and changes in social media.

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

My biggest challenge currently is educating groups across campus about the best practices and then actually implementing said practices.

Many individuals who manage social accounts have many additional responsibilities and aren’t always aware of the best practices for each and every platform.

To cope with this issue, we’ve launched a weekly email that discusses the latest social media updates, trends and social happenings across campus. We are also planning on having our first social media specific workshop for on campus social practitioners.

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

To be honest, life and work balance isn’t the easiest with my job. Social is 24/7 and working in Higher Ed is tough as most events or campus happenings happen outside the normal 8-5, so to maintain balance I do a few things:

• Plan ahead; having a good content calendar allows me to see what events or campus happenings are coming up and figure out which ones I can be at and which one an intern goes to. Having this plan also allows me to schedule and create content ahead of time, so that I can dedicate more time to real time interaction and content curation.
• Hire good help; I have an intern that is a lifesaver and helps out with a lot of content planning, ideation and execution. She is also a student and is a perfect person to bounce new ideas off of because she is either the target audience or has friends that are.
• Curate well; you don’t have to be at every event or happening. It’s fun to see what is happening on campus from other people’s perspective and share their content. It’s mutually beneficial, you get great content to share and you have a chance to engage with an audience member and make them feel special. The biggest thing about curation is promoting the right hashtags and listening to the right keywords, without this, it is hard to tap into the community and curate successfully.
• Create a schedule; I make sure that content is covered through out the day and ensure that during key times we are posting and engaging across platforms. I also check in during peak times of the evening and make sure it doesn’t interfere with family happenings.
• Build relationships; being relatively new to the role, my biggest tip is to find key people around campus that are willing to help you out when you need it. Building these partnerships allows me to increase my reach across campus but also helps by having other people assist with the work and not having to do it all myself.
• Have a Crisis Plan; we work with our Police department and other campus affiliates to make sure we have a plan if there is a small issue or large emergency. Having this plan in place allows for social communications to be streamlined and creates team balance.