Meet #hesm pros to follow: Lori Packer (@LoriPA) from @UofR on social media success, challenges & tips

Lori Packer, Web Editor at The University of Rochester, is one of the 15 higher ed professionals who presented at the 2nd Higher Ed Social Media Conference (now available on-demand).

In this 3-question interview, Lori 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 launched a student-run Instagram account — following the model of Meg Bernier’s @HereWeGoSaints account at Saint Lawrence at the start of this academic year. — It’s only in its 7th week, followers are still small (380 right now) but we’ve seen a lot of student interest in participating in running it. We also started a regular “Geek Joke of the Week” post on Facebook that has proved to me that text posts are not dead. Great organic reach and engagement on these.

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

Getting a handle on how big the whole institution’s social media presence actually is, and helping offices, departments, schools, and units with their social media goals (and wishing that more departments, schools, and offices were using social media to provide a real service, not just as a communications platform to blast out their one news and events promotions).

And I don’t really cope with it. I do a lot of sighing 🙂

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

Delegate, delegate, delegate.

I brought on a new web writer this year, so now with my little team of three, we take turns for who is “on call” to monitor the big accounts.

Every week, one of us gets a week off, so you’re never “on” more than two weeks in a row. I think if you give people some training and guidance so they know what the expectations are, then give them some freedom to innovate and be proactive, you don’t have to *own* everything yourself.