Michelle Tarby, Director of Interactive Content Strategy at Le Moyne College, is one of the 12 presenters of the 4th Higher Ed Social Media Conference.
In this 3-question interview, Michelle tells us a success story, shares the most difficult parts of the job and discusses the required skills to thrive as a higher ed social media pro.
1) What’s your best social media success story?
The best social media success story we’ve had at Le Moyne in the past year is beyond a doubt our 24-hour Giving Day Challenge — but you’ll have to tune into the conference to hear more about that one 😉
One strategic effort I’ve been especially proud of is the creation of an informal team of alumni and admissions staff to get people working together to achieve our overall campus engagement goals.
For the first time, as we work together, everyone is seeing how our stories and efforts can complement each other. Until about a year ago, we were split into three silo-ed channels, each sharing a different spin on the same message with some significant audience overlap.
It takes persistence and careful management to keep people working together, but the rewards are so worth it. We’re currently building a campaign to tell young alumni success stories that address the interests of target enrollment recruiting groups. Without coordination, this would have never been possible.
2) What are the 2 most difficult parts of your social media job and how do you deal with them?
Our content needs to be developed so it resonates with our audience, encourages conversation and above all else presents a real picture of Le Moyne. I deal with this by using metrics – sitting down with people and showing the difference in post engagement and having the sometimes uncomfortable conversation that shows when these posts cause us to lose fans and followers, hurting our community.
Another challenge I think we see especially in higher education is how to best deal with the people who want to do their own thing creating smaller channels without looking at the overall big picture.
Despite all of our best efforts, sometimes this just isn’t something we can solve. I have had success in showing the difference in reach between an account that has 10’s of thousands of fans as opposed to an account that has under 50 fans. Another technique that’s helped is to ask people to explain what their overall goal for the channel is and what their plan is to keep good engagement going.
3) What are the 2 most important skills to thrive as a social media pro in higher ed?
I think the 2 most important professional skills needed to thrive as a social media professional in higher education today are listening and planning.
You need to be able to listen to both the stories your campus is telling and, probably more importantly, listening to what’s being said about your institution. Without knowing what’s being shared about you, you will not be able to adapt to embrace new things and bring them into your overall strategy. You also will never have a handle on what in your current social media plan isn’t working and needs to be modified.
You also have to be able to be an effective planner. Careful and strategic planning lets you organize posts to be engaging across all your channels, build excitement around campus events, balance posts to reflect an authentic portrait of your campus and develop serial content your audience will come to rely on.
Follow Michelle Tarby for a day at work on Instagram!
You’re going to love Higher Ed Experts’ #HESM Instagram Takeovers where your higher ed social media colleagues share a day in their life.
Check out Michelle Tarby’s 1-day takeover of Higher Ed Experts’ brand new Instagram account.
A conference for Higher Ed Social Media pros & teams?
The HESM conference has become a must-attend event for social media teams in higher education looking for new ideas and best practices.
Read below what a few of your higher ed colleagues who attended the past editions of the Higher Ed Social Media Conference say about the event.