Holly Sherburne, Director of Digital and Social Media at Bowdoin College, is one of the 12 presenters of the 5th Higher Ed Social Media Conference.
In this 4-question interview, Holly tells us about managing social media demands, a learning outcome, the role of video in social media strategy and chimes in on Snapchat.
1) How do you manage the demands on your time and focus inherent to social?
At Bowdoin, I’m fortunate to have a person whose role is primarily dedicated to social media, so I’m not as deeply involved in the day-to-day as I used to be. However, we both use tools – such as Hootsuite or Tweetdeck for Twitter – that make it easy to review what’s happening on the various platforms. I also use a social listening tool to monitor sentiment and look for trends. I have the software configured to alert me if there’s a significant change in sentiment or if key terms or important people (such as our president) are mentioned on social media or in various feeds and networks. In a very practical way, I also turn off email and schedule meeting-free blocks on my calendar.
2) What is the most useful thing for your social media work you’ve learned over the past 12 months?
I learned how to simplify social media campaign tagging with Google Tag Manager (GTM) – and then I wrote an article about it (with a video tutorial), so you can learn how, too! Creating campaign URLs for social media posts can become cumbersome and is prone to error. With a little work up front, you can configure GTM to automatically (and invisibly) add a fragment such as #fb to the end of URLs posted to Facebook, #tw for links on Twitter, and so on, and append this fragment to the campaign parameters you choose.
3) What role does video play in the social media strategy of your school?
Video is an important part of our strategy and we capitalize on it whenever we can.
We’ve been working with the college’s news team to create shorter videos for social media, or in some cases, brief “promo” videos to drive traffic to the longer ones. We usually prefer to upload videos onto the social network and we’ve been taking advantage of the captioning offered by Facebook.
Facebook Live has been successful for us, too. Our library uses Facebook Live to show the monthly Audubon’s “Birds of America” page-turning.
One of our most popular videos was created by our Development Office. Filmed on an iPhone, they used our polar bear mascot, our beloved head of security (known for his voice), and a touch of humor to encourage year-end gifts. It showed that creating a video doesn’t have to be very complicated, or be highly polished, to have an impact.
4) Snapchat is still somehow controversial in higher ed. Do you think schools should invest time and resources on this platform?
Snapchat can be a useful platform for higher ed, and many great examples exist. Whether or not you decide to use it will depend on your goals and audience, and whether you have the time and resources available to execute on a solid strategy.
We actively used Snapchat last year, using students primarily, in order to keep a student-centered focus and voice. The lack of analytics on the platform made measuring success difficult, and with the introduction of Instagram Stories, we eventually made a decision to focus our time and efforts there. We continue to monitor the platforms and what makes the most sense. With social media, it’s important to always keep trying new things and reevaluating what’s out there.
A day in the life of a higher ed social media pro: Holly Sherburne
Are you a fan of social media takeovers by students or alums?
Holly Sherburne took over Higher Ed Experts’ Instagram account for a day on October 30, 2017 as part of the Higher Ed Social Media Conference Speakers Takeovers where your higher ed social media colleagues share a day in their life.
A conference focusing on higher ed social media?
The Higher Ed Social Media Conference is a must-attend event for higher ed social media professionals and teams 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 experience.