Social Media
Social media platforms are a valuable tool to organically reach new potential consumers and build online communities. It takes a little effort and the right mindset to stay on top of frequently evolving trends, but there are endless possibilities to creatively leveraging these low-cost platforms. And, of course, social media is really fun, which you can see in my work below.
The Work
Welcome Back, Students
As the end of the summer approached, we searched for ways to welcome students back to campus on social media. We know from previous social media experience that "House of Cards" is very popular among our student body. It makes sense: GW is the most politically active student body in the nation. Our welcome back video emulates the opening "HoC" sequence, showcasing campus and surrounding neighborhoods and monuments, with a wink to the intense Frank Underwood character at the end. The video has been viewed more than 300,000 times on Facebook, with an organic reach of nearly 1 million people.
360° Video Tour of GW's Newest Residence Hall
It's a major priority of GW's social media team to take advantage of and utilize emerging technologies in our work. Knowing that students would soon be receiving their living assignments and that many would get the opportunity to be the first residents of the newly built District Hall, we decided to give them a sneak peak using our new Ricoh Theta 360° camera.
We threw on our hardhats, mic'd up our tour guide and climbed to the top of one of the tallest buildings in DC's Foggy Bottom neighborhood, stopping along the way to showcase some of the finished interiors. After our tour, I edited together the audio and video using Adobe Audition and Premiere, and we put the video — our first foray into 360° immersive visuals — out on Facebook that afternoon. The students (and alumni and parents) loved it.
Live Video
Both Facebook and Twitter offer dedicated live video services, which we try to capitalize on whenever possible. We use live video to highlight upcoming events, broadcast from venues and to interview experts about current news items. GW is one of the most politically active campuses in the nation, so we couldn't pass up the chance to livestream White House spokesman Sean Spicer's interview with CNN journalist and GW Professor Frank Sesno. Frank asked some tough questions, and much of the interview made national news. Our Facebook livestream was viewed by 70,000 people and shared nearly 600 times.
The announcement of a new university president is a big deal, and we had to figure out how to get the word out to as many people as possible. Rather than simply sending an HTML email to faculty, staff, students and alumni, we thought it was a great idea to introduce GW's new president through a Facebook Live video. This allowed our audience to sit in on his introductory press conference and actually "meet" the university's new leader.
Leveraging User-Generated Content
We don't spend an inordinate amount of time wracking our brains for ways to capture the current social media zeitgeist. Frequently — but not always — jumping into the social media fray by using buzzwords and memes can come off as disingenuous bandwagoning. A better solution for capturing audience attention can frequently be found in sharing that audience's content.
We do this in all sorts of ways at GW, from repurposing student photos and stories to create multimedia projects and campaigns, to simply reposting user content so that it reaches a larger audience. Check out the university's Instagram feed, which frequently showcases user content.
GW's most popular Instagram post of all time is a photo taken by one of our students.
Audience Takeovers
We think of this as a logical extension of user-generated content: allowing our audience to actually take control of the social media accounts they enjoy every day. At GW, we often try to coordinate these takeovers around specific university events or initiatives, but often it's the impromptu takeover that performs the best with our community. Our students are doing incredible things in their daily lives, and often it's easiest and most effective to just let them tell their own stories.
Snapchat
Snapchat takeovers can be a little tricky: We're giving students unfettered access to one of our accounts. We vet each student first, give them a rundown of what we expect, and then we let them do their thing. And our students love to see each other on our Snapchat account. These takeovers have helped to increase our number of followers by about 1000% in just a year.
When one of our students, Nana, received the prestigious White House Correspondents Association Scholarship, and a chance to attend the annual WHCA Dinner, we invited her to take over our Snapchat account for the evening. The results were incredible. She hobnobbed with famous actors, athletes, musicians and politicians and, ultimately, met President Obama. It allowed our followers to experience something very few people have the opportunity to see, and our students still talk about how much they loved Nana's takeover.
GW's number of Instagram followers has exploded during the past year: We've made it a major focus of our social strategy, as it's a great way to showcase our campus and surrounding neighborhoods to prospective students. It's also a great way to showcase the incredible talent of our student photographers. We instituted student takeovers after finding more than a handful of students who weren't only adroit photographers but also had interesting stories to tell. We've used these takeovers to highlight non-traditional student life, diversity-oriented groups, art-school student life and more.