University of Michigan - College of Literature, Science, and the Arts: Development, Marketing, and Communications (long name, I know)
I served as an account manager for the College's social media accounts, assisting in dissemination of university news, research, and achievements. My responsibilities included creative analytics and helping with other communications related projects.
I partnered with one other intern to host Facebook Lives about student life, worked with LSA reps in our Admissions office for Twitter Q&As, and helped organize a finals newsletter to support students at the end of semesters.
Running the social accounts for a college is a really cool gig when you get to cover awesome events.
Along with my fellow social media intern, I covered live events on Instagram stories, live tweets, and Facebook Live. Our goal was to bring niche or invite-only events to our LSA students and alumni community.
One of the coolest events we covered was the Fab 5 @ 25, a panel discussion with three of the five members of the University’s famous “Fab 5” basketball team. We organized a pre-event social strategy that attracted a notable crowd and gave day-of followers backstage access to the event pre-, during-, and post-event.
Fundraising is a huge part of higher education social media work. #GivingBlueDay was Michigan’s most successful annual fundraising effort.
Every year, the University tags onto the Giving Tuesday holiday, repurposing the name to #GivingBlueDay to generate funds for student scholarships, research grants, and other public-serving purposes.
Being the biggest college within the University, LSA had a strong presence in the day’s social marketing strategy. I helped create pre-event content to build excitement and executed day-of strategies to engage our alumni community. In total, our work helped raise over $170,000 for the College’s students and programming in the 24-hour period. I needed a lot of coffee to get through the day, but it was definitely worth it in the end.
The faculty and staff of the University of Michigan are some of the smartest people in the world. Condensing down that knowledge into a tweet was tough, but incredibly rewarding.
LSA faculty and staff put out a ton of amazing work every school year (and over the summer). Sharing those achievements with our students, alumni, and University community was one of the core functions of my job and comprised a large portion of our content.
Balancing educational seriousness and social media trends was a challenge, but we found ways to balance the two, given credence to our esteemed faculty and staff while embracing a light tone/on-brand visuals where appropriate.
Timeline:
Social Media Intern: May 2016 – May 2017