Higher Ed Social Media Playbook

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• Higher Ed Social Media Playbook

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Higher Ed Social Media Playbook:

Shoutout to Mizzou's social media director Shawn Davis for sharing his strategy and in turn helping develop a large portion of this playbook.

1. Your ideal audience should see themselves in your content.

Prospective students need to be able to look at your accounts and know what life is like as a student (from a student).

2. Don't just study other academic institutions.

When you imitate orgs in your industry, you can only ever be as good as they are.

Sure, Northwestern and Syracuse are crushing it. But what is Rolex doing?

How is the football team approaching social? Your goals are actually probably incredibly similar. You're trying to recruit five-star recruits, maybe not in football, but in biochemistry, political science, mechanical engineering.

3. Relevant content

Don't start with "What content do we have?" Following this train results in looking and feeling the same as every single one of your peers.

Instead, start with "Who are we trying to reach?" and then follow up with "What content do they like consuming on social?" From here, you can back into what resources and content you have to match what your audience wants.

4. It's called SOCIAL media for a reason

Our job doesn't end when we press post. Insert your brand into your audience's conversations right there in real time.

Shawn shared an awesome example of this: "The other day Sheryl Crow who's a Mizzou grad did an interview and she posted on social. I replied with a funny comment, using a lyric from one of Sheryl's songs and all of a sudden we're in front of a million people."

5. Just tell stories

You probable already know how to find and tell really enthralling stories. Dig a little deeper and find a way to make the content you already have engaging for social.

Social media is not a link storage device. Find a way to tell the story on that platform.

6. Don't overcomplicate it.

• What are your priorities?

• Who is your audience?

• What is your messaging?

Answer those questions and you'll win.

A couple years ago, I was determined to build a podcast around empowering social media professionals. I may or may not (definitely did) have underestimated how much work it would take and how little capacity I had.

Shawn was the first person to reply back to me and commit to an interview and help me test and launch. Forever grateful. MIZ!

I’m starting to scour through those old interviews (I think I have 12-15) and combing through them for phenomenal insights like this. Let me know if this was helpful below!