(Photo courtesy of @hugh_davio)

Since we joined Instagram in April, we’ve been enjoying sharing our favorite photos from around Ann Arbor and celebrating campus life, as well as sharing many photos taken by our community of students, alumni, and Wolverines around the globe. 

Our team in the #UMSocial office got together to discuss our favorite parts about Instagram, and best practices for those looking to build their presence. Instagram is one of our favorite platforms, as it is rapidly growing and never short of visual content.

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I’ve been toying for MONTHS about the best way to get great U-M photos all collected in one place. I tried using the #UMInstagram hashtag (which is still kinda cool, but I hadn’t truly found a good use for it).

Storify is cool, but it’s just not as powerful as I want it to be.

And then today it hit me: The @umichstudents media grid.

It couldn’t be a more perfect visual representation of student life at Michigan. It’s photos taken BY STUDENTS, and they’re all in these beautiful Instagram squares, which is just perfect. 

To be honest, I haven’t figured out all the ways to leverage this yet, but I did update the background of the @umichstudents page, and I think it looks pretty cool. What’s a better way to show a day in the life of our students than their own photos?

Commencement is so big. Not just in size. It’s big in importance. It’s the day that we get to celebrate hard work, scholarship, and the success of our students.

It’s also a day full of stories, so here’s a round-up of how we told them.

We started with this Instagram shot from one of our staff members, which was featured on our Facebook page:

At the ticket pick-up, the Alumni Association had the graduating seniors pin a map of where they’re going after graduation, and tweeted a link.

The Ross School of Business encouraged its graduating students (and those celebrating the graduates) to use the hashtag #michrossgrad, including printing the hashtag in their commencement day materials. The day was kicked off by a tweet from the dean, and the tweets and photos that came through all day told a great story.

The School of Art & Design has been focusing more on posting photos on their Facebook page, and they created a special album, including photos of their outgoing Dean, Bryan Rogers, in a special helmet given to him by his colleagues. It was so representative of the feel of that particular school.

The Office of University Development set up two photo booths at the grad gathering area, and posted the photos to Facebook, encouraging students to tag themselves in the photos. They saw a 17.5% increase in likes and a 9500% increase in daily page engaged users. One of their photos was also featured on the main U-M Facebook page.