Like most months, November was rather busy for the #UMSocial team. There is always something exciting happening at the University of Michigan, and we must readily reflect that in our content. From Thanksgiving promotion and the season’s first snow-fall photos to Homecoming 2014, Election Day, and our inaugural #UMichChat, we worked around the clock to stay consistent in our coverage while also thinking outside of the box to try new things and engage in new ways.
Along with promoting on-campus events and routinely sharing content and updates from the many diverse departments, we experimented with highlighting campaigns, video content, and new things happening on our other social channels. In the past, we’ve seen that seasonal images perform well, and so we decided to mix up our strategy and utilize our YouTube channel to showcase our beautiful #UMichFall campus, GoPro style. Once live, this video was shared on Facebook and received traction:
While engaging with our Facebook audience, over time we’ve learned that there is nothing better than a healthy rivalry. Our fans love to hate Ohio State. We utilized the #BeatOSU hashtag in various graphics, but this time it wasn’t related to athletics! The 33rd Annual Blood Battle provided the perfect opportunity to leverage the UMich v. OSU rivalry in a fun and beneficial way.
Lastly, we teamed up with the Office of University Development to push out promotional content for Giving Blueday, the university’s first 24-hour day of giving. Although Leaders & Best exists as its own Facebook page, promoting giving to the university, it’s important for smaller departments to take advantage of all that the central accounts have to offer!
Our top performing posts:
11K+ likes 10K+ likes 5.7K+ likes
November 7th served as our inaugural #UMichChat, which we initiated to provide our audience the unique opportunity to converse with the many leaders, innovators, and athletes within the University of Michigan community. As Michigan Basketball prepared for the upcoming season, we couldn’t think of a better way to kick-off the series than with our very own coaches and players: Kim Barnes Arico and Spike Albrecht! Read the full recap here: https://socialmedia.umich.edu/blog/tweetchat/
On all channels, we shared content for Veterans Day. However, we saw it perform best on Twitter, becoming one of our most engaging posts of the month:
Amidst our usual posting and UGC-curation, we decided that it was time for another campaign! This month, we kept it short and sweet. We wanted to see, through the eyes of our followers, why it’s so great to be a Michigan Wolverine! The rules were simple:
Throughout the weeks of the campaign, we received approximately 250 entries and gained 650 followers. To encourage submissions, we shared our own photos and included the #MyUMich hashtag in every post. After sifting through our favorites, we announced the winners in a collage-style graphic! It was rewarding to see how excited the winners reacted on social, commenting on our posts, and even re-gramming the winner announcement to share with their friends.
November was hectic, but as we’ve learned, social never sleeps! That’s also part of what makes this work so exciting. We hope that you check back next month to see what else we have planned for UMich. As always, #GoBlue and #StaySocial!
This post was written by Katie Szymanski, Communication and Digital Studies senior; #UMsocial editorial intern
