Twitter continued to be a strong part of our social media strategy in 2015 and two of our most prominent regular campaigns, #UMichChat & #UMichTalks, helped contribute to another year of outstanding growth. After reaching the 100k milestone just before the end of 2014, we set our sight on 150,000. By year end @UMich had welcomed more than 45,000 new followers, just shy of our goal.

But followers and likes aren’t everything. A critical part of what we do is educating our communities on important programs, keeping them informed about and engaged with current events, and enabling increased transparency between faculty, leadership, and our online advocates. The increased popularity of our live interactive dialogues helps us do that, and has contributed to our trending within the state of Michigan on nearly a monthly basis.

Collectively, the thousands of tweets we authored this year garnered more than 28,000 retweets, 50,000 mentions, and 53,000 favorites. Below is a look at five of our highest-performing pieces of content in 2015:

1. Who doesn’t love a birthday party? U-M may be focused on ringing in our upcoming bicentennial, but our social following was just as happy to help us celebrate our 198th, enabling this collage to be viewed by nearly half a million people.

2. One of our key goals as the overarching university account is to ensure the representation of all our outstanding schools, colleges, organizations, and events. Our content submission form on socialmedia.umich.edu enables anyone to share an upcoming event or request our assistance in sharing via social. This tweet promoting a performance by American hip-hop artist G-Eazy hosted by Big Ticket Productions at the annual Block M Party really drew a crowd, viewed by more than 250,000 Twitter users.

3. In the spring of 2014, our U-M social communities rallied together to show support for a member in need. This powerful lesson subsequently gave birth to a partnership with Yik Yak to promote and encourage positive online dialogue and proactive communities. The call to action reverberated throughout our user community and within higher education, resulting in 147,846 people who read about the partnership and its potential.

4. Game days are fantastic days for tweets. Our dedicated athletics accounts provide live play-by-play updates for every sport. We also enjoy sharing key highlights and coordinating campaigns to encourage our fans and followers to do the same. The hashtag #myhoMecoming allowed us to curate content from Wolverines around the world eager to tell their stories, relive memories, and share in the celebrations.

5. The year 2015 didn’t just signal the comeback of our football team: we had many outstanding student-athletes find success on the field. The U-M Women’s Softball Team 38 won Twitter’s heart with their journey to the College World Series. While the team did not win the final game, they represented our university on the main stage with pride and excellence, and the internet congratulated them enthusiastically.

We look forward to continuing to bring you outstanding content in the coming year. Thank you being a part of our ever-growing, ever-evolving community!