Featured blog: University of Michigan Social media team

Maybe it’s the fact that it’s officially Fall (or Autumn depending on where you call home) or the fact that a new semester has just begun, but we’re seeing innovative and new ideas everywhere we look.

A recent conversation we had in the office about how higher education are now increasingly becoming digital industry leaders, got us thinking about how there’s so many higher education digital experts out there now. Think back five years, did your university have a social media team? Did you guys create your own videos, blogs or podcasts? Probably not. It’s incredible to see how far the industry has come and exciting to see where it’s going.

We appreciate a good higher education blog and we appreciate it even more when it’s a blog written by a university social team about the social media they’re working on! This week we’re kicking off a new ‘featured blogs’ series and in our first post we’re shining a big old light on the University of Michigan.

The social media team https://socialmedia.umich.edu/about/

The social team at university of Michigan has an impressive team that includes a graphic designer, social media strategists and interns. They’re serious about social media and it shows. The team was recently featured in an article on the Chronicle that gives a glimpse into the hectic 24/7 working day of the university’s social team. For anyone reading this who thought it was just scheduling the odd tweet then think again.

“In that job at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Nikki Sunstrum is usually up at 6 a.m. checking her phone for mentions of the university since she was last awake. She sends emails and texts to colleagues in the public-affairs office about things she believes the university should monitor online that day, and she gets in touch with her seven-member social-media team via the group-messaging system Slack.” Source: Chronicle

It's also worth noting that for higher education institutes they’re very often dealing with hundreds if not thousands of official social media accounts. (The University of Michigan, for instance, has 1065 social media accounts.)

The fact that they also fit in time to run a blog on the management and performance of their social media is no mean feat. Keeping up with this blog is advisable if you work in higher education and want to see what your peers are up to.

Mention worthy posts include:

Analytics driven monthly recaps https://socialmedia.umich.edu/blog/september-2017-recap/

Insights into what it’s like working on the team https://socialmedia.umich.edu/blog/james-one-year-anniversary/

How to make your strategy better with surveys https://socialmedia.umich.edu/blog/enhancing-strategy-through-surveys/

Debates on which platform is right for you https://socialmedia.umich.edu/blog/twitter-vs-facebook-live-which-live-chat-format-is-best-for-your-conversation/

That’s our featured blog for today, don’t forget that Terminalfour can help you manage your social media accounts so make sure to check out our product page