Can you improve your social media engagement?

The National Convergence Technology Center’s (CTC) recently hosted its first “Brown Bag” webinar of the fall. First launched in 2020, this series offers special topic presentations via bite-sized, 30-minute segments on both technical and employability topics. To date, these webinars have been attended “live” by over 350 people with another 900 views of the recordings on YouTube.

Last month, 30 faculty members from across the country attended “Essential Strategies for Successful Social Media Outreach.” The presenter was Maddie Witt, a content creator and social media specialist at Nelly Group, LLC. She discussed strategies for effectively using social media to promote programs, recruit new students, and better engage with followers.

Below are some highlights of her talk. To view the entire presentation, click here.

* Scheduling posts in advance is a good way to stay on track. Create a “content calendar.” Use a course syllabus to guide your posts – if you’re focusing on cloud security tools one week, for example, then your posts that week should connect to cloud security tools.

* Get content ideas from other programs and colleges. How are they building their content calendar? What kind of posts are they making?

* Regular, frequent posts are essential. Social media algorithms typically boost posts from users who regularly create content. Aim for three per week per platform.

* Scheduling tools like HootSuite or Sprout Social can be helpful – you can schedule several of your future posts at once.

* Spend five minutes a day engaging with your followers and with other accounts in your area of interest. Expand your network.

* If possible, consider getting students involved. They can help provide topic idea or even post content. If you’re looking to connect with current or prospective students on social media, your current students already know what sorts of posts will be most effective and appealing.

* Aside from the number of likes or retweets a post might get, there is very little immediate gratification from social media. It can take months of diligent, three-times-a-week posting to see any real growth. Successful social media engagement is time consuming.

* Social media account from a real authentic person are more engaging than faceless organizations. That is, posts from Professor Jones will likely work better than posts from State College’s IT Program.

* Facebook is becoming more and more irrelevant for promotion and network purposes.

* Consider creating a post in LinkedIn that allows for more characters, then converting that longer post into smaller chunks for Twitter.