Social Media Overview: 2021
Transcript
Robert Hornsby:
Hello and welcome. You've entered the realm of Virtual Communications Lab. We'll start formally in just a minute or so; we'll let a few more people join. I'm Robert Hornsby, the associate vice president of Internal Communications. We have a great program for you today. Joining us is Acacia O'Connor, the Director of Social Media, and Acacia will come back on in a minute and introduce herself, but now I'm going to turn over to Cassandra Nathan who's our master of ceremonies.
Cassandra Nathan:
Yes, hi everyone, thank you guys for joining. I know this one is much awaited I think, of all the virtual labs. This one and also Internal Communications has had the most responses there; everyone's very excited.
Acacia and I’ve had a couple of conversations around what we think you guys would like to know, but feel free to compile your questions in the chat box if need be so that we can make sure that your questions are attended to. So, no question is too big, too small, or unreasonable, so feel free to ask, and once Acacia has completed her presentation, which should be roughly about 25 minutes, we'll get right to your questions. And feel free—I'll mostly call on some of you guys so you can interact with Acacia yourself—but if I don’t– if I call your name and I don't hear from you, I'm just going to go ahead and read your question. And of course this is being recorded and will be made available soon, so you'll be able to see the answers then as well.
All right, so Acacia when you are ready, would you kindly introduce yourself and tell everybody a little bit about your history and your presentation?
Acacia O’Connor:
Yes, hi everyone, I'm happy to see some familiar names and photos and video. I am Columbia's social media point person in Public Affairs and Communications (Communications and Public Affairs). I will share a slideshow, but I also want to invite you if you prefer—I prefer, but as you wish—to follow along on Instagram. I have an internal account that I’ve used sort of sparingly for things like this, but Instagram Stories is sort of my presentation tool preference. I find it easier to build and present there, so if you want to follow along, it's in the Stories @socialatcolumbia, or not.
So, I have been– I'm coming up on my seventh year (seven year anniversary) here at Columbia. I joined in 2014 as a writer and just general communicator supporting President Bollinger's communications presence, special projects, and other things that sort of fell within the presidential public affairs and, in some cases, you know—crisis situations. During my time here, I also did a degree at the Journalism school which sort of launched me into this direction of doing more multimedia communications, multimedia content building, and the like. And I’ve been in a social media role for three years now here and—sort of—it has grown as many of you know because many of you have sort of been a part of this world along with me for the last couple of years.
I would say that a lot has changed—as far as the landscape—as it continues to every single day. I recently had occasion to join Clubhouse, which is one of the latest, newest platforms for social media, on a personal level. We have not yet joined on an institutional level, but just to say this world is always changing.
I resist even the title “expert” because there's just—you could be an expert in any single, tiny corner of social media. I mean, there's just so much to know that I am learning something new every day. I hope to give you a glimpse into what my day-to-day, or my world is, and some of the things that I've learned over time of doing this role. But, you know, there's no final word on expertise because things are moving so, so quickly and I’ve learned so much from even many of you here today, so hopefully there's something that you can take away from this—if only that, that there's always something more to learn.
I will share my slideshow if I can.
[First slide: Title slide/Introduction]
You've met me, and if you're following along on Instagram instead—I mean, I did that intentionally because I feel like I'd like to switch away from the slideshow soon because I like to see everyone's faces personally, but we'll keep this for a little bit. You've met me; thank you so much to everyone who organized this, Robert and Cassandra.
[Second slide: Setting Intentions]
Yeah, here we are. So, to start, I think you know many of you probably have already done the excellent Strategic Communications and Planning seminars that Robert and Cassandra have built and coordinated. Really, that is where we start, even with social media, even on a micro level. When I'm sitting down to plan with our colleagues on the news team—a new campaign or even just to post a single one-off issue—it's always like, what are my intentions here, what are my goals?
In life, as with social media, I just feel it's really important to be intentional. You're here for a reason; we want to make the most of our time, and a drum beat that I will always come back to is that, you know, everyone has really short attention spans.
We are, day-to-day, living in the most saturated content environment that, perhaps, has ever existed in human history—I think almost, probably, definitely has existed in human history. There's more pieces of content being created a day, every single day, than has ever been, I think. And so it's really tricky to try to get people's attention in that landscape, even for a second. I heard this factoid that I don't really think can be fully proven, but I think it has truthiness—right, as Colbert would say—that a single Tweet lives for about 17 seconds organically in the Twitter news feed and then it's gone. I think that even seems conservative now, like 17 seconds, if you didn't see it, you didn't see it unless it went viral.
That's just the world we're living in, right? And here at the university, we're sort of all working together, but we're also, like, competing for the same eyeballs, in a lot of cases. We're trying to get attention from the same people who, sort of recurringly, would be interested.
Just literally sitting down often and thinking through, if not writing down, what is my purpose —with this piece of content, with this video I'm creating, with this account that I want to open? What am I doing here? What am I expressing? What is my tone? Who am I trying to reach? And I actually have a worksheet for this that I think people might find useful that I can share—even in the chat, actually—later on.
[Third slide: Audiences; Building the Structure for Success]
So, drilling down, one of our most important things to consider when we're talking about our social media brands is our audiences. I think people—even me, I'm guilty of this as well—like to think of like, well, everyone. And in the case of @Columbia, the audience can really, literally, be everyone.
And yes, I know there's a typo on my “short attention span,” which probably speaks to my own short attention span, which, you know, there's an economy of attention, even for myself.
Right, so @Columbia is, in many ways, sort of different than a lot of the other sub Columbia—sub brands as I like to call them. You know, you have a center; you have a faculty; like you are an individual person, maybe; you're running an account for a school or department. You have, maybe, a clearer mission, a clearer voice, and more—in some ways—more potential than @Columbia does, because @Columbia is speaking equally, in some sense, to our students: graduate students, prospective students, high school students who may wish to come here, and also to our donors who are older alums, to people across the world who might be interested in our research or who are partnering us (other organizations). I mean, the scope of the audience is just really broad.
So that said, we break it down. We think through, you know, what audience do we wish to reach? There are limitations with organic content versus paid content, and I can get into that. We do mostly organic content, and I can talk about that as well as the paid landscape here. There are limitations to how much you can reach, the audience you want to reach, but there are some things that at least you can try to think through, and say, what platform am I using to reach this audience? Because each of the legacy platforms, in particular, and also new platforms have different audiences built in. Different people are drawn to using them, they're used at different times of day by different demographics. Just, really, it's who do you want to reach? What do they want? Are you giving them what they want? Is there any reason for them to engage in this content based on any sort of information that you have about them, and how do I give it to them?
I talk a lot about how we have to, you know, there are both institutional, political reasons why we have to tell some stories, and that is just our story to tell sometimes. And it doesn't matter if it's, like, fun. You know, like we can make it more fun, we could try to give it to people in a way that is eye-catching, interesting, engaging. But in some cases, like, this is content they need from us; it's information that needs to be passed along. And a lot of the work that we do is sort of strategizing, balancing that with stuff that, perhaps, is a little bit more of interest, general interest, refreshing, dare I say fun. We do what we can.
So, when I entered this role, honestly, the thing I was best at, I thought, was writing: being creative, building content, having good ideas, making them real, doing stuff that was, like, fun, relatable, well-written. I had a grasp of the university's, like, real language, tone, audience again.
What I have come to find is, like, pretty much the biggest part of this role here is building structures for success for collaborating with other folks. You know, the university is famously and rhetorically, notoriously, siloed. You know, everyone really can feel like you're working in your own little company, your own world, whatever it may be. And especially, you know, seven years ago, we were still in a different place when it came to cross-departmental collaboration. It became clear to me that if our channels wanted to be more encompassing of the whole of the university, we had to create some sort of, like, duct-taped together pipe to get that content clearly to all of the parts of central—Columbia News and Public Affairs, those teams—to ensure that we knew what they were.
We could tell that story well because most of you are coming from places where you have a better grasp on your own content, or maybe the Public Affairs officer you work with has a better grasp on that content than I do at first glance. Like, I could read the article you're sending me or the press release you're putting out, but certainly you've worked most closely.
So, this has happened organically, I would say, over time, but it is also something that I have watched be replicated in different spaces within the university, like, very gladly, through this process of questioning: How can I get more content? How can I get connected to other people who maybe have the same audience, similar types of content, a similar vibe? And, how do I build a space where we can, like, share that content pretty regularly and easily, which is—there are many different ways, and set myself up for success and also help other people.
Because, really, here at Columbia, there and everywhere, there are two main social media types: someone who has a lot of content to promote and push out about their own unit, and someone who needs content. And those two users, I would say, can form a really strong and mutually beneficial relationship. Part of this that's really important is that not every one of your handles, channels, platforms will have the access to the ample audience you want or the literal tools that you want.
Most of you who have used Instagram know that one of the strongest features in Instagram is its Story feature. I’m a big fan of Story feature. And now it has reels built into it, which is meant to mimic TikTok. And you have to have a certain profile, like, number of followers and, just like, depth and veracity to be able to post links and have call to action.
So, partnering with other accounts like ours, like others of the big Instagram accounts, can allow you to more easily drive people directly to a call to action, which is really gonna be important for you to get what you want out of people.
That's something, too, that I would think about strategically in advance, like, what do I want someone who is reading this to do for me, for us, because just simply reading, in most cases, isn't enough
[Fourth Slide: Time Management; After Action Reporting]
Time management. Really, I was just actually in a meeting where I joked about cloning myself so, you know, always of the moment.
I will cut ahead to say that we in Communications and Public Affairs don't have a firm policy on establishing new accounts. I prefer that people come and talk to us about it, not because I want to say yes or no, though I perhaps will, but because I think it's useful to have that partnership: to think through what you're doing strategically, whether you need a new platform, whether you may not know there are excellent platforms already that could serve you in a way that allows you to reclaim your time, take back your time.
You're still doing social media, but you don't have to create a whole new account, platform, space that is going to require a lot of– they're like children. They need everything, and they want your attention every second of the day, and they will– you will never sleep if you listen to every need that they have.
So, in a lot of ways, like, it can be beneficial to step back from what I think is an initial and totally understandable impulse of, well, we want to be everywhere, we want to be on all the platforms, we want to open up a new account because we want to make sure we don't miss anybody. We want to make every opportunity available for success for people to see the stuff that we're building.
I often suggest that you think twice about that because there are already so many places that you can leverage that have already such big followings that you could save yourself time, find an area of focus, really drill down on one particular goal, and also help another person—including us in central comms—to like, help you help me promote your stuff and give us also more diverse content.
Real quick note on after action reporting, which is a phrase I stole from Susan Ellingwood. I don't know if she is on here, but I actually love that phrase and I semi-love/love-hate after action reporting. It is a valuable tool for understanding whether you've hit the mark, or at least congratulating yourself for the work you've done and taking stock of everything that you've put into something.
I think that it is sort of a toxic idea that every single Tweet or campaign or post or stream should grow constantly, constantly, constantly. It’s just not reasonable, so I want to empower you to not be afraid of after action reporting because you might find out that “oh, something really didn't work.” Something not working on social media is the norm. It's not, you know, it's not wrong. You're not bad at your job if you've tried something on social media and it didn't work the way you wanted. There's lessons to be learned in that and takeaways about your specific audience that may be different from anybody else's audience, your specific piece of content that could be changed, your specific use case.
Also helps to have partners, so then you can feel like you're sharing a victory together. No two campaigns that even we have done are alike. Honestly, if it comes down to comparing them—even comparing year over year—there's just really limitations to that. So, you have to think through, like, what do you see here when I look at– when I look in the back end, when I look at the data? What do I see from this that strikes me as important? It's all important.
[Fifth Slide: Follow-up; Vibing]
I'll also put my– I'm wild; that's not my right UNI. I'll put my UNI in the chat, and we can continue to have this conversation with some questions.
But, social media can really feel many ways: overwhelming, painful, frustrating, joyful, specifically TikTok to me. I feel like it's the one place where it's still joyful every day. But, I think that you have to focus on the positive. And also, like, every day is a new day on social media, which is a beautiful thing and also kind of a curse, right? Usually you're starting over every day and trying new things—that maybe something worked yesterday, it's not going to work tomorrow. You know, we may have produced three videos that went for one specific subject. The next time you produce three series of videos, none of them– they all flopped. It's like every other place in our world where it's just a complicated mishmash of everything.
The last thing I will say—and I anticipate that this will be of interest to many of you—is it's kind of ironic, I guess, that we postponed this till today, and today is a day where we're trending on Twitter for the first time in my memory. I can't remember another time we trended, though I'm sure that it has happened before. I think it actually– the last time was when we decided to go virtual at the beginning of covid, so it might actually been a year ago, but it's not the same.
We're trending on Twitter today because, you know, right-wing news outlets have sort of run with this story about our multicultural affairs celebrations, which are things that happen at almost every private university for these student groups that bring these collectives of students together. There was a viral Tweet about this—again lots of right-wing folks, some spam accounts, some bots—that went around maybe a week or so ago.
Today we, seeing all these news articles, came in, decided to—and seeing the trending—decided to reply and speak to this issue. And this is a big part of my role, I would say, or it feels big. It feels outsized compared to the other things that wind up getting done because it takes an emotional toll, and it's like a very individual-case-basis sort of crisis communications.
That again is, I think with anything, like anything else, hit or miss. As our society has grown more divided, social media has grown more divided. The only reason anything trends these days is because everyone is mad about something, and unfortunately universities in general are really a flash point for what makes everyone mad in some way, shape, or form.
So, I'm happy to talk more about, like, strategies we have, and many of you know them because we work intimately on, like, being sensitive around crisis issues that come up: pausing posting and how to move forward in a crisis, but happy to talk about how you deal with everything from these sorts of like big issues where you find yourself in in the crossroads to, you know, harassment issues, much of which can't unfortunately really be mitigated. But there are some strategies, and I would actually really point to some other resources that are out there for that.
So, let's see, do we have any questions yet? Please empower yourselves to unmute and speak directly if you wish, and don't be shy. Happy for this to be more of a conversation from here on out.
Cassandra:
Totally agreed. Thank you so much, Acacia, for that. That was amazing. And yes, I agree. If you guys want to chime in, feel free to go for it. I love that aspect of empowerment. I do want to– So there's so much to unpack with what was last said. Like, I'm almost like, “I don't even know where to go.” But I also do want to honor a commitment that I made via email, which is to say anyone who sent any questions prior to, that they would receive priority. So I'm going to take this question.
But before I kind of get into that, you did touch upon a crisis and things of that nature. Any chance, before we get into this next question, any chance you have any, like, immediate recommendations on something that our colleagues can do in the event that something controversial pops up, or a bot says anything, that you would recommend that they do?
Acacia:
Yeah, so I mean within our framework here, super important that you get in touch with us at central comms: me; Susan Ellingwood is here, I didn't see you before; our crisis manager who's—What’s Scott's title? VP for Communications, I believe—Scott Shell; this team; Caroline Edelman. Getting in touch with us and we can drop some UNIs or we can follow up with y'all after the fact is paramount, just so we can know, if nothing else.
Sometimes the guidance, actually most times the guidance, is to do nothing because, truth be told and I think we know this, things do move on really quite quickly. That doesn't mean that—and I want to be clear about this—like, just because the social media on it is over doesn't mean, like, our job is done in terms of, like, the university's job. The university’s job to handle things, like, you know, racial bias or you know, harassment, or any really important, like, issues that are sort of intrinsic to our values.
The work still continues. That is separate from the reaction on social media, frankly, and the social media reaction will, 100% of the time, subside. That doesn't mean that we don't keep working to fix whatever the problem is, because most of these, not this one, not this one, but most of the other ones really do come from, you know, something that there's, like, something that needs to be heard. And in a lot of times, there are already, like, work being done that's just– Maybe we need to communicate it better. Maybe it needs to be a better scene.
So, the first thing is getting attention, just getting a second eye, making sure other people are aware of it. And also, a big dash of it'll be fine, even if it's bad. Ultimately, it will be fine.
I’ve learned, I think, an important lesson over the years; I used to really, truly personalize what happened on social with us. If I had built a piece of content that got, you know, for some reason, taken over by people who were upset with us institutionally, used to really bum me out. Many of us have seen some really hard things happen: losing students; losing, you know, colleagues or other people in the university circle. It's very important, at the end of the day, to detach yourself from social media, just period. It's not the same as real life. It's a different place, and it's not personal, and most of times the things that people say on social media sound really mean and feel really bad when you read them, and they're, like, kind of directed at you. But they're just passing thoughts of people on the internet, and I think that's probably the most important lesson for my sanity.
Cassandra:
Yeah, I think that's really important, and I love that you're mentioning that there are allies on campus. So this is not something that anyone has to handle alone, although there isn't, you know, universally like, some sort of policy around any kind of trolling. But at least there are people on campus and within our department that is very much skilled and trained at handling this.
So I’ll take this as a segue to answer this initial question around policy
Acacia:
Yeah.
Cassandra:
One of our colleagues wants to know, is there a school policy concerning Reddit?
Acacia:
Yeah, so I think this is important to, like, start that in context of policies. What are the policies? A lot of people ask us about, you know, do we have xyz policy, and the answer, in most cases, is no, and the reason, in part, is we're huge. Enforcing such a policy would– like, enforcing any policy that's not, like, of legal import, like, issues around accessibility, for example; there are policies around how to present content in a way that's accessible, and that's the law, in part. It's also difficult to do, regardless, or like copyright policy.
With social media, things are changing all the time. Each of your use cases is pretty unique. Also, how could we enforce you to adhere to policy? What's more of interest to me and important to me is just continuing to build the community of practice and a skill-sharing community where people have, more or less, a general idea of what we do, why we do it, what are the best practices. It's long been a goal of mine to sort of encapsulate a lot of this, like, these thinkings in a document that people can use when they onboard. But this has been a real growth from where we were at; like, seven years worth of growth to see, like, how to really onboard as we all are together as communicators.
To Reddit in particular, I'd love to know if you're using Reddit so that we can sort of brainstorm use cases and best practices for that. We're not actively on Reddit, like, as an entity, though I do monitor Reddit on occasion, and I have tools that sort of pull in relevant Reddit content that's relevant to us. It's a space that's worth keeping an eye on. I would definitely advise you, if you have a unit, school, faculty to at least, like, try to peek at it sometimes. But as far as policy for that, no strong “No,” from me.
I see that there's a chat question.
Cassandra:
Yeah, so there's actually a shout out. Also a question.
Columbia Aging Center says, “Acacia, you are such a great distiller of this realm and I deeply appreciate your voice of reason and experience, so thank you for that.”
I agree.
And Jessica Pavone, are you here, Jessica? Would you like to…?
Jessica Pavone:
Hi. Hey, Acacia.
Acacia:
Yes, hi, Jess.
Jessica:
Hi. This is something that we haven't had a chance to ever chat about, but I do feel, like, you know, we are moving throughout the frontier of social media and the next is, like, more actively engaging, and it just feels like a new frontier. And so–
Acacia:
Yeah.
Jessica:
It's a very generic question, but anything would be helpful.
Acacia:
No, it’s a big one. This goes to the, like, how I am sort of envious of smaller units who have a more intimate connection with the audience than the institutional voice has, and I think that U Life actually falls into that as well. We do engage in our DMs, specifically in Instagram, and I think yes, it's absolutely the next frontier, and it is for a lot of smaller accounts a really powerful way to sort of build community with the people who follow you, be a positive force.
I was very pleased to hear feedback that another conversation that I was a part of, someone took away that my feedback was to, like, be positive on social media, which, if that could be a takeaway that I could leave you with, that would be amazing because I think there's enough of the other side on social media.
But people really do respond well to positivity on social media. Just congratulating folks in the community: This is something we also do, are able to do, in some cases, from an institutional standpoint, is really congratulate, give kudos to people in our orbit. We'd love to do it more, frankly, though it's like a whole can of worms because there's so many of us here at the university. But, I'd say start small, maybe even like, and I’m obviously happy to work with you all, but say, I'm going to respond to my DMs or I'm going to spend x amount of time every day.
We didn't really have enough time to get into super detail about time management, but, you know, even the pomodoro method where you, like, set a timer for a certain amount of time and I'm just going to, like, look through my feed or people that follow me and like their content. Just like it. Then they see that you liked it. Especially, I mean, this is where you have to exercise, also, a certain amount of judgment, and I would absolutely caution you to err on the side of conservatism with that because, you know, you want to definitely be engaging with content that you feel confident aligns with the institutional messaging and aligns with your brand, right?
I go through, however, even on all platforms, to the extent that I am able to, and like mentions that we have where people have been accepted and they're really enthusiastic. I sometimes retweet those. It's one of the few instances in which we retweet non-internal brand accounts. Or like a professor is given some sort of award, or something that's happening in their life that they're tweeting about that, they're posting anywhere about that. Just coming in and being like “Congratulations” or, you know, “This research sounds amazing.”
It comes from a genuine place, I think, when you're doing it. For me, it's like I really do feel happy for those people. Especially in the case of admissions, they're really excited to be coming here and they're living their their best life to know that they're gonna come to Columbia, and that's great for us and it's great that they feel that we are happy that they're that they're happy to be a part of this place. I'd like to see more of that.
One of the toughest things for all of us, I think, is bandwidth, and frankly, like, that work takes time. It takes a lot of time. It's like so small, minuscule, little micro actions, but really you get sucked into it, right? And then you're like, “I've been reading posts for an hour” and “What day is it?” So, start small and see where you get with it, I would say.
Cassandra:
So, speaking of which, because this is something that normally comes up a lot when Robert and I do our Strategic Communications Planning course. I almost want to do a shameless plug but–
Acacia:
Do it; plug it!
Cassandra:
You guys, Strategic Communications Planning is amazing. You don't even know that you need it, and you won't even know how much you need it until you actually give it a shot. It can feel like a heavy load because it requires a different way of thinking, and, you know, we all are resistant to change at some point in our lives. But what you can get from it is you get to network with your fellow communicators, and you get to learn how to be strategic. So something that even Acacia mentioned that when she first came on board, she thought that she would be an excellent communicator; she knew how she was going to create this content. But she learned that she had to create structure, and structure comes from being strategic, and thinking about what you have in your hand, and how you can enhance it, and how you can contribute. So, if that's something you would like to do, please—I almost said DM me—-please email me, and we can get you guys on board for the next cohort.
But something I actually wanted to mention, which is what we hear a lot, is about this bandwidth. So there's a lot of people in our Strategic Communications, and I'm sure people who are on here that just are at a loss for realistically how long it takes from creating content to post. What that time frame looks like, and is it reasonable to think that they can keep up with it? And is it so salient—this is part b, part two or b to this question—is it salient to really carve out that time? Should they just kind of muster up the importance of it and set a time frame? And if so, like, what do you think that time frame should be for content planning and posting?
Acacia:
Yeah, yeah this is a big thing, right? Because it's, like– I'll try to be honest also about my experience myself, which I think sometimes errs towards the, like, more organized side of this, and I thank myself for that later, and then sometimes really just feels like it's all happening one thing after another. And I think that that is completely understandable, given that we're, first of all, we're still in a pandemic, and then second of all, like, we're all being pulled in a bunch of different directions.
This type of role, comms roles in general, you're wearing different hats. I think that finding a comfortable planning ahead strategy is something that I thank myself for when I do it. And then I feel such a weight off because, with the broader news team, we know that it's coming; we know that it's done; I know that it's done. How far in advance really depends on, you know, your situation, how big your team is, whether you have a lot of recurring things that you can, like, plan ahead for.
I’ll just speak to my experience. I'm doing both, right? Like, today I'm responding to this, we're trending on Twitter, people are damning us about it. Not only do we have to respond, I have to, sort of, coordinate across the university to ensure that there's sort of a mirrored response from everyone else to support us. That I did not wake up and expect that to happen today. I wish it had not. And then, you know, we have the upcoming and ongoing and recurring big events, markers: Commencement being obviously the cornerstone event of the year for us at Columbia, but there's a lot of those.
I think spending an hour or even a half hour once a week, like, blocking out and saying, “Here's what's, like, now, next, future as far as content. Even if you don't write the content, just like, note planning out what you know is coming. Again, these feeds are hungry, the beast must be fed. And in a lot of cases, sorry to say, that if you have a Twitter and you're only posting once a day, you're not gonna see the impact that you want, and you'd really be better off directing that energy somewhere else, potentially, or condensing down.
And again, it's about strategic thinking about where's the best place to be speaking to the people I want to speak to who can help me. You might not have any social media platforms but you're leveraging what we would call, like, influencers—or ambassadors, really—that, like, are part of– they’re your faculty, they're your students. Like, maybe they can be sort of induced to help you do the work you have to do rather than, you know, and then you don't have to run three different platforms every day.
Cassandra:
Speaking of which, in terms of managing all this, are there specific tools, or perhaps a calendaring tool, that you can share with everyone so they can feel like they can organize a bit more? And where can they find it if it already exists?
Acacia:
Say that one more time.
Cassandra:
Is there a tool that you use for calendaring or suggestions, resources that you might want to recommend to everyone so they can be a little bit more organized?
Acacia:
Yes. (I didn’t know I muted myself.) There are some free tools. I would say that my axe to grind is that I would like as many people in the university as possible to come into using Sprout Social for social media. There are comparable tools out there; we used to have a Hootsuite account. Currently, we utilize Sprout to schedule—and literally it’s calendar view, gives reporting analytics. And now internally in Communications and Public Affairs with Government and Community Affairs, we have an approval workflow so that we can easily transfer pieces of content one to the other. In the future, I'd like to see a single tool. I don't know if actually that will be Sprout. There is a world in which we've discussed converting to Salesforce, but obviously everything is sort of on pause for us for, like, enterprise level tools here.
But, you know, I think there are free versions of that. Even just Tweet Deck, which is free, it would be a great addendum because not only can you schedule in advance, you can see, like, specialized feeds searches of these different search terms or your partners.
I would encourage people to put in the chat what they use to organize because there are just as many different tools out there as there are people, really, and there are some really strong leaders. A lot of Australian apps are more affordable, for some reason, so like Falcon.io is another one that I know is popular with folks. They really are all very similar to one another.
I also could not live without Google Docs. I literally don't know what I would do. Like tomorrow Google Docs failed, I would fail. I don't know what I would do. I would be back to, like, I would send you a note in the mail, I don't know.
Cassandra:
I'm actually kind of curious, and Veronica is too. What are the advantages? Because I've heard of Hootsuite, but I haven't heard too much about Sprout, so what are the advantages that you found about Sprout?
Acacia:
Yeah, they're very similar. They're very similar, truly. They can do all the same things. There were some differences. Price was one of them. And, you know, if anyone is interested in talking more about this, I'd be happy to talk to them about this. Honestly, it's just an easier interface. Also, the mobile is better; Sprout mobile app is, like, is really powerful, easy to use. Sprout also has a—Hootsuite may also, actually—but I really actually find the Sprout browser app addendum to be very effective, where it's like, if I mount a piece of content, I could actually just—I don't do this that much because of scheduling—but like, if I were spontaneous, to speak spontaneously, to come up on a piece of content that, you know, I'm like, “Oh this would be great,” and it'll import the image, like, directly from the web page using this chrome app.
Buffer is another really popular one and also, like, cost-effective, and I think knowing Ben and Jen, I think they would be happy to help anyone who's also interested in Buffer; I just volunteered you.
What other tools? I think, like, tools for reaching one another, I will plug—I think most of you here are part of this world already—but if any of you are on here who are not already a part (who are doing social media actively) are not already a part of the community of practice which is a listserv. And also a slack channel, you know, to the extent that we busy people are able to keep in touch. We do that, and you can share your content with me in various ways once you become a part of that group.
We also have begun registering everyone's accounts, and I’m going to find and drop that link in the chat for anyone who's on here who has not yet participated in the social media registration. I've had a question recently about when that registry will be made public to the community of practice, and TBD, but hopefully at some point in the near future.
Cassandra:
So, Caitlin actually has a question. Caitlin, are you here? (Once, twice.) Caitlin Hawk?
She says it feels like this field has become specialized, and that for small entities to move the needle on social media is an Everest. Is it conceivable to organize differently and share specialists, tap into central CU comms power? We are fast moving to a full-time equivalent for social media across many entities.
Acacia:
That's my dream, but yes exactly this that I've just described is sort of using WeConnect, using the social media listserv. Also, I think the future of this is being more judicious about what you promote. Like, you may not be able to promote every single thing that you want to promote. You may have to really put your energy into something that's more eye-catching or or more creative, or find an outlet that's, like, less labor-intensive to promote your content.
It's just important to get in line with the university systems that we have, from calendaring through Bedework where people can discover events, to being in connection with us, with me. To promote events, you all have a public affairs officer equivalent, for the most part, or you have a comm or your accounts person who's connected to WeConnect. You know, these tools exist now to sort of further this end because we know that it's not possible for you to create a new account and become, you know, a 100,000-person-strong verified account.
Our brands are not that interesting to the general public. I'm sorry. I love you all. All of your stuff is important to me; I love all my children equally, but truthfully we are a brand and we are vying for people's attention with, like, amazing prank videos. Like, we have to come together and sort of focus in on these things that are important and find ways to collaborate amongst ourselves. And it's hard; it's really hard.
But I think that for me the important thing is, like, don't feel like a failure if you feel like the social media is failing because it's very difficult to succeed in a day-by-day where there's more content today than there was yesterday, every day.
Cassandra:
And do you speak on these topics more on your social media meetups?
Acacia:
The social media meetups, and I miss you all because I have not had time to convene one recently, but I will have to for Commencement soon.
Cassandra:
You have a date yet?
Acacia:
So, the social media meetups are really for the community of practice, so if you email me after this and you actively manage a social media account for Columbia, or you partner as a manager, email me and I will add you to that list, and then you will become informed about meetups.
There's a number of tutorials through Columbia Sites, and I understand that we're moving towards, like, recording those for the future so we don't have to do them, like, again and again. But there's a couple of those that are going to be scheduled in the near future, and I can inform folks through WeConnect about when those might be. Those are, you know, not really going to differ that entirely much from this particular lab. They might focus in—some of them—on a particular issue or platform.
I also partnered with Faculty Advancement recently. Jen! And collaborated on a panel with them, both on Linkedin and on Twitter, so those are available. And I can seek the links or maybe Jen will beat me to it.
Jen Leach:
Oh, I'll put the links in.
Acacia:
You organized the meet!
If you guys want to watch me talk more, which I cannot fathom, but–
Cassandra:
Five minutes!
Acacia:
Yeah, we're coming up on time, so–
Cassandra:
Yes, you’re coming up– I was just about to say that. We're coming up on time, so if you guys have been burning questions, please feel free.
Luis Herrera, could you share the worksheet for setting intentions for social media platform guide?
Acacia:
Yeah
Cassandra:
So while Acacia gets there, go ahead and send them. And you guys know you have some questions, don't be bashful.
I do have a couple of–-
Jen Leach just put the link up for you guys.
So one of the things that we all want to know: Are we doing our job, and how well are we doing it? Right? Like, that's what everybody wants to know. How are we contributing, what do you use to measure success, or how do you define what success is on social media?
Acacia:
I think this will be a subject of an upcoming Sites 101 Analytics. Hopefully, you know, we have a great new engagement editor who I'm so grateful for.
I think it's gotta come from you. And again, start small because– start with achievable goals, like anything else, like anything else you do. You want to travel to 30 countries, you start with one. Not right now, but that was my first analogy that came to mind. You know, you want to see five new followers. Like, it doesn't matter if the numbers are small; they're significant to you. I think tailoring that to having expectations that are moderate.
I know I'm not answering the question because I think that it's really individual. And I think that if you are trying new things, and you're willing to scrap things that aren't working, that's success to me in this role. And, I honestly, even saying that, I’m like, I could do better when it comes to that, even for us. But there's a lot to be done, and I don't think that, for better or worse, there's ever, like, gonna be a feeling of complete success, and I know that I have not found that, for me, at least.
Hold on.
Cassandra:
You said you talked about managing expectations. What if my expectations are different from my supervisor's expectations?
Acacia:
This is a big, yeah…
Cassandra:
It doesn't hurt that their expectations are outlandish.
Acacia:
[Laughs.] Yeah.
Cassandra:
I’ll bring it to, what’s a fair expectation?
Acacia:
I'm also available for this. I think people know that I'm willing to back any of you up on these things, you know, and talk through and assess whether I think that they're reasonable expectations. But there are just some things that you cannot do much about. And there's also a lot of time that gets sucked into this that I think is hard to really…
The thing that's so tough about social media, and we all know it, is that everybody does it. Like, everybody does it ambiently. Like most people have at least Facebook at this point, so you so everyone knows social media. That is a real hurdle because, like, no one thinks they know communications because they, like, talk or email, like, but apparently everyone thinks they know social media because they have a social media platform somewhere or an account. And they're just not the same thing, and that's just a really hard thing to have to combat, that there's like a lot more that goes into it. Not all of it is even about how to use these platforms, frankly. And there's so much that you don't know, that I don't know, that I want to know. So I think that's where I start. Like, not to be defensive about it with folks, but just to, like…
I'm happy to back you up is what I would say. Like, anybody who needs help around this, and many of you know I'm willing to come in and just, like, help people who maybe don't fully understand why it's xyz, that there's a reason why that it just doesn't, doesn’t whatever it is.
Cassandra:
And I love that. I think that's something that a lot of people aren't aware of that we have here, and then breaking down these silos is that we have partnership, and I think that's really silly, and it really does help to create that buffer.
We are coming up on time, you guys. Before we close out, I just wanted to acknowledge CGC webinars. They would like for us to meet Columbia's newest communication officer Andrew Swift. He's in Berlin right now and is working for Global Centers. Everyone, please say hi to Andrew, welcome him to the team. Welcome, Andrew!
And thank you for mentioning that. I think it's important that we know who our colleagues are. So Acacia, and Robert, feel free to chime in too. Acacia, thank you so much. I feel that this was much needed and was an elevated conversation, which I'm really excited about because sometimes we kind of talk about some of the mundane things with social media. Everybody wants to know, you know, how much, and what to do, and everything. But this is a very much
an elevated conversation around being responsible on social media, and having that presence on social media, and also being being gentle with yourself and with the process of learning and growth, right? Like, it is a process; you're not going to get it all in one shot, so I really appreciate that.
Everyone is saying, “Thanks, Acacia.” “Thank you.” “Thank you.” “Thank you, Acacia and Cassandra and Rob for setting this up.” You're wonderful.
So guys, feel free to email Acacia. Acacia, would you put your email address–
Acacia:
Yes.
Cassandra:
–in the chat so that you guys can reach out to her if need be or have that uncomfortable conversation with your supervisor. That you've done–
Acacia:
Susan noted that central comms can back you up as well, because there's a lot. It's not just social media, right? It's web development, it's content development, it's event promotion. We have to do a lot of expectation setting.
Cassandra:
Yes, Mary, this recording will be shared. I'm currently creating our website for all of the trainings and workshops for you guys, and also the website's resources; and the attachment that is available here I will also include that under the subheading for social media
Thank you guys for joining us. We are at 3:01, so if you've made it this far, congratulations. We appreciate you guys, but we are all set. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in.
We'll be here next week. Next week we're gonna have another one, so look out for that email. I’ll keep you guys posted.
If you guys have any suggestions, we are open to them. I can't make promises, but we're at least open to hearing what your suggestions are.
Robert:
Thank you, Acacia. Thank you, Cassandra.
Acacia:
Bye. Thank you so much.
Hello and welcome. You've entered the realm of Virtual Communications Lab. We'll start formally in just a minute or so; we'll let a few more people join. I'm Robert Hornsby, the associate vice president of Internal Communications. We have a great program for you today. Joining us is Acacia O'Connor, the Director of Social Media, and Acacia will come back on in a minute and introduce herself, but now I'm going to turn over to Cassandra Nathan who's our master of ceremonies.
Cassandra Nathan:
Yes, hi everyone, thank you guys for joining. I know this one is much awaited I think, of all the virtual labs. This one and also Internal Communications has had the most responses there; everyone's very excited.
Acacia and I’ve had a couple of conversations around what we think you guys would like to know, but feel free to compile your questions in the chat box if need be so that we can make sure that your questions are attended to. So, no question is too big, too small, or unreasonable, so feel free to ask, and once Acacia has completed her presentation, which should be roughly about 25 minutes, we'll get right to your questions. And feel free—I'll mostly call on some of you guys so you can interact with Acacia yourself—but if I don’t– if I call your name and I don't hear from you, I'm just going to go ahead and read your question. And of course this is being recorded and will be made available soon, so you'll be able to see the answers then as well.
All right, so Acacia when you are ready, would you kindly introduce yourself and tell everybody a little bit about your history and your presentation?
Acacia O’Connor:
Yes, hi everyone, I'm happy to see some familiar names and photos and video. I am Columbia's social media point person in Public Affairs and Communications (Communications and Public Affairs). I will share a slideshow, but I also want to invite you if you prefer—I prefer, but as you wish—to follow along on Instagram. I have an internal account that I’ve used sort of sparingly for things like this, but Instagram Stories is sort of my presentation tool preference. I find it easier to build and present there, so if you want to follow along, it's in the Stories @socialatcolumbia, or not.
So, I have been– I'm coming up on my seventh year (seven year anniversary) here at Columbia. I joined in 2014 as a writer and just general communicator supporting President Bollinger's communications presence, special projects, and other things that sort of fell within the presidential public affairs and, in some cases, you know—crisis situations. During my time here, I also did a degree at the Journalism school which sort of launched me into this direction of doing more multimedia communications, multimedia content building, and the like. And I’ve been in a social media role for three years now here and—sort of—it has grown as many of you know because many of you have sort of been a part of this world along with me for the last couple of years.
I would say that a lot has changed—as far as the landscape—as it continues to every single day. I recently had occasion to join Clubhouse, which is one of the latest, newest platforms for social media, on a personal level. We have not yet joined on an institutional level, but just to say this world is always changing.
I resist even the title “expert” because there's just—you could be an expert in any single, tiny corner of social media. I mean, there's just so much to know that I am learning something new every day. I hope to give you a glimpse into what my day-to-day, or my world is, and some of the things that I've learned over time of doing this role. But, you know, there's no final word on expertise because things are moving so, so quickly and I’ve learned so much from even many of you here today, so hopefully there's something that you can take away from this—if only that, that there's always something more to learn.
I will share my slideshow if I can.
[First slide: Title slide/Introduction]
You've met me, and if you're following along on Instagram instead—I mean, I did that intentionally because I feel like I'd like to switch away from the slideshow soon because I like to see everyone's faces personally, but we'll keep this for a little bit. You've met me; thank you so much to everyone who organized this, Robert and Cassandra.
[Second slide: Setting Intentions]
Yeah, here we are. So, to start, I think you know many of you probably have already done the excellent Strategic Communications and Planning seminars that Robert and Cassandra have built and coordinated. Really, that is where we start, even with social media, even on a micro level. When I'm sitting down to plan with our colleagues on the news team—a new campaign or even just to post a single one-off issue—it's always like, what are my intentions here, what are my goals?
In life, as with social media, I just feel it's really important to be intentional. You're here for a reason; we want to make the most of our time, and a drum beat that I will always come back to is that, you know, everyone has really short attention spans.
We are, day-to-day, living in the most saturated content environment that, perhaps, has ever existed in human history—I think almost, probably, definitely has existed in human history. There's more pieces of content being created a day, every single day, than has ever been, I think. And so it's really tricky to try to get people's attention in that landscape, even for a second. I heard this factoid that I don't really think can be fully proven, but I think it has truthiness—right, as Colbert would say—that a single Tweet lives for about 17 seconds organically in the Twitter news feed and then it's gone. I think that even seems conservative now, like 17 seconds, if you didn't see it, you didn't see it unless it went viral.
That's just the world we're living in, right? And here at the university, we're sort of all working together, but we're also, like, competing for the same eyeballs, in a lot of cases. We're trying to get attention from the same people who, sort of recurringly, would be interested.
Just literally sitting down often and thinking through, if not writing down, what is my purpose —with this piece of content, with this video I'm creating, with this account that I want to open? What am I doing here? What am I expressing? What is my tone? Who am I trying to reach? And I actually have a worksheet for this that I think people might find useful that I can share—even in the chat, actually—later on.
[Third slide: Audiences; Building the Structure for Success]
So, drilling down, one of our most important things to consider when we're talking about our social media brands is our audiences. I think people—even me, I'm guilty of this as well—like to think of like, well, everyone. And in the case of @Columbia, the audience can really, literally, be everyone.
And yes, I know there's a typo on my “short attention span,” which probably speaks to my own short attention span, which, you know, there's an economy of attention, even for myself.
Right, so @Columbia is, in many ways, sort of different than a lot of the other sub Columbia—sub brands as I like to call them. You know, you have a center; you have a faculty; like you are an individual person, maybe; you're running an account for a school or department. You have, maybe, a clearer mission, a clearer voice, and more—in some ways—more potential than @Columbia does, because @Columbia is speaking equally, in some sense, to our students: graduate students, prospective students, high school students who may wish to come here, and also to our donors who are older alums, to people across the world who might be interested in our research or who are partnering us (other organizations). I mean, the scope of the audience is just really broad.
So that said, we break it down. We think through, you know, what audience do we wish to reach? There are limitations with organic content versus paid content, and I can get into that. We do mostly organic content, and I can talk about that as well as the paid landscape here. There are limitations to how much you can reach, the audience you want to reach, but there are some things that at least you can try to think through, and say, what platform am I using to reach this audience? Because each of the legacy platforms, in particular, and also new platforms have different audiences built in. Different people are drawn to using them, they're used at different times of day by different demographics. Just, really, it's who do you want to reach? What do they want? Are you giving them what they want? Is there any reason for them to engage in this content based on any sort of information that you have about them, and how do I give it to them?
I talk a lot about how we have to, you know, there are both institutional, political reasons why we have to tell some stories, and that is just our story to tell sometimes. And it doesn't matter if it's, like, fun. You know, like we can make it more fun, we could try to give it to people in a way that is eye-catching, interesting, engaging. But in some cases, like, this is content they need from us; it's information that needs to be passed along. And a lot of the work that we do is sort of strategizing, balancing that with stuff that, perhaps, is a little bit more of interest, general interest, refreshing, dare I say fun. We do what we can.
So, when I entered this role, honestly, the thing I was best at, I thought, was writing: being creative, building content, having good ideas, making them real, doing stuff that was, like, fun, relatable, well-written. I had a grasp of the university's, like, real language, tone, audience again.
What I have come to find is, like, pretty much the biggest part of this role here is building structures for success for collaborating with other folks. You know, the university is famously and rhetorically, notoriously, siloed. You know, everyone really can feel like you're working in your own little company, your own world, whatever it may be. And especially, you know, seven years ago, we were still in a different place when it came to cross-departmental collaboration. It became clear to me that if our channels wanted to be more encompassing of the whole of the university, we had to create some sort of, like, duct-taped together pipe to get that content clearly to all of the parts of central—Columbia News and Public Affairs, those teams—to ensure that we knew what they were.
We could tell that story well because most of you are coming from places where you have a better grasp on your own content, or maybe the Public Affairs officer you work with has a better grasp on that content than I do at first glance. Like, I could read the article you're sending me or the press release you're putting out, but certainly you've worked most closely.
So, this has happened organically, I would say, over time, but it is also something that I have watched be replicated in different spaces within the university, like, very gladly, through this process of questioning: How can I get more content? How can I get connected to other people who maybe have the same audience, similar types of content, a similar vibe? And, how do I build a space where we can, like, share that content pretty regularly and easily, which is—there are many different ways, and set myself up for success and also help other people.
Because, really, here at Columbia, there and everywhere, there are two main social media types: someone who has a lot of content to promote and push out about their own unit, and someone who needs content. And those two users, I would say, can form a really strong and mutually beneficial relationship. Part of this that's really important is that not every one of your handles, channels, platforms will have the access to the ample audience you want or the literal tools that you want.
Most of you who have used Instagram know that one of the strongest features in Instagram is its Story feature. I’m a big fan of Story feature. And now it has reels built into it, which is meant to mimic TikTok. And you have to have a certain profile, like, number of followers and, just like, depth and veracity to be able to post links and have call to action.
So, partnering with other accounts like ours, like others of the big Instagram accounts, can allow you to more easily drive people directly to a call to action, which is really gonna be important for you to get what you want out of people.
That's something, too, that I would think about strategically in advance, like, what do I want someone who is reading this to do for me, for us, because just simply reading, in most cases, isn't enough
[Fourth Slide: Time Management; After Action Reporting]
Time management. Really, I was just actually in a meeting where I joked about cloning myself so, you know, always of the moment.
I will cut ahead to say that we in Communications and Public Affairs don't have a firm policy on establishing new accounts. I prefer that people come and talk to us about it, not because I want to say yes or no, though I perhaps will, but because I think it's useful to have that partnership: to think through what you're doing strategically, whether you need a new platform, whether you may not know there are excellent platforms already that could serve you in a way that allows you to reclaim your time, take back your time.
You're still doing social media, but you don't have to create a whole new account, platform, space that is going to require a lot of– they're like children. They need everything, and they want your attention every second of the day, and they will– you will never sleep if you listen to every need that they have.
So, in a lot of ways, like, it can be beneficial to step back from what I think is an initial and totally understandable impulse of, well, we want to be everywhere, we want to be on all the platforms, we want to open up a new account because we want to make sure we don't miss anybody. We want to make every opportunity available for success for people to see the stuff that we're building.
I often suggest that you think twice about that because there are already so many places that you can leverage that have already such big followings that you could save yourself time, find an area of focus, really drill down on one particular goal, and also help another person—including us in central comms—to like, help you help me promote your stuff and give us also more diverse content.
Real quick note on after action reporting, which is a phrase I stole from Susan Ellingwood. I don't know if she is on here, but I actually love that phrase and I semi-love/love-hate after action reporting. It is a valuable tool for understanding whether you've hit the mark, or at least congratulating yourself for the work you've done and taking stock of everything that you've put into something.
I think that it is sort of a toxic idea that every single Tweet or campaign or post or stream should grow constantly, constantly, constantly. It’s just not reasonable, so I want to empower you to not be afraid of after action reporting because you might find out that “oh, something really didn't work.” Something not working on social media is the norm. It's not, you know, it's not wrong. You're not bad at your job if you've tried something on social media and it didn't work the way you wanted. There's lessons to be learned in that and takeaways about your specific audience that may be different from anybody else's audience, your specific piece of content that could be changed, your specific use case.
Also helps to have partners, so then you can feel like you're sharing a victory together. No two campaigns that even we have done are alike. Honestly, if it comes down to comparing them—even comparing year over year—there's just really limitations to that. So, you have to think through, like, what do you see here when I look at– when I look in the back end, when I look at the data? What do I see from this that strikes me as important? It's all important.
[Fifth Slide: Follow-up; Vibing]
I'll also put my– I'm wild; that's not my right UNI. I'll put my UNI in the chat, and we can continue to have this conversation with some questions.
But, social media can really feel many ways: overwhelming, painful, frustrating, joyful, specifically TikTok to me. I feel like it's the one place where it's still joyful every day. But, I think that you have to focus on the positive. And also, like, every day is a new day on social media, which is a beautiful thing and also kind of a curse, right? Usually you're starting over every day and trying new things—that maybe something worked yesterday, it's not going to work tomorrow. You know, we may have produced three videos that went for one specific subject. The next time you produce three series of videos, none of them– they all flopped. It's like every other place in our world where it's just a complicated mishmash of everything.
The last thing I will say—and I anticipate that this will be of interest to many of you—is it's kind of ironic, I guess, that we postponed this till today, and today is a day where we're trending on Twitter for the first time in my memory. I can't remember another time we trended, though I'm sure that it has happened before. I think it actually– the last time was when we decided to go virtual at the beginning of covid, so it might actually been a year ago, but it's not the same.
We're trending on Twitter today because, you know, right-wing news outlets have sort of run with this story about our multicultural affairs celebrations, which are things that happen at almost every private university for these student groups that bring these collectives of students together. There was a viral Tweet about this—again lots of right-wing folks, some spam accounts, some bots—that went around maybe a week or so ago.
Today we, seeing all these news articles, came in, decided to—and seeing the trending—decided to reply and speak to this issue. And this is a big part of my role, I would say, or it feels big. It feels outsized compared to the other things that wind up getting done because it takes an emotional toll, and it's like a very individual-case-basis sort of crisis communications.
That again is, I think with anything, like anything else, hit or miss. As our society has grown more divided, social media has grown more divided. The only reason anything trends these days is because everyone is mad about something, and unfortunately universities in general are really a flash point for what makes everyone mad in some way, shape, or form.
So, I'm happy to talk more about, like, strategies we have, and many of you know them because we work intimately on, like, being sensitive around crisis issues that come up: pausing posting and how to move forward in a crisis, but happy to talk about how you deal with everything from these sorts of like big issues where you find yourself in in the crossroads to, you know, harassment issues, much of which can't unfortunately really be mitigated. But there are some strategies, and I would actually really point to some other resources that are out there for that.
So, let's see, do we have any questions yet? Please empower yourselves to unmute and speak directly if you wish, and don't be shy. Happy for this to be more of a conversation from here on out.
Cassandra:
Totally agreed. Thank you so much, Acacia, for that. That was amazing. And yes, I agree. If you guys want to chime in, feel free to go for it. I love that aspect of empowerment. I do want to– So there's so much to unpack with what was last said. Like, I'm almost like, “I don't even know where to go.” But I also do want to honor a commitment that I made via email, which is to say anyone who sent any questions prior to, that they would receive priority. So I'm going to take this question.
But before I kind of get into that, you did touch upon a crisis and things of that nature. Any chance, before we get into this next question, any chance you have any, like, immediate recommendations on something that our colleagues can do in the event that something controversial pops up, or a bot says anything, that you would recommend that they do?
Acacia:
Yeah, so I mean within our framework here, super important that you get in touch with us at central comms: me; Susan Ellingwood is here, I didn't see you before; our crisis manager who's—What’s Scott's title? VP for Communications, I believe—Scott Shell; this team; Caroline Edelman. Getting in touch with us and we can drop some UNIs or we can follow up with y'all after the fact is paramount, just so we can know, if nothing else.
Sometimes the guidance, actually most times the guidance, is to do nothing because, truth be told and I think we know this, things do move on really quite quickly. That doesn't mean that—and I want to be clear about this—like, just because the social media on it is over doesn't mean, like, our job is done in terms of, like, the university's job. The university’s job to handle things, like, you know, racial bias or you know, harassment, or any really important, like, issues that are sort of intrinsic to our values.
The work still continues. That is separate from the reaction on social media, frankly, and the social media reaction will, 100% of the time, subside. That doesn't mean that we don't keep working to fix whatever the problem is, because most of these, not this one, not this one, but most of the other ones really do come from, you know, something that there's, like, something that needs to be heard. And in a lot of times, there are already, like, work being done that's just– Maybe we need to communicate it better. Maybe it needs to be a better scene.
So, the first thing is getting attention, just getting a second eye, making sure other people are aware of it. And also, a big dash of it'll be fine, even if it's bad. Ultimately, it will be fine.
I’ve learned, I think, an important lesson over the years; I used to really, truly personalize what happened on social with us. If I had built a piece of content that got, you know, for some reason, taken over by people who were upset with us institutionally, used to really bum me out. Many of us have seen some really hard things happen: losing students; losing, you know, colleagues or other people in the university circle. It's very important, at the end of the day, to detach yourself from social media, just period. It's not the same as real life. It's a different place, and it's not personal, and most of times the things that people say on social media sound really mean and feel really bad when you read them, and they're, like, kind of directed at you. But they're just passing thoughts of people on the internet, and I think that's probably the most important lesson for my sanity.
Cassandra:
Yeah, I think that's really important, and I love that you're mentioning that there are allies on campus. So this is not something that anyone has to handle alone, although there isn't, you know, universally like, some sort of policy around any kind of trolling. But at least there are people on campus and within our department that is very much skilled and trained at handling this.
So I’ll take this as a segue to answer this initial question around policy
Acacia:
Yeah.
Cassandra:
One of our colleagues wants to know, is there a school policy concerning Reddit?
Acacia:
Yeah, so I think this is important to, like, start that in context of policies. What are the policies? A lot of people ask us about, you know, do we have xyz policy, and the answer, in most cases, is no, and the reason, in part, is we're huge. Enforcing such a policy would– like, enforcing any policy that's not, like, of legal import, like, issues around accessibility, for example; there are policies around how to present content in a way that's accessible, and that's the law, in part. It's also difficult to do, regardless, or like copyright policy.
With social media, things are changing all the time. Each of your use cases is pretty unique. Also, how could we enforce you to adhere to policy? What's more of interest to me and important to me is just continuing to build the community of practice and a skill-sharing community where people have, more or less, a general idea of what we do, why we do it, what are the best practices. It's long been a goal of mine to sort of encapsulate a lot of this, like, these thinkings in a document that people can use when they onboard. But this has been a real growth from where we were at; like, seven years worth of growth to see, like, how to really onboard as we all are together as communicators.
To Reddit in particular, I'd love to know if you're using Reddit so that we can sort of brainstorm use cases and best practices for that. We're not actively on Reddit, like, as an entity, though I do monitor Reddit on occasion, and I have tools that sort of pull in relevant Reddit content that's relevant to us. It's a space that's worth keeping an eye on. I would definitely advise you, if you have a unit, school, faculty to at least, like, try to peek at it sometimes. But as far as policy for that, no strong “No,” from me.
I see that there's a chat question.
Cassandra:
Yeah, so there's actually a shout out. Also a question.
Columbia Aging Center says, “Acacia, you are such a great distiller of this realm and I deeply appreciate your voice of reason and experience, so thank you for that.”
I agree.
And Jessica Pavone, are you here, Jessica? Would you like to…?
Jessica Pavone:
Hi. Hey, Acacia.
Acacia:
Yes, hi, Jess.
Jessica:
Hi. This is something that we haven't had a chance to ever chat about, but I do feel, like, you know, we are moving throughout the frontier of social media and the next is, like, more actively engaging, and it just feels like a new frontier. And so–
Acacia:
Yeah.
Jessica:
It's a very generic question, but anything would be helpful.
Acacia:
No, it’s a big one. This goes to the, like, how I am sort of envious of smaller units who have a more intimate connection with the audience than the institutional voice has, and I think that U Life actually falls into that as well. We do engage in our DMs, specifically in Instagram, and I think yes, it's absolutely the next frontier, and it is for a lot of smaller accounts a really powerful way to sort of build community with the people who follow you, be a positive force.
I was very pleased to hear feedback that another conversation that I was a part of, someone took away that my feedback was to, like, be positive on social media, which, if that could be a takeaway that I could leave you with, that would be amazing because I think there's enough of the other side on social media.
But people really do respond well to positivity on social media. Just congratulating folks in the community: This is something we also do, are able to do, in some cases, from an institutional standpoint, is really congratulate, give kudos to people in our orbit. We'd love to do it more, frankly, though it's like a whole can of worms because there's so many of us here at the university. But, I'd say start small, maybe even like, and I’m obviously happy to work with you all, but say, I'm going to respond to my DMs or I'm going to spend x amount of time every day.
We didn't really have enough time to get into super detail about time management, but, you know, even the pomodoro method where you, like, set a timer for a certain amount of time and I'm just going to, like, look through my feed or people that follow me and like their content. Just like it. Then they see that you liked it. Especially, I mean, this is where you have to exercise, also, a certain amount of judgment, and I would absolutely caution you to err on the side of conservatism with that because, you know, you want to definitely be engaging with content that you feel confident aligns with the institutional messaging and aligns with your brand, right?
I go through, however, even on all platforms, to the extent that I am able to, and like mentions that we have where people have been accepted and they're really enthusiastic. I sometimes retweet those. It's one of the few instances in which we retweet non-internal brand accounts. Or like a professor is given some sort of award, or something that's happening in their life that they're tweeting about that, they're posting anywhere about that. Just coming in and being like “Congratulations” or, you know, “This research sounds amazing.”
It comes from a genuine place, I think, when you're doing it. For me, it's like I really do feel happy for those people. Especially in the case of admissions, they're really excited to be coming here and they're living their their best life to know that they're gonna come to Columbia, and that's great for us and it's great that they feel that we are happy that they're that they're happy to be a part of this place. I'd like to see more of that.
One of the toughest things for all of us, I think, is bandwidth, and frankly, like, that work takes time. It takes a lot of time. It's like so small, minuscule, little micro actions, but really you get sucked into it, right? And then you're like, “I've been reading posts for an hour” and “What day is it?” So, start small and see where you get with it, I would say.
Cassandra:
So, speaking of which, because this is something that normally comes up a lot when Robert and I do our Strategic Communications Planning course. I almost want to do a shameless plug but–
Acacia:
Do it; plug it!
Cassandra:
You guys, Strategic Communications Planning is amazing. You don't even know that you need it, and you won't even know how much you need it until you actually give it a shot. It can feel like a heavy load because it requires a different way of thinking, and, you know, we all are resistant to change at some point in our lives. But what you can get from it is you get to network with your fellow communicators, and you get to learn how to be strategic. So something that even Acacia mentioned that when she first came on board, she thought that she would be an excellent communicator; she knew how she was going to create this content. But she learned that she had to create structure, and structure comes from being strategic, and thinking about what you have in your hand, and how you can enhance it, and how you can contribute. So, if that's something you would like to do, please—I almost said DM me—-please email me, and we can get you guys on board for the next cohort.
But something I actually wanted to mention, which is what we hear a lot, is about this bandwidth. So there's a lot of people in our Strategic Communications, and I'm sure people who are on here that just are at a loss for realistically how long it takes from creating content to post. What that time frame looks like, and is it reasonable to think that they can keep up with it? And is it so salient—this is part b, part two or b to this question—is it salient to really carve out that time? Should they just kind of muster up the importance of it and set a time frame? And if so, like, what do you think that time frame should be for content planning and posting?
Acacia:
Yeah, yeah this is a big thing, right? Because it's, like– I'll try to be honest also about my experience myself, which I think sometimes errs towards the, like, more organized side of this, and I thank myself for that later, and then sometimes really just feels like it's all happening one thing after another. And I think that that is completely understandable, given that we're, first of all, we're still in a pandemic, and then second of all, like, we're all being pulled in a bunch of different directions.
This type of role, comms roles in general, you're wearing different hats. I think that finding a comfortable planning ahead strategy is something that I thank myself for when I do it. And then I feel such a weight off because, with the broader news team, we know that it's coming; we know that it's done; I know that it's done. How far in advance really depends on, you know, your situation, how big your team is, whether you have a lot of recurring things that you can, like, plan ahead for.
I’ll just speak to my experience. I'm doing both, right? Like, today I'm responding to this, we're trending on Twitter, people are damning us about it. Not only do we have to respond, I have to, sort of, coordinate across the university to ensure that there's sort of a mirrored response from everyone else to support us. That I did not wake up and expect that to happen today. I wish it had not. And then, you know, we have the upcoming and ongoing and recurring big events, markers: Commencement being obviously the cornerstone event of the year for us at Columbia, but there's a lot of those.
I think spending an hour or even a half hour once a week, like, blocking out and saying, “Here's what's, like, now, next, future as far as content. Even if you don't write the content, just like, note planning out what you know is coming. Again, these feeds are hungry, the beast must be fed. And in a lot of cases, sorry to say, that if you have a Twitter and you're only posting once a day, you're not gonna see the impact that you want, and you'd really be better off directing that energy somewhere else, potentially, or condensing down.
And again, it's about strategic thinking about where's the best place to be speaking to the people I want to speak to who can help me. You might not have any social media platforms but you're leveraging what we would call, like, influencers—or ambassadors, really—that, like, are part of– they’re your faculty, they're your students. Like, maybe they can be sort of induced to help you do the work you have to do rather than, you know, and then you don't have to run three different platforms every day.
Cassandra:
Speaking of which, in terms of managing all this, are there specific tools, or perhaps a calendaring tool, that you can share with everyone so they can feel like they can organize a bit more? And where can they find it if it already exists?
Acacia:
Say that one more time.
Cassandra:
Is there a tool that you use for calendaring or suggestions, resources that you might want to recommend to everyone so they can be a little bit more organized?
Acacia:
Yes. (I didn’t know I muted myself.) There are some free tools. I would say that my axe to grind is that I would like as many people in the university as possible to come into using Sprout Social for social media. There are comparable tools out there; we used to have a Hootsuite account. Currently, we utilize Sprout to schedule—and literally it’s calendar view, gives reporting analytics. And now internally in Communications and Public Affairs with Government and Community Affairs, we have an approval workflow so that we can easily transfer pieces of content one to the other. In the future, I'd like to see a single tool. I don't know if actually that will be Sprout. There is a world in which we've discussed converting to Salesforce, but obviously everything is sort of on pause for us for, like, enterprise level tools here.
But, you know, I think there are free versions of that. Even just Tweet Deck, which is free, it would be a great addendum because not only can you schedule in advance, you can see, like, specialized feeds searches of these different search terms or your partners.
I would encourage people to put in the chat what they use to organize because there are just as many different tools out there as there are people, really, and there are some really strong leaders. A lot of Australian apps are more affordable, for some reason, so like Falcon.io is another one that I know is popular with folks. They really are all very similar to one another.
I also could not live without Google Docs. I literally don't know what I would do. Like tomorrow Google Docs failed, I would fail. I don't know what I would do. I would be back to, like, I would send you a note in the mail, I don't know.
Cassandra:
I'm actually kind of curious, and Veronica is too. What are the advantages? Because I've heard of Hootsuite, but I haven't heard too much about Sprout, so what are the advantages that you found about Sprout?
Acacia:
Yeah, they're very similar. They're very similar, truly. They can do all the same things. There were some differences. Price was one of them. And, you know, if anyone is interested in talking more about this, I'd be happy to talk to them about this. Honestly, it's just an easier interface. Also, the mobile is better; Sprout mobile app is, like, is really powerful, easy to use. Sprout also has a—Hootsuite may also, actually—but I really actually find the Sprout browser app addendum to be very effective, where it's like, if I mount a piece of content, I could actually just—I don't do this that much because of scheduling—but like, if I were spontaneous, to speak spontaneously, to come up on a piece of content that, you know, I'm like, “Oh this would be great,” and it'll import the image, like, directly from the web page using this chrome app.
Buffer is another really popular one and also, like, cost-effective, and I think knowing Ben and Jen, I think they would be happy to help anyone who's also interested in Buffer; I just volunteered you.
What other tools? I think, like, tools for reaching one another, I will plug—I think most of you here are part of this world already—but if any of you are on here who are not already a part (who are doing social media actively) are not already a part of the community of practice which is a listserv. And also a slack channel, you know, to the extent that we busy people are able to keep in touch. We do that, and you can share your content with me in various ways once you become a part of that group.
We also have begun registering everyone's accounts, and I’m going to find and drop that link in the chat for anyone who's on here who has not yet participated in the social media registration. I've had a question recently about when that registry will be made public to the community of practice, and TBD, but hopefully at some point in the near future.
Cassandra:
So, Caitlin actually has a question. Caitlin, are you here? (Once, twice.) Caitlin Hawk?
She says it feels like this field has become specialized, and that for small entities to move the needle on social media is an Everest. Is it conceivable to organize differently and share specialists, tap into central CU comms power? We are fast moving to a full-time equivalent for social media across many entities.
Acacia:
That's my dream, but yes exactly this that I've just described is sort of using WeConnect, using the social media listserv. Also, I think the future of this is being more judicious about what you promote. Like, you may not be able to promote every single thing that you want to promote. You may have to really put your energy into something that's more eye-catching or or more creative, or find an outlet that's, like, less labor-intensive to promote your content.
It's just important to get in line with the university systems that we have, from calendaring through Bedework where people can discover events, to being in connection with us, with me. To promote events, you all have a public affairs officer equivalent, for the most part, or you have a comm or your accounts person who's connected to WeConnect. You know, these tools exist now to sort of further this end because we know that it's not possible for you to create a new account and become, you know, a 100,000-person-strong verified account.
Our brands are not that interesting to the general public. I'm sorry. I love you all. All of your stuff is important to me; I love all my children equally, but truthfully we are a brand and we are vying for people's attention with, like, amazing prank videos. Like, we have to come together and sort of focus in on these things that are important and find ways to collaborate amongst ourselves. And it's hard; it's really hard.
But I think that for me the important thing is, like, don't feel like a failure if you feel like the social media is failing because it's very difficult to succeed in a day-by-day where there's more content today than there was yesterday, every day.
Cassandra:
And do you speak on these topics more on your social media meetups?
Acacia:
The social media meetups, and I miss you all because I have not had time to convene one recently, but I will have to for Commencement soon.
Cassandra:
You have a date yet?
Acacia:
So, the social media meetups are really for the community of practice, so if you email me after this and you actively manage a social media account for Columbia, or you partner as a manager, email me and I will add you to that list, and then you will become informed about meetups.
There's a number of tutorials through Columbia Sites, and I understand that we're moving towards, like, recording those for the future so we don't have to do them, like, again and again. But there's a couple of those that are going to be scheduled in the near future, and I can inform folks through WeConnect about when those might be. Those are, you know, not really going to differ that entirely much from this particular lab. They might focus in—some of them—on a particular issue or platform.
I also partnered with Faculty Advancement recently. Jen! And collaborated on a panel with them, both on Linkedin and on Twitter, so those are available. And I can seek the links or maybe Jen will beat me to it.
Jen Leach:
Oh, I'll put the links in.
Acacia:
You organized the meet!
If you guys want to watch me talk more, which I cannot fathom, but–
Cassandra:
Five minutes!
Acacia:
Yeah, we're coming up on time, so–
Cassandra:
Yes, you’re coming up– I was just about to say that. We're coming up on time, so if you guys have been burning questions, please feel free.
Luis Herrera, could you share the worksheet for setting intentions for social media platform guide?
Acacia:
Yeah
Cassandra:
So while Acacia gets there, go ahead and send them. And you guys know you have some questions, don't be bashful.
I do have a couple of–-
Jen Leach just put the link up for you guys.
So one of the things that we all want to know: Are we doing our job, and how well are we doing it? Right? Like, that's what everybody wants to know. How are we contributing, what do you use to measure success, or how do you define what success is on social media?
Acacia:
I think this will be a subject of an upcoming Sites 101 Analytics. Hopefully, you know, we have a great new engagement editor who I'm so grateful for.
I think it's gotta come from you. And again, start small because– start with achievable goals, like anything else, like anything else you do. You want to travel to 30 countries, you start with one. Not right now, but that was my first analogy that came to mind. You know, you want to see five new followers. Like, it doesn't matter if the numbers are small; they're significant to you. I think tailoring that to having expectations that are moderate.
I know I'm not answering the question because I think that it's really individual. And I think that if you are trying new things, and you're willing to scrap things that aren't working, that's success to me in this role. And, I honestly, even saying that, I’m like, I could do better when it comes to that, even for us. But there's a lot to be done, and I don't think that, for better or worse, there's ever, like, gonna be a feeling of complete success, and I know that I have not found that, for me, at least.
Hold on.
Cassandra:
You said you talked about managing expectations. What if my expectations are different from my supervisor's expectations?
Acacia:
This is a big, yeah…
Cassandra:
It doesn't hurt that their expectations are outlandish.
Acacia:
[Laughs.] Yeah.
Cassandra:
I’ll bring it to, what’s a fair expectation?
Acacia:
I'm also available for this. I think people know that I'm willing to back any of you up on these things, you know, and talk through and assess whether I think that they're reasonable expectations. But there are just some things that you cannot do much about. And there's also a lot of time that gets sucked into this that I think is hard to really…
The thing that's so tough about social media, and we all know it, is that everybody does it. Like, everybody does it ambiently. Like most people have at least Facebook at this point, so you so everyone knows social media. That is a real hurdle because, like, no one thinks they know communications because they, like, talk or email, like, but apparently everyone thinks they know social media because they have a social media platform somewhere or an account. And they're just not the same thing, and that's just a really hard thing to have to combat, that there's like a lot more that goes into it. Not all of it is even about how to use these platforms, frankly. And there's so much that you don't know, that I don't know, that I want to know. So I think that's where I start. Like, not to be defensive about it with folks, but just to, like…
I'm happy to back you up is what I would say. Like, anybody who needs help around this, and many of you know I'm willing to come in and just, like, help people who maybe don't fully understand why it's xyz, that there's a reason why that it just doesn't, doesn’t whatever it is.
Cassandra:
And I love that. I think that's something that a lot of people aren't aware of that we have here, and then breaking down these silos is that we have partnership, and I think that's really silly, and it really does help to create that buffer.
We are coming up on time, you guys. Before we close out, I just wanted to acknowledge CGC webinars. They would like for us to meet Columbia's newest communication officer Andrew Swift. He's in Berlin right now and is working for Global Centers. Everyone, please say hi to Andrew, welcome him to the team. Welcome, Andrew!
And thank you for mentioning that. I think it's important that we know who our colleagues are. So Acacia, and Robert, feel free to chime in too. Acacia, thank you so much. I feel that this was much needed and was an elevated conversation, which I'm really excited about because sometimes we kind of talk about some of the mundane things with social media. Everybody wants to know, you know, how much, and what to do, and everything. But this is a very much
an elevated conversation around being responsible on social media, and having that presence on social media, and also being being gentle with yourself and with the process of learning and growth, right? Like, it is a process; you're not going to get it all in one shot, so I really appreciate that.
Everyone is saying, “Thanks, Acacia.” “Thank you.” “Thank you.” “Thank you, Acacia and Cassandra and Rob for setting this up.” You're wonderful.
So guys, feel free to email Acacia. Acacia, would you put your email address–
Acacia:
Yes.
Cassandra:
–in the chat so that you guys can reach out to her if need be or have that uncomfortable conversation with your supervisor. That you've done–
Acacia:
Susan noted that central comms can back you up as well, because there's a lot. It's not just social media, right? It's web development, it's content development, it's event promotion. We have to do a lot of expectation setting.
Cassandra:
Yes, Mary, this recording will be shared. I'm currently creating our website for all of the trainings and workshops for you guys, and also the website's resources; and the attachment that is available here I will also include that under the subheading for social media
Thank you guys for joining us. We are at 3:01, so if you've made it this far, congratulations. We appreciate you guys, but we are all set. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in.
We'll be here next week. Next week we're gonna have another one, so look out for that email. I’ll keep you guys posted.
If you guys have any suggestions, we are open to them. I can't make promises, but we're at least open to hearing what your suggestions are.
Robert:
Thank you, Acacia. Thank you, Cassandra.
Acacia:
Bye. Thank you so much.