How do you empower a two-person team who is in charge of the university’s social media on a part-time basis?
Give them tools to perform a excellent job and the resources to document the improvements.
Wichita State had an interesting problem that they were encountering; how were they going to harness the power of social media? For a college that was beginning to double-down on technology, this was the make-or-break point for an emerging social media initiative. At the time, there were only two people who were did the social media for Wichita State, and neither of them have had extensive experience on how to effectively use social media and asked students for a place to start.
The task was assigned to our group of four where we had to analyze the current usage of social media and figure out how to improve the effectiveness of social media without employing someone specifically for social media, due to budget restraints.
UX Hypothesis
We believe that understanding different social media platforms and creating strategy plans will increase traffic to the social media platforms and enhance the students of Wichita State.
We will know this is true when a higher frequency of like/retweets/shares for many of the social media posts.
The first suggestion that we offered was to start tracking the metrics between of the social media accounts. This allows the two to try out new things and measure the effectiveness. The tracked data provides concrete evidence, instead of the anecdotal results that the social media team relied on.
Another benefit to the recording of metrics is that this would bring a deliverable in hand to the university department heads, will make it easier to get funding for a position in the future. With Wichita State wanting to take a step into the future, proving the worth of social media now is important in order to get the necessary funding to expand the social media program in the future.
For Wichita State, Facebook is more of an interactive platform for generating conversation between students and the organization. The ideal Facebook user may be someone who is on the go, but likely for someone stationary who has time to browse. Schedules, event locations, and additional search resources would be helpful to generate traffic to the Facebook page, and interaction/engagement with students and groups would also improve the relationship between student and the university.
Twitter would be more useful for quick information and the posting of upcoming events. One of the ideas we proposed was to have the school mascot, WuShock, go around campus and have people tag where they found @Wu_Shock on Twitter. Twitter would be more useful for putting out quick information, information that people would not have to necessarily search for, but be able to find at the relevant moment.
With these ideas in mind, Wichita State took into consideration these ideas which allowed them get a dedicated social media intern, as well as unleash the full potential for social media for a university investing in the future.
UX Skills used:
- Problem Solving: Understood the issue WSU faced and what steps could be taken to solve the problem.
- Brainstorming: Thought of possible ideas WSU could use to engage with students and enhance their social media.
- Interviews: Communicated with students and staff about their expectations of social media and what could be improved.