Working in the tech world can be daunting!
With the accelerated growth of Artificial Intelligence, and newer and newer updates coming out, what feels like every day, It can feel impossible to stay up to date with the latest Information technology trends. It can feel like you are always lagging behind and going into a dead sprint to catch up to that “razor’s edge” that the tech world sits on. And it’s no different when it comes to running a social media page either! It is here, on this double-bladed razor’s edge that my culminating senior project comes in.
My senior project is a perfect tie between my job experience in IT and my degree in Communications. I was approached by my boss at the IT Service Desk about taking on this project and in the beginning, there were a lot of unknowns. These unknowns were as simple as an exclamation “Wait… we have an Instagram page?” and then quickly followed up by the question “Who runs it?” Well, turns out that the page @byui_it does, in fact, exist and it is run by some pretty amazing people in the BYU-Idaho IT Governance Team.
I had the opportunity to meet with the Social Media Specialists over in the IT Governance offices to get a baseline of what the team was already doing. That, combined with a little harmless snooping on the page, gave me a good feel of where I and the team were starting from.
Baseline
I took some screenshots to get a nice “before” picture for the transformation. On a first glance I could see that reels perform better than traditional posts and that the traditional posts are more informative and the reels are more funny and relatable. Highlights on the top of the page still had good information in them. Though some highlights share old locations for places, long gone employees, some COVID era trends, and an old job posting. All of which were really simple fixes. Just delete and recreate the story posts with more accurate information. Or replace the highlight with something more relevant to the brand of the page.
On the page most tradition Instagram’s post might get 10- 20 likes and reels getting in the range of 40-60 with two reels spiking in engagement, with over 150 likes. Both reels used relative hashtags and trending video formats to achieve this outcome and can be used as a baseline for what a good post is for the team.
Restrictions
In order to create and operate a university sponsored social media page, you need to play by the universities rules. Aspects like logo design and style have to be uniform and approved by University Relations. In addition to the branding guidelines set by the school, all posts they make must also meet the requirement of being informative and related to the BYU-Idaho IT world. You can look at the branding guides set by the university here.
The IT Governance team is primarily comprised of student employees. This is great for being in-touch with current trends on social media. They even have dedicated graphic designers for all the infographic and posts seen on the Instagram’s page. But the IT Governance team is responsible for a lot more than just maintaining and posting on Instagram. So I wanted to make a good plan that they can could follow without a having to drop everything they are doing to make posts.
Goals
EXISTING POSTING GOALS
The IT Governance team shared with me that they have the goal off posting at least 2 Reels a week and posting infographics 2-3 times a week. The traditional posts are planned out about a month in advance with helpful tips for registration, graduation, etc. Where as for Reels, the team meets Mondays to brainstorm ideas for Reels, followings trends or memes and sharing the formats with each other. All are post are approved by the IT Governance Manager prior to posting. Under this schedule they post 4 out of the 5 weekdays.
ADDITIONAL GOALS
I categorized the goals for this refresh in two parts. To raise internal awareness and increase external engagement and I listed the following goals and ideas to demonstrate these goals.
Internal Awareness
- Collabs and takeover within IT and other university pages
- Having employees follow the page and interact with posts.
- Posters event with QR codes to incentivize following the page
External Engagement
- 4 reels that break 60 likes (100 likes)
- Traditional posts float in the range of 20 – 30
- increase followers to 1500 (currently 1365)
Audience
The Instagram page’s main audience is 18-25 year old BYU-Idaho students (Gen Z) focusing mainly on-campus students. And the secondary audience is IT employees. Though these employees may not all be 18-25, they are still an important sub-audience that can be tapped.
How I Did It
I wanted to show how easy simple it is to promote your own brand through social media. So I did convenient methods to show case this. When I say “simple”, I mean sharing to my Instagram story when a new post drops, telling co-workers and friends about the page, and putting the word out through channels available, even Microsoft Teams. I wrote on a style to match the brand (comedy).
In addition to using social media to promote the page, the IT Governance Team promoted the page at an “Amazing Race” themed event for all the IT Student employees. At this event they encouraged employees to follow while waiting in line for the free lunch provided. They also took the opportunity to film a Reel with all the employees and used it for one of there posts for the week.
Posts ideas came from trends on social media and by looking at what other similar Instagram pages do and mimicking there methods. The Governance Team would Searched for trends throughout the week and meet on Mondays to discuss what Reels and Posts they were goin to launch that week.
It’s also a good thing to mention that I was not involved in the day-to-day but remained as an almost 3rd party outside consultant for the IT Governance team despite my ties to the IT Department.
Results
Broke the reels goal, as for the other goals, not so much. Traditional posts continued on there same amount of likes with it floating around the 10 like benchmark. The page gained 18 followers, that came from an IT event where they encouraged employees to follow the page. In addition, I have a way to bribe visitors to the senior showcase to actually follow the page and it rhymes with “rookies”.
Reels
This slideshow below contains screenshots of the 9 reels that were created while I was working on this project. As you can see, at least 4 have like counts over 60 and a couple breaking 100. So we accomplished the goal we set or the reels! We primarily focused on increasing reels interactions due to their shareability and relatable content.
One reel in particular, found on the 6th slide, performed exceptionally well with 359 likes! I this could function as the benchmark. It is a post that focuses on the audience of students. With a popular anime scene leading to a pun. The description acted as an invitation to interact with the post with some humor, poking fun at common discussion board post that all students can relate to. It even had local hashtags that drive more people to see the post and take part in the soda shop discussion.
How Communications Helped Me
Throughout my time as a communications student I found that the classes I took really prepared me for this project. In previous Public Relations Classes we worked with real clients and did market research and developed PR plans and booklets. So when the time came to do my own project it felt natural. And when I felt stuck, I would refer back to my past assignments, notes from class, and professors to help create this my own. The classroom was where I learned the skills I needed to be successful in this project.
In addition to the course materials, I’d also say working in groups, in school and work, gave me strong interpersonal skills and project management skills to get this project done efficiently and correctly.
I learned the principles of promoting social media and establishing a brand through research and personal experience. And from my previous emphasis and tools that were made available to me i had fun in creating design elements that are appealing.
Overall, my degree, my teachers, and my classmates all had a part in making me into the person and employee that I am today. And that is irreplaceable and worth more than a degree. Though I still want/need/deserve that silly piece of paper!
Thanks for reading this far!
Follow me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nate-wilkinson-365a27220/