One of the great things about having students on your social media team is that they bring you new ideas and platforms — some of which even work behind the scenes. GroupMe — which our students suggested — has been a noteworthy new tool that has improved our efforts this semester.
GroupMe is a private messaging service that allows you to share text, photos and video — and to help organize what you do.
This semester, we have our largest social media student team ever — seven students. How do we keep activities organized, especially spontaneously? GroupMe.
With that larger group, most of the students are specializing on one particular channel. But when they get that great content, how do they share it with the rest of us for the other channels? GroupMe.
The perfect example of how we use it came this weekend, with a special and decidedly visual event — our first-ever Teddy Bear Toss to benefit local kids. In a nutshell, attendees to the Saturday night men’s hockey game were asked to bring teddy bears (or they could buy them in the arena from the local Girl Scouts) and throw them on the ice after the first Laker goal. A wonderful way to make spirits bright for a number of children this holiday season.
But it’s also clearly great content. Saturday afternoon, I sent a group message asking who was available to get video and/or photos at the game. Two students, Ilyssa and Erika, replied they would be there and they determined Ilyssa (whose main channel is Twitter) would get photos and Erika (whose main channel is Instagram) would get video.
The Lakers scored an early goal, teddy bears rained down and both teams helped collect them. Great visuals, indeed. Ilyssa’s photos and Erika’s video were posted and shared to appear across Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat, all doing very well at showing this event that supported a worthy cause and underscoring we are a caring community.
A lot of people focus on the dazzle and the sizzle of social media, but you can’t do a good job without the structure and the steak. Whether its something as simple as Yousef, our intern who specializes in athletics, telling me he’s taking care of promoting today’s action, or as complex as coordinating a big social media moment on the fly, GroupMe has really been a fabulous addition to our social media game.
InsideTimsHead 