As the academic year comes to a close, we thought it was a good time to reflect on all of the work UMW’s social media team has accomplished over the past year. Let’s start with three hashtag campaigns that got our students tweeting about our university:
#UMWFinals Campaign (December 2014)
We launched our first hashtag campaign during finals week of the fall semester using #UMWFinals to encourage students to share their last week of the semester with us. Students were encouraged to show us their finals projects and favorite places to study… and they did! Over five days, #UMWFinals was used 200 times and the resulting Storify received 230 views. Shout out to our Social@UMW group that helped promote the campaign!
#UMWSnowDay Campaign (February 2015)
It took a while, but when our campus was finally covered in frozen flakes on February 17, our social media team was ready with a #UMWSnowDay campaign. Between snow ball fights and snow angels, our students shared pictures of their snow day festivities. In just one day, the hashtag was used 86 times. The posts were collected into a Storify that received 1,079 views.
#UMW15 Campaign (May 2015)
To celebrate our Class of 2015’s special day, we used #UMW15 as the official hashtag and collected content into a Tweetwall that was shared at the undergraduate commencement. In total, we collected 1,045 tweets that reached 171,968 people. The hashtag was also popular on Instagram, where it was tagged 515 times in the five weeks leading up to graduation.
We do more than just tweet all day though. Here are a few other things our team has been busy putting in place this year:
Launched a new Social Media Policy
With a social media presence spanning 130 accounts (and we’re still counting), UMW’s social media team developed a policy keep its social savvy community thriving, our brand story, and our accounts in compliance with state and federal laws.
Created a Directory Submission Form
While we would have liked to get a social media directory live this year, we made steps towards our goal by setting up a submission form so anyone running a UMW social media account can add their accounts to the directory. We’ll keep the work going this summer, stay tuned!
Revamped UMW’s YouTube Presence
With the help of our new video intern, our team was able to turn UMW’s YouTube page around with branded images and a new series of Great Minds videos featuring our passionate students, faculty and alumni.
