Welcome!
My name is Libby Sparks and I will be graduating from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo in spring 2021 with a Bachelor of Science in Graphic Communication with a concentration in Design Reproduction Technology. Choosing this major was one of the best decision I have made so far in my adult life, and I know that it has set me up for success in the future. I have always loved expressing my creativity through painting, digital design, sewing, crafting, or anything else I can get my hands on. Social media has been one of the best outlets for me to experiment with new ideas. For the past year, I worked as the Director of Social media for the Graphic Communication Department and the Teacher's Assistant for GrC 220: Introduction to Applied Social Media. Although it was challenging, especially being completely virtual, it was a very rewarding experience. Through this position, I have helped students learn how to create content and understand how to use social media for a business, while managing various social media platforms. This journal will share my year long experience, quarterly recaps, and recommendations for the future.
Here is where we started:
The previous Director of Social Media, Madi Krasny, left our socials in a great place. I was excited to continue the work and also bring in some ideas of my own. During the start of my transition in mid-June 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement was sweeping across America and social media. Our department put out a post in solidarity with resources on multiple platforms prior to my transition. While posting on my own over the summer without students, we wanted to limit the amount of "normal" content we put out in order to be mindful and not be tone deaf to the situation. However, it was important to not be silent on the subject and I continued to post accurate and helpful resources almost daily in our Instagram stories. Other content over the summer consisted of a GrC Summer Internship series, job postings, and deadlines.
Summer Posts
Summer takeaways and recommendations: Over summer, I experimented with simpler graphics and branded series. This helped all of our feeds look a lot more cohesive and easier on the eyes. Posting on all the platforms helped me get first hand experience about the workload. Instagram stories and tweets were a lot easier to produce than Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn posts.
- In order to even out the workload, have IG stories and Twitter teams have at least 2 individual posts a week.
- Incorporate DEI topics to promote discussion; be proactive in getting statements from the department on sensitive matters.
- Instagram came out with a new feature over the summer: Reels. The algorithm seems to promote accounts that utilize Reels. Try starting to use more video and animation.
- Discourage a lot of 'positivity quotes' because they were very repetitive over the past year.
- Aim for cleaner and simpler branding and graphics. Too much text or 'swirls' gets very busy and the user may not know what to focus on.
FALL QUARTER
I was so excited to start helping students and work with Lyndee! I was definitely nervous and was still learning how the class worked myself. Lyndee and I met every week outside of class to go over grading and anything important for the upcoming week. The first few weeks were a lot of work and preparation, but the workload evened out throughout the quarter as I began getting used to the class. During fall, we had 20 students divided into 5 teams. Each student had to individually create a post for every week of the quarter on their platform. I put each team into a group text in order to communicate easier with them than through email. I made sure to send a weekly text checking in with each team to make sure things were going smoothly for them. At the beginning of each class I also announced my favorite post for the week, chosen based on high engagement/creativity/great graphics/great copy, etc.
Weekly Recaps:
- Week 1: This was my first time meeting all the students! I introduced myself and got to know a little bit about everyone else. Lyndee and I gave an overview of the class and our current social media platforms. The students completed a survey and we divided them into teams based off of their interests, skill level, and where we thought they would excel.
- Week 2: I gave a Post Creation Presentation about branding, good vs. bad posts, and the whole posting process. I also created about 15 pre-made posts for the students to post on their platform as practice. We had each team do a channel audit to understand their platform more, and develop a plan for the quarter based on their findings.
- Week 3: Lyndee and I began getting into more of a groove with the class. In order to make grading easier, students weekly drafts and final posts were due in the calendar on Fridays by 11:59 PM and I went through the approvals and made comments about edits over the weekend. During this week, the students got more time in their breakout rooms and had a copywriting and proofreading assignment.
- Week 4: I gave a Social Analytics Presentation that went over the importance of analytics and how to use them to improve. The students also had an analytics assignment this week, and started tracking what they thought were the most important metrics.
- Weeks 5 & 6: We had two guest speakers this week: Madi Krasny (The Foggy Dog) and Kayla McCarty (Disney). They both have social media positions but work for very different companies so it was interesting for the students, as well as myself, to see what a social media career could look like. During Week 5, the Instagram and LinkedIn teams advertised the upcoming GrC Career Day with a branded series of posts. These posts were very last minute and definitely made me realize that for winter and spring, more preparation needs to happen. I think they would have been more successful if we related them more to our department, by getting quotes from alumni who work there for example.
- Weeks 7 & 8: We had another guest speaker during Week 7, Kat Cassidy who has a lot of experience doing animation and stop motion. The students created their own project incorporating these aspects and many posted them during Week 8.
- Weeks 9 & 10 & 11: To wrap up the quarter, we had the students update their LinkedIn profiles and connect with the Graphic Communication Department, Lyndee, and myself. Each team was then assigned a final group project that was cater to each specific platform. For example, LinkedIn wrote an article on a Graphic Communication topic, where as Instagram Stories did a research project on how Reels are used for businesses.
Notable Fall Quarter Posts:
Instagram (Content Categories: Industry News, Tutorial/Tip Tuesday, Student Spotlight, Careers/Alumni, Day in the Life, Events, Class or Staff Spotlight)
Instagram stories (Content Categories: Question, Font Feature, Day in the Life, Tip Thursday, Repost, Events, Repost)
Facebook (Content Categories: Events, Tutorial/Tip Tuesday, Student Spotlight, Careers/Alumni, Day in the Life, Industry News, Class or Staff Spotlight)
LinkedIn (Content Categories: Industry News, Tutorial/Tip Tuesday, Student Spotlight, Alumni Spotlight, Job Opportunities, Article, Events)
Twitter (Content Categories: Industry News, Events, Class or Staff Spotlight, Tip Thursday, Careers/Alumni, Student Spotlight, Joke of the Week)
WINTER QUARTER
Winter Quarter started off a lot more smoothly than Fall! I felt that I had a better understanding of how the class worked, boundaries to set, and ideas for changes. This quarter we had 17 students and 6 teams. Here are the changes we made:
- Create a list of content categories with some required, and other up to the team to choose. Have the teams assign the categories on the calendar instead of having them pre-populated.
- Create a new series on Instagram that focuses on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion topics. These posts should be educational, but also tie directly back to the GrC Department and/or the SLO community.
- Plan for Career Day much farther in advance. Ask the Department to try to give at least 2 weeks notice on content they would like posted.
- Start a new team- Video. This will involve a lot of flexibility and experimenting, but we envision it being cross platform, with videos first posted on YouTube and then edited for other platforms as well.
- Transform the IG Stories team into an IG Stories and Reels team. Instagram has been favoring accounts that utilize Reels so this is a great time to experiment. This also evens out the workload between teams.
- Create my own series on LinkedIn featuring graduating seniors to help them make new connections.
- Create my own cross platform series for the new "GrC Speaker Series" in place of International Graphic Communication Week (IGCW).
Weekly Recaps:
- Week 1: This week followed the same as Fall Quarter including introductions, an overview of our current platforms, and an introduction to the two new areas: Video and Reels. Students then completed their survey so that we could assign them to teams.
- Week 2: I made some changes to my Post Creation Presentation in order to clarify more about the posting process. I found it easier to share my screen while going over the calendar with the class. I also created about 15 pre-made posts for the students to post on their platform as practice. We had each team do a channel audit to understand their platform more, develop a plan for the quarter based on their findings, and assign their own content categories. In theory, this sounded like a good idea, but giving the students too many options for categories confused them and many teams didn't even put them into the calendar and so I ended up assigning the categories anyway.
- Week 3: During this week, the students got more time in their breakout rooms and had a copywriting and proofreading assignment. This week is always difficult for the students because they have to have a final post done with out having submitted a rough draft.
- Week 4: I made some updates to the Social Analytics Presentation to emphasize the importance of analytics. The students also started tracking what they thought were the most important metrics.
- Weeks 5 & 6: During these weeks, the students really got into the flow of the class and were staying consistent in their categories. Madi and Kayla were both able to zoom in again and present which I think was very helpful for the students. On LinkedIn, the team started advertising the GrC Career Fair and collecting quotes from GrC alumni that worked at the featured companies. They did a great job of creating a very cohesive series and directly relating it to the GrC Department.
- Weeks 7 & 8: During Week 7, the students wrote a reflection on the presentations from the previous weeks. In Week 8, we had the students update their LinkedIn profiles and connect with us, which was a week earlier than last quarter.
- Weeks 9 & 10 & 11: During the last few weeks of the quarter, we wanted to try something different for a final project. Since PIASC was holding a competition for social media at the time, we had the students follow the guidelines and submit their work. They created a social media campaign relating to a topic within the graphic communication industry for Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. This was a great way for students to experience social media cross platform and a piece to put in their resume. The second aspect of the final project was a team presentation on what they learned throughout the quarter and an overview of their platform analytics.
Notable Winter Quarter Posts:
Instagram (Content Categories: Opportunities, Tips/tutorials/hacks, Student Spotlight/Alumni Spotlight, Events, Concentrations, Industry News, DEI)
Instagram Stories and Reels (Content Categories: Events, Reel/Tutorial Tuesday, Quiz/Poll, Repost, Class Spotlight, Small Biz Saturday, Opportunities)
Facebook (Content Categories: Events, Job/Internship Opportunity, Student Spotlight, Tech/Tip Tuesday, Alumni Spotlight, Industry News, Staff Spotlight)
LinkedIn (Content Categories: Speaker Series, Grad Spotlight/Alumni Career Paths, Announcements, Staff/Professor/Student Spotlight, Job/Internships, Article, Scholarship/Competition Opportunities)
Twitter (Content Categories: Events, Industry News, Concentrations, Tip Thursday, Fun Fact Friday, Meme, Quiz/Poll/Trivia)
Video (No specific content categories)
GrC Speaker Series
The GrC Speaker Series occurred virtually during Winter Quarter in place of International Graphic Communication Week (IGCW). The faculty invited speakers of various disciplines into their classes, and I created graphics and copy to market the series on our social media. These posts were aimed to invite all students to learn from these industry experts. Overall, the best engagement occurred on LinkedIn, which I believe the content was most appropriate for. We were able to tag the companies and each individual, and most reposted which helped with reach. Instagram Stories had decent engagement and it was easy to repost multiple times; we used the countdown feature and added the zoom link to our bio. From our insights, we could see that there were on average 3 link clicks per GrC Speaker IG Story. Instagram posts however did not do very well. Because all of the posts looked the same, many of our students said that they thought it was the same post and skipped over it. This supports the current trend of event posts not doing well on Instagram, but better on Instagram Stories.
SPRING QUARTER
The start of spring was bittersweet... I felt so much more prepared and could see where our socials were going, but also so sad that it would be my last quarter. Each quarter flew by so quickly and Spring Quarter went by the fastest. Winter Quarter saw the biggest changes and so I wanted to keep that momentum going. This quarter we had 23 students and 6 teams. Not many big changes happened during Spring, but some changes and things to keep in mind were:
- No longer do the list of content categories for the students to assign themselves. This was too confusing for them. Assign them before the quarter, but give them the option to change them up.
- At the beginning of every class, have a brainstorming/announcement session.
- Send all links in the Zoom chat to our social platforms during the first or second class for everyone to connect/follow. Tell them to support each other's team!
- Continue with a social media campaign and analytics presentation as a 2 part final project.
- Create a google form for students to send to student and alumni for spotlights.
- Create a GroupMe with the whole class in it to send announcements.
- Emphasize planning early, and doing more than 2 weeks in advance.
- Emphasize importance of Reels and DEI topics on Instagram.
- Give Video team filming tips and SOPs.
- Diversify posts as much as possible!
Weekly Recaps:
- Weeks 1 & 2 & 3: The beginning weeks all followed the same schedule as the previous quarter. I felt so much more confident presenting my Post Creation Presentation and explaining the social calendar. The students completed their intro survey, team channel audit, plan for the quarter, and copywriting assignment.
- Weeks 4 & 5 & 6 & 7: During Week 4 I gave my Social Analytics presentation, but added in a new section that I think was super relevant and important for the class. I talked all about algorithms for each platform and tips for the students to get the most out of them. Students also completed their analytics assignment. We moved up the LinkedIn profile update assignment to Week 5, which was more effective and more students were interacting with our LinkedIn posts. Madi and Kayla came to speak again, and both had new experiences to share.
- Weeks 8 & 9 & 10: To wrap up the quarter, we decided on 2 part final project, similar to Winter Quarter. We created our own prompt for the social media campaign. They had the option of choosing between a DEI or Sustainability social media campaign, directly relating it to the graphic communication industry. The second part of their final project was a team presentation on their analytics and findings throughout the quarter. This quarter was cut a little short because we didn't have class due to Memorial Day, so the presentation came up quickly.
Notable Spring Quarter Posts:
Instagram (Content Categories: Alumni Spotlight, Tips/Tutorials/Hacks, Opportunities (job, internship, scholarship), Student Spotlight, Video, Professor/Class Spotlight, DEI)
Instagram Stories and Reels (Content Categories: Q&A, Events, Take Over Tuesday (day in the life), Reel, Quiz/Poll, F2F, Opportunities (Job, Internship, Scholarship), Font Friday, GrC Collabs, Student/Alum owned businesses, repost)
Facebook (Content Categories: Professor/Staff Spotlight, Student Spotlight, Job/Internship Opportunity, Video, Industry News/Career Segments, Alumni Spotlight, Class Spotlight)
LinkedIn (Content Categories: Professor/Student Spotlight, Grad Series/Alumni Career Paths, Job/Internship Opportunity, Class/Project Spotlight, Announcements/Department info, Article/Industry News, Scholarship/Competition Opportunity)
Twitter (Content Categories: Meme, Contest/Design Submissions, Quiz/Poll/Trivia, Video/retweet, Font Friday, Spotlight Saturday, Opportunities (Job, Internship, Scholarship)
Video (Content Categories: Alumni Spotlight, Tips/tutorials/hacks, Student Spotlight, Professor/Class/Project Spotlight, Concentration Series, Day in the Life)
Graduate LinkedIn Series:
I decide to create a new series on LinkedIn to honor graduates that lost opportunities due to COVID. Those who wanted to participate filled out a google form in place of an interview and I put together the graphics and copy. These posts on LinkedIn acted as a way to network and market that they were open to work. Some students did have jobs already lined up for post-grad and had the opportunity to share.
A content category worth mentioning...
The purpose of this series is to be an ally to marginalized communities. As a department, we want to build and nurture a community that is welcoming and accepting of everyone, no matter their religion, social class, race, gender, political party, and so on. The posts will provide educational material, a call to action, resources, and encourage dialogue. We want to shed light on injustices and inequality in our community, but more importantly target the root causes, and what can be done to create effective change. These posts tie back to SLO and Cal Poly specifically. They required students to put in thoughtful and substantial research for a high quality post.Remember to always have a reason for your post, don’t just post something to post it. Remember to always have a reason for your post, don’t just post something to post it.
FINAL FINDINGS
Instagram: Consistency, people, creativity, diversity, and Reels are most important to pay attention to. There is a trend with our account where posts with tips/tricks have the most saves, while posts with people typically have the most likes and comments. Saves are essentially a "super like" and indicate that the post is important enough that the user wants to come back to it. Even if these posts don't have the highest likes, it is still content that our followers want to see. Tip/tutorials as Reels have seemed to do very well and should really be continued every quarter; we have gotten Reels with over 4K views, over 100 saves, and lots of positive comments. Experimenting with Reels as short student spotlights or class spotlights would be really interesting! I could see someone doing a time lapse of their GrC 339 Book Design process being popular. Our posts with high quality and unique graphics also did well. The DEI topic posts had lots of engagement and were reposted in many other people's stories. What doesn't work well on Instagram is events, career day spotlights, and an over use of graphic heavy posts.
Instagram Stories: Interactive posts (poll, quiz, question box, countdown, etc) or posts will a call to action do significantly better than static IG Stories. A post where students can do something pushes our post further to the front for people to see. Having multiple posts in IG Stories per day increases our reach. Each student should aim to post at least twice a week. If we are tagged in IG Stories or Posts, repost in our story to show off what the students are doing. Reposts normally don't get as many impressions as other content, but it encourages more people to tag us for the chance to be reposted. New story platforms to experiment with are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn stories.
Facebook: Audience is very important for Facebook. The majority of the audience is the 25-34 range at 42.3%, which is younger alumni. The 35 and older age range makes up another 35% of our audience, which is older alumni and parents of current or potential students. Because of this, content is different. Focus on student, alumni, staff, and class spotlights that feature people. Photos of people have done much better than graphic heavy posts. Announcements of awards and news within the Graphic Communication Department do the best, but that content is harder to find. Whenever department news comes up (which hopefully will be easier to hear about in-person) should ALWAYS be posted on Facebook! Job postings and career segments do okay, but could probably be improved by including a quote from an applicable GrC Alum. Posts on tutorials/tips, events, and positivity do not do well and should be used sparingly.
LinkedIn: Our following has been seeing increasing growth on both accounts, but many followers may be confused by two accounts. By combining the two accounts, information will be easier to access and less confusing. Ideally, the business account (not the personal one) should be the only account because it has very robust analytic features. Alumni spotlights, professor spotlights, grad announcements, job postings, and awards/department news always do well. GrC events and Career Day postings don't get a lot of reach or interaction, but is still important information to share. If graphics are included, they should be very simple and professional. LinkedIn is a great platform for sharing more about the different aspects of the graphic communication industry through longer posts, such as writing articles on sustainable packaging. In order to have cohesive posts on LinkedIn, creating a template for spotlights or job postings may be effective. Something that could be experimented with is animation and video content on LinkedIn.
Twitter: Humor truly does the best! The twitter team should really have avid twitter users on it who stay up to date on the trends. Encourage them to be flexible; to some extent let them change their posts in order to be on top of these trends. Once in-person events are back, posting live updates to Twitter is great! The live update from winter quarter of the GrC Banquet did very well compared to other posts that quarter. Twitter seems to be our slowest growing platform; try going through our roster to find current students and follow them.
Video: Video team always has it a little bit harder than the rest of the teams and should be given a lot of flexibility. They have to do a lot more work for a single post. Spring quarter worked well having all team members work on 1 video together each week. If 220 is in-person, it would be ideal to have all team members film and edit together during class to even out the workload. One of the biggest factors for video team is quality. Quality content and quality of the video files. Zoom interviews were laggy and pixelated, so in person interviews are much better if possible. Video team should keep in mind who their audience is. On YouTube, they should cater their videos towards potential and current students. Class, student, and professor spotlights that show what GrC is all about, is the best content for YouTube.
General Recommendations
- Emphasize planning as early as possible! We require a 2 week planning schedule but even putting down ideas 3-5 weeks in advance makes it so much easier on the students. If doing a spotlight series, try to reach out to people in the first few weeks. Students have found sending out an google form with a set deadline in place of an interview as an effective way to be respectful of everyone's time. Encourage working cross-platform on spotlights to have cohesive information and graphics.
- Diversify. Diversity the gender, age, race, concentration, interests as much as possible. Our department has so much to offer and unique people. We want to showcase our department as a whole.
- Make some changes to the team breakdown. Create a stories team that handles IG, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn Stories. Instagram team will now handle normal IG posts as well as Reels. Video should be cross platform on all accounts. Teams should work together to make sure they are not posting on the same topics and to proofread each other's work, but content categories should also spend time working together. All student spotlight people should be in a chat together to coordinate their posts cross-platform. The same goes for alumni spotlight, professor spotlights, class spotlights, events, etc. This will help all our feeds be more cohesive.
- Take more time on the team channel audit and analytics project. Make sure they are logged into the platform account beforehand so that they can look at the analytics. Make sure they understand which content categories perform the best (and continue with them) and which categories perform the worst (and use sparingly). Really emphasize that analytics are extremely important to pay attention to during the quarter. Refer back to the analytic sheet every week for future post ideas. If they choose to use an excel sheet to track their metrics, include a comment column that gives a weekly recap of their finding so that it is easier to visualize. Let them know that at the end of the quarter they will be giving an analytics presentation, so it is important to pay attention to throughout the quarter.
- Use the current student roster to find students to spotlight. Also use this roster to follow students on all our channels. Facebook and Twitter especially need to reach a broader audience.
- Engage before and after posting to boost interactions and reach. By liking, commenting, sharing, DMing, etc users will get a notification from our account and may be inclined to click on our profile and see our new post.
- For job postings/Career Day employer highlights/career series, have students try to reach out to GrC alumni that work at the company. It makes the post more relatable and helps students make more connections at the company.
- Use alt text whenever possible. This will increase our accessibility.
How it ended...
Acting as the Director of Social Media and TA for GrC 220 was a challenging but extremely rewarding experience. Having over an entire year of virtual learning was not what I expected for my college experience and it definitely was difficult at times. I could see that my peers and students in 220 also felt this way at times too, and everyone needed a little more patience and grace this year. A virtual year made it harder to make connections and stay up to date, but each social media team always surprised and impressed me with what they were able to accomplish. I've come to LOVE social media for the business side and all that it has to offer. This position allowed me to become more involved in the department and find my place in the GrC Pod. I loved getting to know 50+ students who were all so unique and spending a year getting to know Lyndee so much better. I admire everyone in our department so much, but Lyndee truly felt like a friend and someone who wanted the best for me and the students. Thank you for this experience!