What's new with #UNHSocial?

Before the Fall semester begins, #UNHSocial spends a lot of time strategizing and preparing for move-in weekend on campus. Part of our transition is to get students excited to come back to campus and to share their school pride through Facebook class groups, Twitter, and Instagram. All this leads up to our pep rally on opening weekend. We ask students to use hashtags #UNH and #UNHSocial when sharing on various social networks. We also have a great student produced blog at unhtales.com, in which students talk about their academic-influenced experiences.

With a brand new class on campus, we wanted to make sure they were aware of our efforts and to make sure the students knew we existed prior to move-in day.  We starting using the hashtag of #UNH17 and without asking, incoming freshman started using it more and more on Twitter and Instagram throughout the Summer - the engagement, photos, and interactions grew so large we collected it all in a Storify and shared it with the entire university community. To make sure we didn’t lose anybody, #UNHSocial also offered contests by giving away UNH tees, hats, and Alex and Ani UNHbracelets from our Barnes & Noble campus bookstore to encourage even more sharing and engagement.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn are our go to social media tools, but we’re trying out new platforms such as Vine. Creating 6-second videos to help demonstrate various situations on campus is catching on, but we want to be more creative and get more student involvement. We currently have over 900 followers on Vine and it’s steadily growing.  This semester, I have 4 student workers who are going to ramp up our Vine presence and it might spill over to the new Instagram video app as well - we'll see.

This semester, you can expect an amazing, but fun #UNHSocial attack all over campus. We're going to have more contests where students can win great UNH gear, but also get the student perspective through photos, videos, and blog entries. We just launched a new mobile app for Android and iOS devices and it include GPS tracking for our bus system - students will never miss another bus! We're starting to heavily promote this app because it also includes our social media directory, student blogs, campus map, athletics scores, dining menus, events, access to Blackboard, class schedules, and much more.

Our favorite platform right now is Instagram and Twitter. Photos work best! Why? Because they're fast, easy, and our students love to share! Just search #UNH or #UNHSocial right now to find out! Lately, we've seen more engagement, more followers, and even more comments and questions through Instagram. It's a super quick way to reach students and it gives them a voice.  

Who knows, maybe it will surpass Twitter in number of followers someday...