Social Media at June Orientation

Just as commencement comes to an end, UNH gets prepared for it's next class to arrive...
The class of 2018. 

June is orientation month in which almost 3,400 first year students visit campus, stay over night, meet future classmates, chat with academic advisors, tour campus, sign up for classes, get their photo IDs, and learn more about university resources. It's a lot to go through in just two days, but the students absolutely love it.

How do we capture orientation through social media and share what we see every day? First, we define the use of a hashtag for first-year students (which we started back in December 2013, when applications were arriving at our admissions office). This year's hashtag is #UNH18. Next, we share content all over our social networks. The answer is not just Facebook and Facebook Groups, but we also take advantage of our LinkedIn University page, Twitter, Instagram, and Vine. We share many amazing photos on Facebook and Instagram, but this year, the real treasure came from the six-second videos on Vine created by our student workers. 

#UNH18 on Vine

As students arrived by bus, car, or on foot - Hillary Flanagan '14 and I approached many of the newest Wildcats and asked them if they had 6 seconds to spare before heading to the registration desk inside Stoke Hall. We couldn't believe the response we got -- some videos we couldn't post, due to background noise, but many more we did and we're so proud of our newest class for helping us show the world the newest faces at UNH. 

*Our list of Vine videos will continue to grow all the month of June, then it's time for #HumansofUNH.

Stay tuned! 

UNH is nominated for a Shorty Award!

The Shorty Awards: "honor the best of social media, recognizing the people and organizations producing real-time short form content across Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, and the rest of the social Web. More than 2 million tweet-nominations were sent during the 5th Annual Shorty Awards nomination process."

The University of New Hampshire was lucky to be included and nominated this year for best social media college by Barnes & Noble. Vote for UNH here: http://shortyawards.com/UofNH

Watch our Vine and read our interview all about social media and UNH here:  http://unh.me/tp2vK

Social Media for Colleges mentions UNH

UNH Social Media was mentioned by Social Media for Colleges for our post on the 'Before I Die...' wall seen outside Dimond Library towards the end of the Fall semester. Thanks for the mention! We'll have more creative posts soon!

Link: http://socialmediaforcolleges.com/blog/2013/12/9/great-social-media-idea-before-i-die

Top Social Colleges Share Experiences in Google+ Hangout

The medium, as much as the message, is key to engaging students, and the panel was invited to name the favored platforms at their colleges and the success of newer mediums such as Tumblr and Snapchat. Jason Boucher, Social Media Director at the University of New Hampshire pointed out. “Photos work best for us, so Twitter and Instagram are used the most,” he said. “And now, Instagram includes comments and questions – so we’re adding 100 new followers a week.”

Read the entire article here: http://www.bncollege.com/news/top-social-colleges-share-experiences-in-google-hangout/ 

How Every First-Gen Should be Using Social Media

Recently, FirstGenerationStudent.com asked me to blog about social media and how students should approach using the many social platforms and accounts they've created...

Read the entire article here: http://ow.ly/qyJOk