Permanent link for Building a College President's Social Media Presence on May 28, 2020

Written by Anna Young

After beginning her tenure as president of Grand Valley State University in 2019, Philomena V. Mantella became the first president at GVSU to have social media. She has a professional presence on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. 

Managing social media for an individual is very different from an institutional account. Here are a few tips the Grand Valley social media team has learned along the way. 

Assemble a Team

President Mantella’s busy schedule gives ample opportunity for great social content but doesn’t allow her time to manage her social media accounts on her own. It quickly became evident that in order to grow a strong following and consistently create high-quality posts, support was needed.

Our social team monitors President Mantella’s social media each day to share content and monitor engagements. Maintaining an active presence on social media has been key to growing the following on all of these accounts. 

Building a close relationship with the president’s office has been essential to curating strong content for social media. The president’s office will keep the social media team updated on President Mantella’s schedule, and assist in sharing relevant content with us as needed. 

Identify Your Goals

Being new to the role of president, the strategy around President Mantella’s accounts is focused on accurately demonstrating her priorities as a leader, and fostering a strong relationship with the GVSU community. 

We utilize President Mantella’s accounts to share more specific presidential initiatives that may not resonate with the broader GVSU social media audience. We’ve also seen success in sharing more personal posts, such as photos of her dog, or outings she’s had with her family. 

To support building a connection with the Laker community, we regularly engage with relevant posts through likes or comments. This includes congratulating recent Laker alumni on their graduation or thanking a faculty member for going above and beyond with their students. 

Make a Plan

On a weekly basis, we share the social media plan for the next week with President Mantella and a few others in her office. President Mantella has full approval of all of the content that is shared on her accounts, and often posts content on her own when she sees fit. 

We’ve also collaborated with her to curate specific audience personas that she wishes to connect with on social media. This includes national leaders in higher education, and those working in innovative tech spaces around the country, including professionals at Google and Sony. 

Track Analytics

To ensure the goals you’ve set are being met, it’s essential that you are regularly examining your analytics. 

Being new accounts, tracking follower growth seems like it would be priority number one, but we actually focus more on engagement, impressions and reach. You can have a large following, but if they aren’t engaged, it means your content isn’t connecting with your audience. 

Additionally, if you have low reach and impressions on your posts, It’s unlikely that your audience will continue to grow. The best way to ensure strong impressions is to generate timely, unique content that others will want to see. 

Not sure what analytics are most important to you? Sprout created a helpful run-down of what social media metrics are, and what you should be paying attention to. 

You can learn more about President Mantella and her initiatives at www.gvsu.edu/president.

Categories: best practices strategy
Posted by Anna Young on Permanent link for Building a College President's Social Media Presence on May 28, 2020.