Rob Peeler leads social media and other digital communication efforts within the College of Health and Human Development at Penn State. As Assistant Director – Engagement, he develops and contributes to strategies that support strategic communications objectives of the college and its constituent units through content optimization of websites, emails, social media, and multimedia content.
Specific to social media, Rob has led the strategic development of a college-wide social media initiative that includes over 50 separate social media accounts, a college-wide social media group bringing together department social media managers and college business units, and an Instagram student ambassador initiative (launching Fall 2020) that will highlight the undergraduate student experience in each of the college’s majors.
Social media is becoming part of many staff roles within higher ed. This presents a variety of challenges for higher education social media managers as those managing social media accounts at colleges and universities are a mixture of novice, intermediate, and advanced users. Additionally, students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends interact with social media in different ways and every college major interacts with social media in unique ways. In order to overcome these challenges, social media teams need to work together and be "social" behind the scenes.
Within Penn State's College of Health and Human Development, we’ve worked to break down department silos and develop ways to learn from each other. Together we've helped novice users become more familiar with social media and helped the experts look at things in a different light. This allowed our team to feel empowered and develop their own approaches to social media and spearhead various initiatives.
This presentation will describe how we moved from 10 independent social channels to one social enterprise working together to achieve the same goal. We'll highlight an Instagram takeover focused on undergraduates and strategies to reach alumni, specifically those graduates of the last decade. At the conclusion of our presentation, we'll provide a virtual toolkit for attendees where you can replicate or borrow any of our strategies, tools, templates, and more.