Essential Strategies for a Student-Staffed Social Team
Managing social media accounts isn't a part-time job; it seeks your attention any time of day or night, any day of the week. You never know what you might have to handle at any moment.
Much like social media, colleges students are communicating late into the night via text, Snapchat, or Facebook Message; their schedules are unpredictable, dependent mostly on schoolwork and events. They are "on" 24/7, between academics, extracurriculars, and robust social lives.
But we are not. (Well, for the most part.)
That said, managing students who work on your social content team can be a little tricky. But after doing it over eight iterations, we have some suggestions (and warnings) to share on how to not just make it work, but how to make it into an effective and collaborative team that produces unique, engaging, and authentic content.
Our office, Interactive Media, manages many projects — from addressing sexual misconduct to showcasing experiences from students around the world. Of these many projects is HashtagNYU: our public brand and digital community built around engaging and relatable content about the NYU story. This particular project is our student interns' focus; our students are the ones who write the tips, take the photos, craft the tweets, create the articles, and execute the videos. It is a narrative shaped by students, for students.
So, let's first get on the same page about why you should have a student-staffed social team. It’s about using students to communicate to students effectively. Because impressive places like Radius Global discovered that...
Millennials are influenced more by word of mouth than they are by advertising
... we can only infer that students are more responsive and engaged with what their peers are saying than generic brand messaging.
After all, students know how to talk to their peers better than we do (even if we do like to consider ourselves young *flips hair*), and that's why we hire about a dozen NYU students every semester. Students are the experts on how to talk to their peers and make our messages accessible. Simply put, peer to peer is paramount. So, why wouldn't you apply their ideas, perspectives, and experiences when talking to the larger student body? Which brings us to our first strategy:
Let students be creative agents
Students are full of amazing ideas just waiting to be hatched. By allowing them the space and time to share suggestions and contribute ideas, your social content will truly stand out by being relatable and authentic. It's coming straight from the students themselves. Give them a little control — but not necessarily all of it. They'll still need guidance, direction, and clear tasks, which we'll get to in a little more detail later on.
Grow and learn together
Hiring students to work on a social team is not about them doing administrative work. They are developing and applying marketable skills, meaning that their experience on your team has professional value for them. Explore their professional skills and interests, and see where and how they can grow on the team.
Let them be leaders among their peers, whether it's by leading meetings or taking point on a project
Offer outlets for feedback like one-on-one chats during the semester or a "call for suggestions" submission process
Use mistakes as learning opportunities for peers and future teams rather than shaming or guilting individuals. It's for the team, it's not personal
Create an internal community by making every student feel like they have value and truly belong on the team. Social events and a Facebook group are simple ways to start building such a community
Be flexible and open to change
Students have a lot of "other stuff" going on. That "stuff" is academics, part-time jobs and internships, social lives, club activities, community service, the list goes on... A whopping 91% of NYU students work one part-time job or internship during the academic semester; 16% work two, and 4% work three. They're busy. Like, really busy.
Students are humans first, students second, "everything else" third. In other words, their health and wellness is their first priority, followed by their academic commitments. We need to be flexible to accommodate their mental health and other priorities.
Find ways to redistribute weight if need be, and prepare for it in advance. For instance, if they're overwhelmed with work during midterms, give them a short break and see if someone else can make up the work or whether the deadline can be negotiated.
When adding on the complexity of multiple students' priorities, even scheduling weekly meetings, for example, may prove to be difficult. We've had to meet at 7AM for several semesters because of how diverse everyone's class schedules were, and it's rare that we ever have a semester with intern meetings during traditional workday hours. Determine what you're willing to be flexible on, and what those boundaries are. Can't do meetings before 9AM? Consider evenings or less frequency. Taking time off during the semester? Prepare your students in advance on what they need to get done before you leave and once you return.
Just as schedules and priorities change every semester, your team will change, causing your team structure and workflow to inevitably change, too. Adapt and evolve as your team does. You can figure out how to adjust in several ways:
Apply their feedback. Ask students what they'd want to improve or modify and consider what suggestions make realistic applications.
Track data. Which projects or tasks have the smallest and greatest ROI in terms of hours spent? What type of content is doing terribly or wonderfully?
Observe trends. Social media platforms continue to emerge, as do changes to others. Optimize your platforms' changes and growth.
Experiment and take some risks. There will be changes with many potential results, but you won't know how it turns out unless you try. Trial and error sometimes is the best option.
Obviously, don't go changing everything about your team structure and workflow every semester. Consistency is important, too, particularly for students who are working on your team for more than one iteration. But those students also need to be flexible; prepare them for those new changes as soon as they're finalized.
Build an intuitive workflow
Workflow depends on effective and constant communication among the team. Make communication channels convenient.
When it comes time to get everyone together in-person, give purpose to the meetings. Our social team's meetings are dedicated to reviewing and scheduling content for the upcoming week. Our video team's meetings provide a space to share videos that inspire them and pitch new projects. Assign tasks that need to be completed by or presented at each meeting, which then become the basis for discussion and brainstorms, whether they're one-off assignments or recurring.
Outside of meetings, schedule time for each of them to be in the office, or some sort of workspace where a supervisor can be present. It's the perfect opportunity to check in about individual work. Because of how crazy and various student schedules can be, students may mostly work remotely. The question then becomes: how do students remain accountable to their work when you don't see it happening? Seek out an easy-to-learn and convenient communication process and project management system. We use several tools, all of which have different purposes, that have smartphone counterparts, notification capabilities, and individual user accounts:
Trello — project management, tasks, assignments, and our content calendar; where all projects, due dates, and assignments live
Google Drive — content drafts (videos, articles, etc.), resources, and content libraries (photos, music, etc.)
Google+ Hangouts — meetings held remotely
Facebook Group — sharing articles and videos, asking questions, making conversation, having discussions
Email — general announcements and reminders
Phone (text or call) — immediate attention, timely notification or question
Students, and social media, are 24/7 and constantly mobile. Sometimes, that means replying to questions via text at 11PM on a Thursday. Tell them what's appropriate at the start — for example, that you may not respond immediately during a weekend — which leads goes into the next point...
Lay down the rules from day one
If the rules aren't explicitly reviewed and understood from the start, there's nothing to fall back on if something goes wrong. Putting together guidelines and documents can be daunting and take longer than you'd expect — but it's worth it.
Some documents that our team has put together to set these standards are:
Our Culture Code. A manifesto of our worth ethic and values, as well as expectations for those we work with — students and otherwise. We ask students to read the code in preparation for their interview, and review it in more depth during orientation.
Ultimate Intern Guide. An extensive document outlining intern roles, tasks, meetings, expectations, and opportunities. The guide is read out loud at orientation, is digitally accessible, and includes an internship agreement that everyone is required to sign.
Style Guide. A detailed look at our visual and verbal standards when representing our brand, HashtagNYU. Also digitally available to the team, this document is mainly used as a reference.
Essentially, all of this should be made clear from the beginning so everyone can be on the same page about their responsibilities, expectations, appropriate behavior, and actions. This makes it easier to "release people to the market" if need be, although we would rather not have to do that at all.
Be selective with your team
We all want to work with creative, skilled, and innovative students. Duh. But there are a lot of qualified applicants, so it can often be difficult to narrow down the applications. Ask very pointed and specific questions in the application to test their creativity, industry knowledge, and collaborative nature:
You have five hours and are working with a small group. Pitch an idea that shares the NYU story and detail your role within the group dynamic.
List five things you would implement or change regarding social media at NYU.
But teams work well not just because everyone's skills mesh well together; it's also about fit. In fact, we think that fit is more important than skill in many cases, since many skills can be learned or developed on-the-job. Our interviews are primarily about determining a candidate's fit, so we ask questions like What's the strangest thing about you?
It's also a good idea to, if possible, invite a past or current intern to the interviews; they'll have a better sense of what personalities would work well on the team. As Drew Houston, Dropbox's CEO, once said:
You become the average of the five people you hang out with.
Since the team works so collaboratively, this is a good way make sure new hires are vetted, so-to-speak, by other team members.
So, here's a recap:
Let students be creative agents
Grow and learn together
Be flexible and open to change
Build an intuitive workflow
Lay down the rules from day one
Be selective with your team
It'll take some time to get the hang of things, as social media and student culture are both changing constantly. But being ready to act and adapt is key to managing an effective social team. Good luck!
- Caro
