Abstract
Social media is an important tool for academic departments. Yet, with limited resources, many health promotion departments may not have the ability to conduct extensive planning or development of social media plans. This commentary reports the efforts of one undergraduate public health program to improve its social media presence. Faculty and students worked together to develop a social media plan, identify activities to implement the plan, and track social media follower counts on Instagram and Twitter in spring 2020. A logic model planning framework drove the process, and key learnings from efforts are presented. Departmental leaders may want to link students and faculty to generate student-driven content on social media. Leaders should recognize that advance planning is needed to maintain consistency, control account access, and be prepared to deal with problematic comments on social media. Suggested activities are presented in the hope they may inform other departments’ efforts. Department leaders and faculty may find they have much to learn from their students in this area.
Importance of Social Media
Social media has become a powerful tool for health education and health communication and has become an important part of building professional networks when used correctly (Bernhardt et al., 2014; Bliss, 2015; Luc et al., 2020; Oomen-Early & Early, 2015). For an academic department, social media provides a way for public health training programs to connect with students, promote the major, disseminate campus events, model social media best practices, and promote faculty research. Yet, academic departments with limited budgets and time may not know the best ways to leverage social media platforms. This commentary highlights a student-faculty collaboration to strengthen the social media presence of an undergraduate public health program at East Carolina University’s Department of Health Education and Promotion.
At the beginning of spring semester 2020, we created a social media team and relaunched dormant and underutilized department Instagram and Twitter accounts. First, we formed a core team of undergraduate research assistants and interns paired with four interested faculty members. We then sought feedback from faculty about their social media usage, handles, and interest in learning more about social media using a paper survey handed out in a faculty meeting. Next, students worked to identify the most popular and compelling social media accounts on campus so we could mirror effective approaches. Our team then queried students about how the department could create content that would engage the desired audience of undergraduate students. Finally, as shown in Figure 1, we used these conversations and data to create a social media plan in the form of a logic model (Knowlton & Phillips, 2009). To design and implement the activities of this logic model, we turned to our student team.
Logic model for social media efforts, 2019.
Student-Driven Approaches to Increasing the Reach of Social Media
The team worked on developing content that would be compelling to students. This included the following: student content takeovers, giveaways upon follower milestones (e.g., after every 100 new followers), collaborative promotion with other campus offices, “pinned stories” or “highlight reels,” and introductions of faculty. In Instagram student takeovers, public health interns were encouraged to “take over” the department account for a day with information that they may find interesting or helpful to public health students (e.g., posting about public health issues with East Carolina University or elsewhere). Giveaways included gifting student essentials (e.g., umbrellas, pencils, pens, paper, notebooks) to a random student follower whenever the Instagram would reach a certain number of followers. We worked with other campus offices such as Study Abroad to generate content.
We also created “pinned stories” with student driven content that appear at the top of the profile; unlike other stories, these do not disappear. These 15- to 60-second-long videos or pictures highlighted research, faculty, study abroad, organizations, and interns. After spring break (March 7–15), our campus pivoted to all online classes, and we used social media to focus on special topics such as the university’s coronavirus mask up campaign.
One of the primary efforts was to grow the number of followers of the social media accounts. We worked to create awareness and “hype,” as students described it, around Instagram and Twitter. We promoted the accounts through the weekly student email announcement sent by the program director. Faculty asked students to follow departmental social media accounts at the beginning of classes, and we developed flyers with social media handles. We also promoted the accounts by giving away healthy snacks in the public health building. This helped create an incentive that made students want to follow the account.
Results of Our Social Media Efforts
As shown in Figure 2, the number of Instagram followers nearly doubled, and we saw small increases in our Twitter following; both leveled off as the semester ended.
Spring 2020 social media growth.
Our impact and results might have been different had the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic not physically closed our campus and resulted in online classes. Social media efforts seemed to us even more important to connect with students after there were no in-person classes. During the pandemic, we continued to share social media handles in communications to students. Distance education necessitates the creation of opportunities for students to informally learn more about potential partnerships, research opportunities, and ways to grow professionally outside of the classroom. Social media allows for short messages to be shared with students outside of the class context—often without realizing growth is continuing to occur.
Next Steps
Since the success of promoting the department on Instagram and Twitter, ongoing efforts have included the development of a department LinkedIn account. This is facilitated through assignments focusing on professional representation. Instructors use this as an opportunity to teach about social media accounts and their role in the hiring process.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the department had multiple open houses scheduled at surrounding high schools. Social media, including the easily identified social media icons with our handles, would have been displayed and promoted to increase the following on various platforms.
Another planned activity is a departmental PowerPoint slide deck that has been developed and disseminated to all teaching instructors in anticipation of the coming semester. This one-slide document compiles all social media information in an appealing format, encouraging students to “follow” departmental accounts. Instructors can show these slides at the beginning of each course.
Practical Advice
Utilizing social media in a health education and promotion academic department has come with some lessons learned. The first is the challenge of tracking access and maintaining consistent monitoring and content. We have found that all accounts on various platforms should be made using one easily accessible email account. The log in credentials to such an account should be accessible to several department faculty members. Doing so helps ensure that the online content stays with the department, regardless of staffing changes. Second, each social media account should have one assigned faculty member for continuity. These individuals should be given posting frequency expectations. Third, there should be a standard operating procedure for dealing with inappropriate content. Our standard procedure is to screenshot potentially problematic comments for review by the undergraduate program coordinator. Responses may include deleting the comment in its entirety, messaging the individual responsible, and submitting a students of concern report.
Regarding content, general content areas should be selected based upon students’ interest. These areas can be identified through formal or informal focus groups or interviews. As interest in topics change, accounts should change accordingly. We have found success by connecting and sharing content between different university accounts. Sharing, reposting, and tagging helps connect one social media account to others with a different follower basis. Additionally, sharing faculty publications can improve their reach and even have an impact on citations (Luc et al., 2020), which is an important metric of scholarly productivity. Finally, we found success in hosting joint social media events. These can be connected with state or national events and should ask for feedback and provide incentives for participation. Giveaways should be widely promoted. Additional entries may be given for shares, likes, and comments. These events can be captured through hashtags and highlight reels.
Need for Further Research
In this perspective, we have highlighted our experience in trying to build the number of followers of our department’s social media accounts by partnering with students. Our experience has been a positive one. However, questions remain. For example, focus groups could be conducted to solicit how students feel about interaction from these accounts. Questions might examine how students feel about the department liking their content, hesitations about the social media account managers viewing their personal account’s content, and how students are managing the proliferation of university accounts. Interaction plans should be made in accordance with student responses moving forward. It is also unclear how the proliferation of social media accounts is impacting our efforts. Many academic units as well as most campus offices run their own accounts in addition to the official university accounts. Further research should examine the balance between engaging and informing students versus overwhelming students with constant information from all parts of campus.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
