The Social Side of Social Media at UTA Libraries

Since I was hired as the Editorial Services Coordinator in August 2019, I have been working to rethink the way the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries promotes itself, its services, and its value on social media. Thanks to a stellar Marketing and Communications team and the incredible talent we have throughout the Libraries, I was able to develop a consistent strategy that saw some impressive leaps in engagement and audience growth.

As we head into 2021 and face whatever the new year has in store for us, we will be taking a new turn with our social media strategy which will focus even more on the repository of “thumb-stopping” images provided by Multimedia Coordinator Danny Grigg; thoughtfully leverage stunning graphics created by our Senior Graphic Designer Candy McCormic and her Graphic Design Assistant Chris Heinlen; and lean on the expertise of Marketing Director Dara McCluskey, Web Developers Krystal Schenk and Andrew Leverenz, and Communications Assistant Siddhi Nair.

In this post, I will be sharing our current strategy, analytics highlights from 2019-2020, and a preview of our next phase of social media promotion and development.

We currently schedule our posts using Hootsuite (and, at times, within the social media platforms themselves) up to two weeks or so in advance, depending on the post content and our monthly schedule.

The bulk of our posts are the timely promotion of events as single posts. Each event gets at least one promotional slot, and up to three, depending on the schedule, lead time, and receipt of content.

In April 2020, we implemented what we call our “Personality Posts” – these posts align with popular hashtags or events, such as Tuesday Trivia or Flashback Friday, and primarily promote the Libraries’ personality traits. The content for these posts mostly come from Danny’s photography, the UTA Libraries Digital Gallery, and screenshots from past online events.

We also host periodic campaigns, such as the Pet Takeover in August (which featured photos of our staff’s pets) and Ask a Librarian (a once a semester event where UTA librarians takeover our Twitter feed for an hour and answer any questions our users have). Finally, we occasionally partner with other units on campus to promote university-wide events, like Mav Stampede and Homecoming.

We aim for two to four posts per channel per weekday, with one or two posts on the weekend depending on content availability and need. Twitter will often see more posts than this if we are retweeting content to highlight a particular event or holiday, such as when we promoted voting on Election Day. We also routinely share content to our stories on Instagram and Facebook, and dedicate time to build relationships with our partners through likes, comments, and sharing of their content. Siddhi and I also do a lot of research on popular tags to expand our research on Twitter and Instagram.

These efforts over the last year have yielded results I am especially proud of, organized below by platform.

Facebook

• Gained more than 100 followers YTD (Aug. 2019 v. Aug. 2020)
• Reach (Aug. 2020): 14,711
• Engaged Users (Aug. 2020): 982
• Hosted 70 virtual events/videos on FB/IG from Mar. 6 to Aug. 7

Twitter

• Nearly 10x as many impressions YTD (Aug. 2019 v Aug. 2020)
• More than 25x the number of engagements YTD (Aug. 2019 v. Aug. 2020)

Instagram

• Top performing channel for engagement, follower growth, and creative opportunity
• Gained approx. 500 followers YTD (Aug. 2019 v. Aug. 2020)
• Top Post for the last year: 820 reach, 24 shares, 40 profile visits

YouTube

• Views (Sept. 1, 2019 – Aug. 31, 2020): 12,122
• Gained more than 50 subscribers
• 131,000 impressions (Sept. 1, 2019 – Aug. 31, 2020)
• 674.3 watch hours

After a successful first year, and following an insightful webinar led by the social media team for Texas A&M University (hosted by PhotoShelter), we reflected on our current strategy. I believe we have identified some areas we could tweak for greater impact, as well as opportunities to experiment.

Event Promotion

• One carousel post at the beginning of the week that promotes all the events for that week
• One carousel post at the end of the week that promotes events that are two weeks out
• Link to Libraries event calendar for more information

Unstructured Personality Posts

• Take advantage of the repository of images that Danny has already taken
• Create shorter, snappier captions that highlight our personality traits and play to trends/relevant topics (without needing a hashtag)

Instagram Reels

• TikTok-style videos for Instagram
• Use licensed music/user uploaded “sounds” to make comedic or important statements (or dance)
• Want to experiment with this tool to showcase Libraries’ personality

Other

• Increase use of Digital Gallery images (some of our most popular posts are Digital Gallery images)
• New campaigns, such as Photos of Holidays Past/Spring Break Pet Takeover/etc.
• Collaborations with other organizations/units on campus
• And more! (We have to keep a few things up our sleeves, don’t we?)

You can find us online at the following links:

• Facebook: facebook.com/utalibraries
• Twitter: twitter.com/utalibraries
• Instagram: instagram.com/utalibraries
• YouTube: youtube.com/utalibraries
• More: https://libraries.uta.edu/news-events/social-media

Thank you for reading! If you have any questions, suggestions, or opportunities for collaboration, please reach out to us at LibraryNews@uta.edu.