When you think of social media use on campus it’s usually scrolling through your feed during a lecture not paying attention. Now there is a high chance that the person giving the lecture might appear on your feed.
The Associated Students Organization (ASO) plans on holding a Social Media Marketing event to provide tips and tricks for professors on how to effectively use some of the social media platforms that are being used every day.
The main focus of the event would be how to effectively use Instagram. However, the time will also be spent looking at various social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Reddit and Tumblr.
Chair of the ASO Publicity Committee, Dominic LeFort, is the manager of this event said that its main goal is to help faculty members learn how to navigate through the tools of social media marketing and how they can increase their levels of student engagement. Whether it be using sked social and scheduling posts for peak usage times so that students are more likely to see it or creating entertaining and eye-catching posts, soon the professors will be able to grab student’s attention.
LeFort also adds that the majority of people who were asking for this training were faculty members.
“They are likely going to be using the knowledge they learn at this event to advertise their department better or even a specific class that’s getting low enrollment,” LeFort said.
Social media could be used negatively, as some students can be seen scrolling through their feed instead of listening. Instead, Lefort believes that, if used effectively teachers can use social media to their advantage and improve the student-teacher connection.
“If teachers can become better about interacting with students on those platforms and understand what it is that students are doing and the kind of information that students are looking for it will allow us to do so much more,” Le Fort said.
Chair of the Social and Cultural Committee, Nicole Alfaro, said students can also benefit from this event, as they can not only learn how to upgrade their own social media page, but also how it can be used to get their voice out.
“In this generation, we need people to hear us and to hear our voices,” Alfaro said. “This is because there are some issues that people are afraid to speak about and social media is a platform that anyone can use, but it can be easily used just in the right way.”
ASO senator Brandon Le believes this event is important as social media is used create connections with both large multitudes of people or cater to smaller niche communities.
“Using social media to influence others allows people to branch out to others to connect and offer many resources,” Le said. “Knowing how social media operates and utilizing the skills will help when people want to advertise products or potentially help others.”
LeFort who manages the ASO social media accounts, intends to make it more like a small website. A place where people can learn more about clubs and different events happening on campus.
“That way when a student is considering becoming a stem major, they can go to the Pierce College stem page and take a look at all the different classes we offer,” LeFort said. “Also, students can see the different teachers that are teaching those classes and how they can get more involved.”
This Social Media Marketing event is open to everyone, and will take place on Tuesday, April 9, at The Great Hall.
