We all know that video is the powerhouse of social media content, and we are all creating so much of it that inspiration for creativity is key! Join this 2-part workshop to learn ways you can refine your video skills, get innovative in a moment’s notice, embed humor in ways that meet brand expectations, and adopt trends that encourage engagement. From strategy to production to ideas for setting your brand apart, you’ll leave this session ready to say “Action!” 

It’s time for your debut! In part 2 of this workshop, you will collaborate with your colleagues to put your learning into Action! Resources will be provided to facilitate your team’s video production. You’ll leave this session with a fully filmed and edited video that’ll launch your social media stardom!

If we want audiences to enjoy our content, we must ensure that everyone can experience our content. It is not only a legal requirement to make digital content accessible, it is also an immensely important best practice to ensure all posts are accessible to everyone. This session will cover a range of accessibility insights from writing alt text to thoughtful inclusion and respectful representation for content that engages everyone. 

At Berea College, ensuring brand consistency across campus is critical to our communications strategy. To address this need, we developed and led Brand Camp, a now-annual internal conference providing comprehensive training for staff and faculty on the College’s brand standards, including effective social media practices, media relations protocols, and digital media templates. In this session, I will share how Brand Camp became integral to fostering collaboration, ensuring consistency, and empowering our community to effectively tell Berea’s story across all platforms to an audience that includes prospective students, alumni, friends, and prospective supporters. This session is designed for advancement professionals seeking to enhance brand education on their campus.

Too many cooks in the kitchen? No, chef! Join us to learn our recipe for collaborating with student workers and staff to create engaging content for your organization’s social channels during giving days and crowdfunding campaigns. We'll share content examples, insights on our approval process, and tips on inspiring your community to contribute their own content. Get ready for a taste of inspiration in our social kitchen!

Hosted by Justin Cox, creator of the two-time CASE Award-winning Pod of Orcas podcast, this session will share how your organization can develop its own podcast, and why it might be a great idea. You will learn how to conceptualize your podcast idea, identify and engage your target audience, select an appropriate format, and acquire essential recording, editing, and distribution tools—all while working with a very small team and a limited budget. Additionally, the session will cover strategies for pitching guests (if applicable) and effectively promoting episodes. While sharing how we launched a successful podcast with a one-person team and a tiny budget, we will walk you through the process of doing so with your own organization in mind. Attendees will come away with the foundation for creating their very own. We will invite engagement during the presentation, offer a checklist for attendees to flesh out their idea, and leave room for a robust Q&A at the end.

In just 12 months, the Acceleration Consortium’s LinkedIn audience grew by nearly 150%, expanding from 1,700 followers in September 2023 to over 4,280 in September 2024. This session will explore the key strategies that fueled this growth, focusing on diverse content creation, event-based storytelling, and the development of internal brand ambassadors. Through practical examples and case studies, participants will gain actionable insights on how to amplify their institution's social media presence and audience engagement.

Learn how to engage stakeholders during live events by creating a dynamic social media strategy! This session will cover building pre-event excitement, securing and empowering social media ambassadors, and effective tactics for maintaining energy throughout the event. You’ll walk away with practical tips to maximize audience participation and amplify your event’s impact across social media platforms. Whether you're hosting a small gathering or a large conference, this session will help you engage your audience and drive meaningful interactions in real time.

How do you answer the question, “is that good?” when explaining social achievements? Analytics can be a crucial tool in developing buy-in from stakeholders, supporting strategic creative decisions, and influencing long-term platform strategy. External benchmarks can be misleading, incomplete, hard to come by, or feel irrelevant (whether too high or too low). In this hands-on session, you’ll learn how to create and utilize internal benchmarks instead to help generate continuous improvement across your social media channels. Social media is undeniably critical to the digital marketing and PR landscape, but still often treated as an afterthought or secondary consideration by many traditional organizations. Contextualization – being able to answer the question, “is that good?” when explaining social achievements – can significantly shift the conversation about social with key stakeholders, and analytics can be a crucial tool in developing buy-in, supporting strategic creative decisions, and influencing long-term strategy. Finding relevant external benchmarks, however, can be a challenge, as many are either misleading, incomplete, hard to come by, or feel irrelevant (whether too high or too low). In this hands-on session, you’ll learn how to create and utilize your own internal benchmarks to help generate continuous improvement across your social media channels, so you can better paint a picture of the value social media provides within your organization. Demonstrating how to access data in both Meta and Hootsuite to download and create an Excel benchmark sheet, Courtney will discuss how to calculate the most important KPIs, the most valuable formula you’ll ever use (percent change), why these metrics are important, and how to frame them with stakeholders so they can see the value of the work you’re doing on social. She will also discuss how to use these metrics to approach platform and content strategy so you can continuously improve your position against your benchmarks, find red flags, and make changes before they become an issue.

“Should we hop on this trend? Should we do our own thing? What do we want to say?” are questions you’ll face in social. And this session will help you answer those questions! Discover strategies and tools to meaningfully connect with your audience through trending and original social media content through this hands-on workshop. We will highlight the “behind-the-scenes” content strategies and creative processes that will enhance your organization's digital presence, and Reel in engagement.