Social media is all about community, so we’re bringing the topic of audiences center stage to kick off this conference! Fostering communities of all sizes, designing content for specific audiences, and being an active member of our communities are all vital steps to successful social media strategies. Join us for a fun session all about connections through communications!

Learn how the Oregon State University Foundation is transforming its LinkedIn advertising strategy to drive higher alumni engagement, stronger event turnout, and greater brand visibility. This session reveals what we’ve discovered from testing video vs. single‑image ads, refining bidding approaches, and tailoring audiences across key regions and alumni segments. You’ll also see how today’s platform trends—authentic storytelling, multi‑format content, conversation‑driven engagement, and smarter ad tools—can elevate your results. Attendees will leave with clear, immediately applicable tactics for optimizing creative, targeting, and campaign structure to sharpen their institution’s paid social performance.

A single viral post can bring unprecedented attention—and unexpected challenges—to your school. You may gain visibility, but you also face real-time pressures: moderating online comments, fielding media requests, protecting students, and making quick decisions with limited time. How can you prepare in advance to minimize chaos and safeguard your community?

In this session, participants will explore a real-world case study of a school that went mega-viral and learn from the lessons that followed. You’ll hear firsthand what unfolded, including the immediate challenges, the decisions made under pressure, and the long-term impact on students, staff, and school culture.

Leave with practical strategies to prepare your social media accounts and policies, and gain an awareness of the potential long-term effects of virality. Walk away ready to face sudden online attention with confidence!

Many institutions feel trapped between two extremes when it comes to student-created content: a fully formalized student ambassador program that requires heavy administrative lifting, or ad hoc student takeovers that risk brand integrity and consistency. For small communications teams, solo social media managers, and independent schools, neither model is truly sustainable. This session presents a middle ground approach: a modular, gig-based collaboration model that enables authentic, student-led storytelling without the need for internships, course credit, or payroll. Instead of managing a staff of creators, this approach treats students as project-based collaborators. By prioritizing flexibility over meetings and creative briefs over contracts, you can meet students where they are–balancing intense schedules with your need for high-impact content. I will break down the three levels of student contribution we use at Deerfield–narrator, curator, and creator–to show how you can match student skills with institutional trust. Attendees will walk through the production process for real-world examples and participate in a hands-on exercise to build their own creative briefs. You’ll leave with a scalable framework that reduces administrative friction, protects your brand, and delivers the platform-native authenticity your audiences crave.

Last year at Vanderbilt, a series of limited-edition enamel pin drops became a campus-wide phenomenon—driving lines, social sharing, and meaningful face-to-face engagement between students and campus units. Hosted through the university’s main Instagram account, each drop became a recognizable and surprising moment that students learned to anticipate. Trendy designs were affixed to small cardboard backers that provided messaging and context—drawing students in visually while creating a natural moment for communication.

Campus partners funded the pins and staffed the giveaway events, while the central communications team provided the creative container: cohesive design, centralized promotion, and on-site content capture. The result was a low-lift, high-impact model that partners across campus quickly embraced. In nearly every case, students lined up before events began and pins sold out entirely. In one example of impact, the campus library gained 300+ new Instagram followers during a two-hour pin drop; other partners reported sustained in-person conversations with audiences typically considered harder to reach.

This session will explore how Vanderbilt tapped into FOMO, collectibility, and cohesive visual storytelling to create a scalable engagement model rooted in cross-campus collaboration. Participants will learn how tangible, collectible items—paired with intentional in-person experiences—can bridge digital and real-life engagement. These events humanized campus units while creating a series of moments students actively seek out. The session will break down strategy, costs, staffing, partner collaboration, and lessons learned, offering a repeatable framework institutions of all sizes can adapt for their own campuses and audiences.

This session is all about leaning into trust and being authentic by amplifying student voices through branded accounts. Institutional channels represent our communities, so leading with their voices provides a transparent experience for all community members. Trust is increasingly important and increasingly difficult to gain. It is necessary that we are adept at the approaches we can take to be as genuine as possible.

Whether you're interested in creating short-form videos about innovative research or adopting trends to humanize your researchers, this panel will dive deeper into the world of creating scientific content that doesn't suck.

In the midst of social media chaos we often ask ourselves “is this what our audience really wants to see?” But what would happen if we actually asked them? This is a reminder that sometimes the most effective social media strategy isn’t a trend report or a crystal ball, it’s a question sticker. Learn how asking "what do you need to know?" turned into nearly half a million views.

Using a real-world case study from an orientation cycle at the University of Northern Iowa, this presentation walks through the brainstorms, content, data and proven success that came from (you guessed it) literally just asking. The session wraps with hands-on small group work, giving participants the chance to turn audience answers into a strategic plan of their own, and leave with a framework they can actually use.

When incidents happen in or near our communities, social media is where people go to express their concerns and seek information. It is often where news is breaking or where breaking news is quickly being discussed. Social media managers have to know how to monitor for concerning topics, spikes in certain dialogues, and ways to craft responses when necessary. In this session, we will discuss this topic with examples and experiences, sharing how to conduct listening, monitor situations, and manage messaging for audiences across an array of platforms.

This session breaks down how Mississippi State transformed its social media presence from 1.5 million views in 2023 to 125 million views in 2025 through intentional strategy, bold creative decisions, and disciplined execution. Participants will gain a clear, repeatable framework for scaling social media reach without relying on a paid media strategy.

Attendees will leave with practical steps for auditing their current content, aligning creative with platform behavior, and building systems that reward consistency, experimentation, and audience trust. The session focuses on what actually moved the needle, including content prioritization, cadence, platform specific storytelling, and metrics that matter.

Participants will walk away with a practical playbook they can adapt to their own teams, helping turn everyday content decisions into sustained social media momentum.