To Nikki Sunstrum, director of social media at the University of Michigan, social media channels shouldn't be viewed as "shiny" but rather as strategic communications platforms. Since Sunstrum joined U-M in January 2014, the university has become a leader in using Snapchat to engage with prospective and current students as well as young alumni. "If you're not going to put the most valuable content in that space, it's a missed opportunity," she says. Sunstrum will chair the 2017 CASE Social Media and Community Conference, which will be held March 13–15 in Los Angeles.
You ask yourself each year how you can raise the bar. What's the plan for 2017?
I always highlight something specific we want to achieve or a goal we want to attain. Next year, one of the biggest things we're focusing on is social scholarship—how social media can factor into the ways our faculty and leaders interact with students and what that means for the greater context of increasing academic engagement and the perception of our academic prestige.
How do you remain focused on strategy?
When you lead with strategy, everything else falls into place. We're not going to fill a space if it doesn't add value to the content we're disseminating. Does it achieve anything on behalf of the organization as a whole? In 2015, rather than send an email to students, we did an alcohol awareness public service announcement on Snapchat—100,000 people viewed it within 24 hours. That's a win for us. Messages like that don't have to come from a press release. Social media is the best way to reach our core demographic. We assess every message and whom it needs to get to and find the right vehicle for it, then try to create highly consumable content.
What brands do you look to for inspiration and best practices?
Two of my favorites are Dove and Gatorade. A lot of our content has the emotional appeal of Dove. The personal narrative approach makes the biggest impact because people feel for the content, the person who's featured, or the type of story that's being told. We have also looked closely at Gatorade's approach, particularly its Snapchat strategy during the Super Bowl. We don't have $750,000 for a [sponsored] Snapchat filter that pours Gatorade onto people's heads, but the feature gave us ideas about customizing on-demand geofilters to do fun scavenger hunts or different interactive things.
If you could have a superpower, what would it be?
The ability to freeze time. Twenty-four hours in a day is not enough, and at the pace at which social media moves, there's barely enough time for sleep at the end of the day, let alone at all.
How would you use this superpower in your role as chair of the 2017 CASE Social Media and Community Conference?
To identify the value people find in different presentations and discussions. Some people write blog posts when they leave, some live-tweet the conference, and others may take the survey at the end of the week. I'd get one-on-one feedback if I had the ability to freeze time and talk to every single person there.
Where would you like to see social media professionals direct more of their time and energy?
Two things: One is adding value. How is your content changing the world or the perception of the consumers around you? The other is leveraging the opportunity to make a difference and leave a legacy. Social media has given people the ability to instantaneously reach a global demographic for practically free. If we just add to the noise, we're not really doing anything. We have this great potential to influence everyone around us by teaching people how to make a difference in this space, reinforce personal accountability, and understand that the words they say matter.