Vertical video and polished products are the standard in today’s social media landscape. In this session we will review content creation tips and strategies across various platforms, with a focus on video creation.

Whether major incidents occur on or off campus, institutions are often expected to draft responses to their communities. In this session, we will hear from a panel of educational institution crisis responders on how they craft messaging for various audiences across an array of platforms.

In this session, attendees will gain hands-on experience with video editing and content creation guided by seasoned practitioners. Attendees will leave with a finished practice product and insights on how to use these skills at their home institutions. Please bring a laptop or other technology to this session.

While it is impossible to plan for every possible scenario, your communications team can create templates, protocols, and processes to respond to major types of incidents. In this session, our faculty will review best practices and lead an interactive workshop where you and colleagues can begin discussing and drafting messaging you can bring back to your campus.

Content plans can have the most inclusive, innovative, impactful strategies in place, but it all shifts in a moment when an issue rises. It’s a careful balance to stay relevant, remain on brand, and understand what the community is experiencing, feeling, and questioning. This session will discuss strategic approaches to social media’s ever-evolving industry and opportunities to incorporate flexibility into content plans.

University marketing and communications teams continuously face the dilemma of having too many social media accounts across campus. When there’s a social media account for every unit, team, faculty, and degree, it’s difficult to know who is sharing what, it’s challenging to manage strategy and branding, and it’s particularly difficult for students to know where to get the information they need to thrive on campus. When reflecting on the state of our social media channels within the students' portfolio at UBCO, it was clear that there were too many accounts without any oversight or strategy. We saw an opportunity to create a coordinated portfolio-wide strategy to ensure all student communications moving forward are shared in a timely, strategic, and professional way that provides student value. In the last year, we have consolidated our Instagram accounts to eight total profiles and developed a strategically aligned social media strategy implemented across the portfolio. This session will include a Case Study presentation followed by an interactive workshop to get you started with your own approach to this style of social media strategy. Takeaways from this session: 1. A blueprint for streamlining university social media communications in a current and valuable way for students. 2. A case study to support future proposals to consolidate accounts and align social media strategies at your institution 3. A list of best practices to get started on enhancing social media processes on your team 4. Lessons learned about building relationships and trust on campus to advance social media strategies

How can artificial intelligence make daily tasks your small team does more efficient? Integrating AI into your workflow benefits the frequency and quality of the content your marketing/communications team produces. Programs such as ChatGPT and Bard, as well as in-app AI tools in the Adobe Suite, Canva, and more, can play a role in every MarCom task—from writing an effective social media caption to publishing a professional podcast. Partner with your school's IT department to understand and establish guidelines for your organization’s safe use of AI. With the support of IT, maximize your use of AI and strategize to be prepared for future emerging technologies.

Reddit is often dismissed as the wild west platform. Users have quirky or obscure usernames, it's not as pretty as the big three, and it can be full of misinformation. Whether you like it or not, future and current students are on Reddit, talking and asking questions about your school. This presentation will explore how UCalgary Law uses Reddit as a social listening tool, to answer questions from future students, and to dispel misconceptions about our school in a very non-market-y way...all while using our actual name! (And the only law school in Canada to do so.)

The paradigm of education marketing has shifted drastically in the digital age. As graduate programs aim to attract a mature, career-focused demographic, LinkedIn emerges as the optimal platform for such outreach. This report delves into the intricate dynamics of why and how LinkedIn has become an indispensable ally for graduate programs worldwide.