Student Social Media Strategists: Recruiting your University’s team

One year ago, the first Community Manager position was created at Syracuse University.  Before I was hired to fill that position, a student team had been assembled to assist with some of the social media activities that the University was beginning to dabble in.  After you work in social media for a while, you realize how the scope of the jobs we have are expanding, and how limited resources are.  The student social media team has provided us with a way to expand our presence without having to hire additional professional staff.  That strategy has been a double-edged sword at times, but one that has paid off considerably.

After building up the team and working with them over the past academic year, I have a pretty good idea what it takes to recruit, develop and manage a team of student social media strategists.  This post will deal specifically with recruiting and selecting the team.  For the record, I am assuming that the person doing the selection has a considerable knowledge of and is utilizing social networks themselves. Twitter, in particular, is an essential way to interact with college students and your community manager should have an established presence there.

Social Media Team Members at SxSW

Recruiting Team Members

According to a study conducted at the University of New Hampshire in 2009, 96% of college students use facebook.  Therefore, using facebook does not make a student social media savvy, or necessarily a desirable candidate for a student social media team.  You really should consider the student’s overall social media presence when considering who to hire.

Certain students just seem to rise to the top on twitter.  Look for students who are utilizing twitter not only to interact with their friends, but to share information and contribute to conversations with professionals in their field, professors and other staff at the University.  Keep an eye on these students.  Put them on a special twitter list where you can easily follow them.  Try to identify students who have a decent level of maturity, professionalism and importantly, personality.  It helps if they have interests in a variety of areas and/or are student leaders.

Seek out students who are contributing to popular blogs such as USA Today College and ABC News On Campus.  They have proven communication skills and also the drive to pursue these opportunities.

Consider what platforms your University is using or interested in using.  If you’re interested in using tumblr or foursquare, figure out which students are actively participating in those networks.  Again, twitter is the font from which most of this kind of information flows.

Crowdsource your recruiting.  This is one of those areas where having an established presence really helps.  Ask your followers to help identify potential student social media team members.  Find out specifically who’s got a great tumblr, or a must-read blog.  What I have found is that once I ask these questions, students self-identify and the conversation develops from there.

Next step:  Selecting Your Team

Once you have your candidates in place, it’s time to make your final selections.

Have each candidate send you a list of the links to their social profiles.  Whether or not you are paying your team (we do), the student’s role should be looked at as a job, so their selection as a team member should be treated as hiring.  Students who want to be a part of a University social media team should be at the forefront of their peers in their use and application of social media tools.  I would expect each candidate to have, at minimum, an active twitter account and a complete LinkedIn profile.  Check each link that is provided for appropriate tone, grammar, spelling, and general communication skills.  How engaging are they?  Are they simply RTing others without comment on twitter?  What is their Klout score?  Are they producing any of their own content?  All of these aspects of the student’s social media presence combined will give you a better picture of their overall understanding of the medium.

Interview the student face-to-face if at all possible.  While a Skype or e-mail interview might save time, I have found that it is best to interview in person.  You will often find that the student’s true persona does not match their online presence.  You may get an email application that would put you off, only to find that an in-person meeting would have you hitting it off.  And the reverse may also be true.  In any event, a key element in hiring for your team is that the student is a good fit.

Have other students from the team interview the candidate.  This may not be possible on the first-go round, but if your team is anything like ours, you have what I would refer to as ‘anchor’ students who are the foundation of your team.  They are the first students you thought of when you dreamed up this team, and they are already enthusiastically on board.  Make sure all of your students are on the same page with social media, and that your ‘anchor’ students feel the candidate would be a good fit for the team.

Traits to look for in Team Members

Reliability.  This is an absolute must for SM team members.  Do they respond to your tweets, emails, DMs in a timely fashion?  Do they show up for meetings when scheduled?  reliability will become very important when you are scheduling your students to tweet from the University account on a particular shift, or hosting a table at your Spring Reception.  Unreliability is a deal breaker.

Ability to Communicate in Writing.  You may have weeded out these candidates previously, but make sure the materials they send you as part of the application process are grammatically correct, with perfect spelling, punctuation and usage.  You would be surprised how many alums will DM you when something gets tweeted that is not quite in keeping with the University’s reputation as a top-ranked communications school (or whatever kind of school you’re at).

Varied Skill Set.  While I may hire a student with the idea that they will be working mainly on foursquare, it’s always nice to know that they can jump on tumblr or create a quick video if necessary.  This will give you lots of options when creating assignments, and also when something comes up at the last minute and you need someone to fill in.  There should be a nice mix of skills (and interests) to choose from.

Interpersonal Skills.  Your student team members will become well-known on campus, and possibly beyond, and will serve as quasi-ambassadors for your school.  Make sure the student is comfortable in that role and doesn’t always want to stay behind the scenes.  The social part of the team is both online and off.

Ability to Multi-Task and Maintain Grace under Pressure.  Many of the students who apply to be on your team will be self-identified over-achievers.  They will be the ones who are in the drama club, with three majors (graduating a year early), doing guest blogging stints for national blogs, working for the University ambulance service and interning for network stars in the summer.  This is great, but everyone has their limit.  Maintaining grace under pressure is harder to determine, but suffice it to say that situations will come up on a social network that are best handled  by professional staff.  Don’t let your student team member fall apart before stepping in to take some of the pressure off.

The process of recruiting a team of social media strategists can be both exciting and terrifying, but at some point you have to pull the trigger on it.  The reputation of your college or university is, in some respects, going to be in the hands of these young social media staffers, so it is essential that a lot of thought goes into their selection.  The great thing about being in a higher education setting is that all of your work is geared towards preparing the next batch of professionals.  If something goes wrong, my advice is to always look at it as a teachable moment.  The world will not end if an errant tweet goes out from your account.  On the flip side, the value of the student voice in your social media will be invaluable.

I would love to hear your experiences with student social media teams and answer any questions you may have on ours.  In future posts, I will share my thoughts on developing and managing a team of student social media strategists.

For further reading, check out this post from one of my ‘anchor’ team members, Alyssa Henry:  How to Build a University Community on Twitter

Photography credit: Social Media Team photo by kk+