UC Davis social media coordinator , Chris Nicolini , holds a phone rig while filming student tour guide Sergio Maravilla as they talk to students live on the university ’ s Instagram channel . PHOTO BY DAWSON DIAZ , COURTESY OF UC DAVIS
plays what he describes as the “ 3-year-old game ” of asking a series of why questions . “ Why do you want to be on social media ? Why do you want to be on TikTok ? Why do you think this is your audience ?”
Sussing out these answers helps ensure the platform is a legitimate fit for the company ’ s strategy , and not , as Pierce puts it , “ just to scratch a CEO ’ s itch .” His advice : Put yourself in your audience ’ s shoes and think deeply about what platforms they ’ re using , why they ’ re using them and whether they ’ ll still be using them in a year . “ Are they online when they ’ re riding in transit and looking for memes or something funny ?”
The social media team at UC Davis aggressively employs this mindset . “ We have a new class coming in every year , and they ’ re getting younger and younger ,” says Sallie Poggi , director of social media at UC Davis . “ We listen very deeply on what platform they ’ re engaging on .” The university didn ’ t hop on TikTok because the staff skimmed an article in Adweek ; they followed the trends of the students . When they realized students were on Reddit , they started doing AMAs ( Ask Me Anythings ). They create Spotify playlists for students . They ’ re even keeping tabs on what Poggi calls more fringe platforms , like Wildfire ( an alert app developed at UC Berkeley ), in case that ’ s where the eyeballs migrate .
Poggi is monitoring Clubhouse ( the real-time , audio-only app , where users tune in to conversations of influencers ) and keeping an open mind , but she personally thinks it ’ s “ a little bit of navelgazing .” All of this helps explain why , as Lopez puts it , UC Davis “ knocks it out of the park ” with social media , and why the team has earned national recognition , such as winning multiple CASE awards ( issued by the nonprofit Council for Advancement and Support of Education ).
UC Davis made a real investment . “ Social media is a team sport . It ’ s not a person doing it in the corner or a parttime job ,” says Poggi , who leads a team of five full-time employees exclusively dedicated to social media . Empowerment is key . Poggi reports directly to the chief marketing officer , who reports to Chancellor Gary S . May . “ I have an equal seat at the table , and I ’ m seen as a peer and an equal , not an afterthought ,” says Poggi .
This kind of empowerment isn ’ t always a given . “ Are you ready to be online ? Not every brand is ,” says Pierce . “ It takes a lot of management and time .” Companies often leap into social media with the misguided notion that it ’ s just one extra task — it ’ s just a tweet or two , right ? — they can pile on some poor employee ’ s plate . Lopez has found that many companies still have a mindset that “ if you just put it out there , they ’ ll come .” That ’ s no longer enough . “ There ’ s just way too many people doing it well for that to work anymore ,” she says .
If you under-resource social media , pitfalls are everywhere . They can be trivial , like not properly formatting your posts , and a missing image preview on TikTok or YouTube is a dead giveaway that you ’ re cutting corners . This sounds petty , but it can sap credibility . The blunders can be more subtle , like when companies try to dump everything they have to say all at once . “ Dude , you have unlimited room ,“
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