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Experts from news outlets, art museums, athletic organizations and other established brands shared their trade secrets with the overflow audience of students, staff, faculty, community members and industry professionals.
How can news and social media complement each other?
How can you find your voice on social media or make it more accessible and authentic?
How can you build community, ambassador programs and reach Gen Z through TikTok?
Those were just some of the relevant topics discussed during Northeastern University’s second annual Social Media Summit on Tuesday.
The event, hosted by Northeastern’s communications team and held in the EXP research complex on the Boston campus, touched on best practices, trends and innovative ideas.
Experts from national and regional news outlets, prestigious art museums, world-class athletic organizations and other established brands shared their trade secrets with the overflow audience of students, staff, faculty, community members and industry professionals.
Emily Schario is director of multimedia storytelling and head of content for The Boston Globe’s social media brand, The B-Side. For a newsroom to be successful, she said, it’s important to consider what audiences find informative — and entertaining.
Schario shared her insights during a discussion on how news publications can use social media to their advantage. The panel also included Kyley Schultz, an assignment editor for The Washington Post’s social team.
“At the end of the day, people are going to social media to be entertained, so if we’re approaching this in a very buttoned-up fussy format — because we are a newspaper — we are going to lose,” Schario said. “It’s about throwing away this idea of how you should [act] as a news organization and cater to what your audience is actually interested in.”
Schultz echoed Schario’s statement, highlighting that social media platforms can be useful venues to experiment with alternative story formats.
“How can we make someone smarter?” Schultz asked. “How can we tell them this story in a new way and show the breadth of information and reporting that we’re doing is super important?”
In a discussion about how brands can sharpen their identities online, Sarah Drumm, manager of public relations and social media at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, said having a strong brand voice starts with having a strong organizational mission.
Drumm said social media has been useful in educating people about the MFA’s mission, especially since half of its followers don’t live in the U.S. and only follow the MFA’s social accounts for entertainment.
“For us, having a voice on these platforms is crucial, because it might be the only thing they know about the MFA,” Drumm said. “We’re both an extension of the museum, but also an invitation in a sense. We want to reflect what you see when you come into the building, but also strike a really friendly, accessible tone that makes you feel like you can come there in the first place.”
Social media content creators Kevin Cooney and Ashley DeMato highlighted the importance of posting regularly and staying engaged with your audience. The married couple produces content about their lives and have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers on TikTok and Instagram.
“It’s a volume game and if the goal was to hit a home run and you only posted once a week, only swung the bat once a week, the odds of a home run sink,” Cooney said. “But if you posted 10 times a day, the odds of a home run would be significantly greater.”
Other panelists included Alex Marse, manager of digital communications at the Boston Athletic Association; Rich Brothers, senior manager of brands and strategic initiatives at the BAA; and Ally Burchill, senior paid social media manager at WHOOP, a wearable technology company headquartered in Boston.
At the end of the day, people are going to social media to be entertained…It’s about throwing away this idea of how you should [act] as a news organization and cater to what your audience is actually interested in.Kyley Schultz, an assignment editor for The Washington Post’s social team
At the end of the day, people are going to social media to be entertained…It’s about throwing away this idea of how you should [act] as a news organization and cater to what your audience is actually interested in.
Brothers highlighted the importance of building trust with your social media followers by posting content that is authentic, engaging, relatable and useful.
“Fifty-five percent of people who participate in the Boston Marathon each year, it’s the first time they are running,” he said. “So we have the opportunity to give those people what they are looking for and what they want, but make sure that we’re reaching our audience as well.”
The summit opened with a panel discussion on accessibility with Jody Santos, an associate teaching journalism professor at Northeastern and founding executive director of the Disability Justice Project
Santos discussed how brands can not only better represent people with disabilities, but also make their content more accessible through the use of things like alt text and closed captions.
“The narratives around disability are evolving, and that’s a good thing,” she said. “There might be awkward steps along the way, and there’s going to be a lot of debate about it. For me, the opinions whose matter most are of the people (with disabilities that) we’re portraying.”
Adebukola Ajao, an adjunct professor at Northeastern and founder of the marketing agency B.DY. Consult, spoke about how to build community through social media.
One of the keys, Ajao explained, is creating authentic connections to create trust with your audience and adopting different strategies for different platforms.
“I find community building essential,” Ajao said. “As a marketer, it can’t be about simply marketing. You truly need to care about the people in your community.”
Brand ambassadors can be a key part of this community building. Northeastern senior social media video producer Cameron Sleeper and Boston University director of social media David McDonald discussed how working with students has helped their respective universities build their social media presence in an authentic way.
“I always try to relate something back to a trend or internet reference that can bring people that aren’t necessarily looking for Northeastern into the fold,” Sleeper said. “We love to make our content accessible to an audience beyond Northeastern. … The advice that these ambassadors offer is just invaluable. Trust your gut, but also trust them because they might know what the audience is looking for.”
When it comes to speaking to a Gen Z audience, Sleeper said, authenticity can go a long way.
“They want to know who is behind the keyboard, and you know what their personality is,” he said in the panel, “Reaching Gen Z Through TikTok,” which also featured Schario.
Renata Nyul, Northeastern’s vice president for communications, welcomed the audience to the all-day summit.
While social media is still evolving, Nyul said, it’s become a crucial part of any brand’s identity — whether it’s a major retailer, news organization or university.
“Not so long ago, social media existed on the periphery of your brand strategy,” Nyul said. “Today, your brand is incomplete without it. Social media is part of your crisis communications strategy, your sales and marketing strategy, your audience engagement and news distribution strategy. Social media can give your brand a personality and it can give your personality a brand.”