Sonja Likness, the Director of Social Media & Content Strategy at Duke University (Communications Office), joins the Social Pros Podcast to discuss how she runs social media at a major university with numerous departments, collaborators, and over 15,600 students.

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Full Episode Details

Coordinating social media content across campus with a large number of departments is no easy feat. However, Sonja Likness, the Director of Social Media & Content Strategy at Duke University, has created a seamless structure that upholds the university’s reputation while still giving departments their own voice on social.

As Sonja stated in this episode of the podcast, “a part of my job is to educate, give best practices, consult when they run into trouble, and to facilitate everybody talking to each other.”

Social media practitioners can learn a lot from Sonja, who effectively structures countless collaborators on campus covering a range of different topics and navigates social for a popular university with approx. 15,634 students – not to mention, juggling all of this and keeping everything aligned during a global pandemic. Hear how she does it without breaking a sweat on this fascinating episode of Social Pros.

In This Episode:

04:14 – How Sonja coordinates social content across campus
06:16 – How Duke University’s ‘social media working group’ works together
07:26 – How audience prioritization differs across different social media platforms
12:57 – Why additional governance is necessary when approaching profound topics such as COVID-19
15:07 – How Duke University leverages influencers and user-generated content
18:13 – How Sonja’s team are creating new video content during the pandemic
20:40 – How Duke University uses highly-polished video content vs. authentic video content
23:38 – The importance of social listening
27:40 – Why (and how) Sonja builds relationships with key social media leads across campus
32:40 – How Duke University targets graduate students with social media marketing

Resources

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