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Having a Conversation About Social Media Accessibility

The important task of making your social media accounts accessible for those with disabilities requires mindfulness, thought, and consideration. Sometimes in the rush to post, it can be very easy to forget to add alt-text image description or not caption a video. After all, if you are a team of one like most social media managers in higher education, who is going to hold you accountable? Chances are your supervisors and university administration don’t use screen readers and are unaware of these accessibility issues that you are working to resolve. This is why it is vital to have a conversation with your supervisors and campus stakeholders about the importance of accessibility in social media and the measures you are taking to improve it.

The GIF That Keeps on Giving

GIFs are the lingua franca of Twitter. They can express complex ideas and emotions that can’t fit into a Tweet, create humor and levity, or add a personal touch to a reply. In higher education, we use them constantly to congratulate students when they’ve just been accepted, share the excitement of the school year starting, or wish students luck on final exams.

However, GIFs are not without their problems.

The Anatomy of a Terrible Social Media post

As a social media manager working in higher education, I get the same request almost everyday. “Will you put this flyer on the university Facebook page?” Unless the request comes from the president’s suite, the answer is always no. Using promotional materials designed for print in the digital space is just a terrible idea. In addition, these flyers, often made in PowerPoint or Microsoft Publisher, are poorly designed to begin with. If putting up flyers around campus isn’t getting students to your events, putting the same flyers on social media isn’t going to help either. The problem is your content, not the medium.

"Good Enough for Social Media" Isn't Good Enough

I’ve heard it said a thousand times. “It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough for social.”

This is often said when reviewing sub-par content that has no other place to go. Or maybe it’s said after taking an out of focus photo on the fly at an event before Tweeting it out to thousands of uninterested followers. The sad fact is a lot of people think that there is a low bar for content posted to social media. However, this is far from the truth as social media has matured and the quality of content from brands and media outlets has increased rapidly and dramatically. Blurry cell phone photos and shaky videos no longer cut it.

Social media is the voice of your brand, so why would you settle for anything less than excellent?

Five Tips for New Social Media Managers

Only other social media managers understand the life of a social media manager. You need a like-minded group that you can talk to, ask questions to, and provide support when the trolls get to be overwhelming. Find other social media managers in your field on Twitter and interact with them. Participate in a Twitter chat, ask questions of those you think are doing well, and give back to the community when you can. I also recommend joining a professional organization and attending conferences when you can. A strong community of support is vital.

What Social Media Superhero are You?

Being a social media manager requires a wide array of skills. You must have focus, understand and absorb a constant stream of information, predict future trends, be on call 24/7, handle crisis situations...basically you have to have super powers. As we gear up for the onslaught of superhero movies the summer blockbuster season would bring, I thought it would be fun to ask, "What social media superhero are you?" Here are a few options:

Instagram Stories Deserve Their Own Content.

When Instagram released their “Stories” feature there was quite an uproar of thievery followed by a sigh of praise. Yes, Instagram totally ripped off Snapchat, but they also made it their own and made it better.

For social media marketers, it can be frustrating when a new feature like this is released. It’s another thing you have to create content for in order to stay competitive. You can hardly blame social media marketers when they simply choose to import their Snapchat story over to Instagram and have two identical stories in two different social networks. After all, a lot of your Instagram audience doesn’t follow you on Snapchat. Right?

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