By SUSAN JONES

Social media has long been tricky for even the most media savvy veteran to negotiate. And the upheaval at Twitter over the past several months has made the path forward even more unclear.

Pitt’s social media team in the Office of University Communications and Marketing not only oversees the University’s official channels, but also is a resource to help with any issues that people administering school or unit social media accounts encounter. The team also is working with the chancellor’s office on a policy — that will eventually go through the official policy process — to guide Pitt-related social media interactions in the future.

Acacia O’Connor, executive director of social media, and their team also are in the process of doing an audit of all the social media accounts associated with Pitt schools and units. They are reaching out to social media managers to determine “what accounts exist, what dead accounts exist, and who is working on social media, so that we can really have a holistic view of what the University looks like on social media.”

During the audit process, O’Connor said ideally there would be a pause on creating any new accounts, then the various units and the social media team can assess “what’s strategic for each of these bigger entities within Pitt,” O’Connor said.

There already is an account registration process, which O’Connor encourages all units to use. “If and when you are putting in for a new account and you want to start that conversation, we sit down with you and talk about your goals, your strategic priorities, what time you have to devote to that account, and just really try to help you get in the right place and make sure you have connections to all of the brand materials and resources you need for social media.”

Often creating new accounts isn’t the way to go, because it’s hard to build up followers from scratch. “My preference is to help people work with the audiences we already have as captive audiences in our biggest platforms and channels and sort of monopolize those spaces,” they said.

The main message O’Connor wants to get across to people handling social media at Pitt is, “I want them to know that our team is available to them for guidance and support and feedback and we’re here to help. We’re the social media coaches and quarterbacks of the University. … If they have a question, they can come to us, and we’re here to talk it out.”

What about Twitter?

One of the big questions in the social media world is whether to stay on Twitter or not. Since Elon Musk bought the company in October, it has been surrounded by controversy, including mass layoffs, reinstatement of some divisive accounts and the demand by Musk that people pay for the blue check that verifies their account.

O’Connor said Pitt has chosen to stay on Twitter and pay for the blue check verification for now. “We wanted to be able to access the maximum amount of customer support while Twitter decided to do whatever it was going to do about the ‘checks’ system,” they said. “We would leave it if we find it’s not valuable, ultimately.”

Pitt’s official social media has suspended any advertising spending on the platform, “Because the thing that I don’t want is to have something related to our university placed on the feed next to something really hateful. That’s a brand security issue,” O’Connor said.

Many social media managers have a love/hate relationship with Twitter, O’Connor said. “It is a cornerstone of how we humans are currently sharing information. That said, we have seen diminishing returns on Twitter for a while since before I joined (Pitt). And so while we do still put things on there, that is not a platform of strategic focus. And we are this year working to embrace other spaces on social media that we think could, in some way, replicate some of the things that we get from Twitter, but there is no other Twitter.”

Some of the platforms the team is looking at include Reddit and Pinterest, which both have large and growing audiences. “It’s not like Twitter, there’s a lot of differences and limitations, but I think that’s what I’m looking at to see if we can experiment there and see what we can do there.”

O’Connor told members of Pitt’s Communications Council that, “if your unit doesn’t find Twitter or any platform to be giving you the dividends that you want to see and you feel like it’s not a good use of your time on social media, you can leave. … We have had Pitt accounts that have done that and that’s totally valid.”

Top platforms

For Pitt, “Instagram is king,” O’Connor said. “And LinkedIn is a peer to that. I think that they are equally strong right now. They’re very different. Instagram is where the larger share of our University community is. Our students are our core audience, younger staff, younger alums, and also a lot of families of students now are in that space. … We have the most significantly growing Instagram, percentage-wise, compared to our peers. We’re still only around 60,000 followers because we got started kind of late in the game, but the year over year, month over month growth of that platform blows all of our peers away.”

And while the number of followers on Instagram isn’t huge, O’Connor said the engagement is very strong. “We’ll have pieces that are seen by almost all of our followers, which is wild.”

They would like to see more faculty and staff following Pitt on Instagram. “I want more people to be there that aren’t just our students,” they said.

On LinkIn, Pitt’s official account has nearly 270,000 followers. “I think the people who are most invested in their own relationship with Pitt are present there,” they said. “If we want people to read and click things, that’s where it goes. People love to see accolades.”

Pitt joined TikTok about a year ago and the team has used that space to be more playful and to follow trends. “We have had great student interns who are really great at working with all of us in that space,” O’Connor said. A video with one of the team members, Elliot Pippin, dressed as Mr. Monopoly and offering a free Pittsburgh Monopoly game to the first person who brought him a thimble was viewed nearly 14,000 times. It also was used on several other platforms.

O’Connor said they also are working with the Communications video team to grow engagement on YouTube. “YouTube is a huge social media platform. .... It’s massive and people spend hours a day there. But it’s really tough for higher education.” The video team has done “incredible work” there, they said, “And we are sort of mixing up the pot by adding our shorter social media videos into the mix.”

Policy in the works

O’Connor said any new policy on social media would probably be fairly short. It would lay out the rights and responsibilities, obligations and ramifications of people using social media, when they are members of the Pitt community and when they are working on behalf of the University.

“If you look at other universities or peer institutions, most of them have some version of this,” they said.

In the meantime, they are rolling out protocols for University Relations staff that puts in writing things what we all know — the internet is not a private place and there are different responsibilities and obligations on different platforms.

After that, the team would like to develop best practices and guidelines for social media managers at Pitt. There already is a community of practice with more than 70 people. “Most of those people do social media in concert with other communications roles as part of their job and (we’d be) just sending out how best to represent their sub brand of Pitt.”

Most of this information will be on the social media page on the Communications and Marketing website, which also will have guidelines on how to work with the social media team to pitch projects, register accounts and more. This also would include guidance on handling online harassment, bullying and sensitive subjects on social media, along with guidelines on  trademark, copying, ethical conduct and brand.

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

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