Social Media Consulting Club (SMCC)
“The Social Media Consulting Club is a student organization working directly with UM Social and UMSI to provide departments and organizations at the University of Michigan with one-on-one digital strategy consultation. Included in our consultations are online communications strategies, social media analytics, and digital branding recommendations.”
From Fall 2017 to Fall 2018, I held a leadership position in the Social Media Consulting Club (SMCC) as a project manager and co-founder of the organization. SMCC is sponsored by UMSI (U-M School of Information) and UM Social (main department for social media management of the University's brand).
At the start of each semester, I participated in rigorously reviewing and interviewing applicants to the organization. My primary role throughout the semester involved talking directly to our client, scheduling client and team meetings, providing assistance to consultants and designers on my client team (~5 to 6 students), and assisting fellow leads with broader organizational needs.
I worked closely with University of Michigan departments and organizations to help them develop a social media strategy based upon their specific inquiries and requests. I also worked with these clients to understand their social media analytics and make recommendations within the span of a semester.
U-M's Office of Undergraduate Admissions (OUA)
My client team consisted of undergraduates from the School of Information, the Communication Studies department, and the Stamps School of Art and Design.
Four consultants: Ali Barzyk, Katie Ortiz, Mackenzie Francisco, and Madeleine Sabo
One designer: Cynthia Ding
We worked with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions to help them in identifying their audience(s) on their social media platforms.
Additionally, we helped generate sample content intended to engage/resonate with their audience (both intended and actual).
Process Details
Stakeholder Analysis
To better understand the OUA's audiences, we conducted a stakeholder analysis together during our initial intake meeting. From this we found that high school upperclassmen and their families were key players.
Competitive Analysis
After narrowing down OUA's social media platforms to focus on their presence on Instagram, we conducted a competitive analysis. In this analysis, we chose the five most recent posts on each of the Big 10 schools' office of undergraduate admissions Instagram feeds and compared them to OUA's.
Content Calendar
Since we were not able to thoroughly conduct A/B testing, we created an example Social Media Content Calendar with potential themes and ideas for each week in order to test different combinations of content and formats on Instagram.
Final Recommendations
Utilize Instagram Stories to reach higher levels of engagement and collect more click conversions.
Track your social media metrics to determine the relative success of social media content.
Curate content towards OUA’s target audience(s) to gain increased engagement amongst their followers.
Additional Information
A/B tests were not run for this client. We consulted UMSI faculty mentors and determined that an A/B test on Instagram was not feasible for this project.
Final deliverables included a report detailing our findings and recommendations, content mock-ups for potential campaigns, content calendar, competitive analysis of Big 10 school Instagrams, and a spreadsheet and form for tracking social media metric data.