OFFICE OF ENROLLMENT COMMUNICATIONS INTERNSHIP
During the spring 2019 semester, I worked with the UNC Charlotte Office of Enrollment Communications as the Communications and Social Media Marketing Intern and learned about how the university communicates with internal departments and prospective students.
Social Media
My primary task during this internship was to create content for the UNC Charlotte Admissions social media account. In addition to daily posts, I helped plan and execute campaigns and contests, as well as attended to questions and concerns that came through private messaging.
Over the five months that I interned at the OEC, I posted content that brought a wider audience to our social media accounts. Between Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, my posts resulted in over 470,000 impressions and over 38,000 points of engagement.
My supervisor came up with the idea of a weekly Instagram campaign that would showcase a future UNC Charlotte student holding their green welcome envelope. It was my job to locate a new incoming student through the #Future49er, ask permission to use their photo and write entertaining and informative copy for the post.
Since #Future49er Friday had been a success, my supervisor asked me to brainstorm a contest that would be an offshoot of that campaign. I came up with the idea of the #IPickUNCC contest. Incoming students would be asked to post a picture of themselves on campus or with their envelope and tell us why they chose UNC Charlotte for a chance to win a swag pack. We chose nine finalists out of many, and posted their pictures on our page.
As a lead-up to our first Open House of the semester, I created a weeklong campaign showcasing "hidden" areas on campus as a way to encourage visitors to make the most of their experience. Incoming, current and past students and families alike were surprised to learn of the services highlighted and shared these posts at a fast pace.
Other Projects
In addition to creating content for social media, my internship gave me the chance to work on more unique modes of communication used to interact with admitted students.
Incoming students receive a newsletter near the end of the school year to welcome them to UNC Charlotte. My supervisor asked me to edit the newsletter for Fall 2019, choose new pictures to showcase and re-do the student interview section. I chose to highlight a freshman student who worked for the Belk Gym on campus about her experience so far.
I assisted with both Spring 2019 #49ersLive Facebook Live events, where admissions counselors and current students answered questions from applicants and their families. Prior to the events, I created and posted reminders. During the event, I was given the task to collect live questions from all of our social media accounts and post them on a shared Google Doc for our moderators to see.
As a reminder for admitted students to submit their intent to enroll by May 1, I created an interactive spark page featuring all of the next steps required of a #Future49er. These steps included instructions for applying for housing, registering for orientation and submitting advanced credits. This spark page also gave us the chance to post the pictures of several of our #IPickUNCC submissions.
Sometime in April, my supervisor and I realized that UNC Charlotte had few stickers on Instagram and Snapchat that incoming students could use to celebrate their acceptance. It was my responsibility to upload gifs created by my supervisor to Giphy and communicate with their team about allowing our account to make the switch to a brand account, which would increase our scope.
Administrative Work
This internship gave me the chance to learn how to use new software and taught me how it would be useful in my future career. I was also responsible for monitoring our affiliates and keeping up a content calendar.
My supervisor oversaw a team of 12 UNC Charlotte tour guides who served as Social Media Ambassadors for the university. The SMAs were required to post on Twitter a certain number of times during the week, and it was my job to record their tweets every week. I created a spreadsheet for each SMA, with a graph showing their progress over the semester.
One of the first skills I gained from this internship was learning how to work with Hootsuite. Although the platform is easy to understand and incredibly helpful, having to use it taught me what kind of posts are made to be scheduled versus those that need to be posted manually.
The OEC is responsible for sending out financial aid reminders to students every day. After getting trained in how to use the software, it was always my first task of the day to send these emails. Over the course of my internship, I think I must have sent thousands of emails.
Before posting on our social media accounts or even scheduling posts on Hootsuite, I kept a social media calendar on Google Sheets. This way, my supervisor and I could keep track of upcoming events that needed promotion, and she could sign off on posts before they were made.
Crisis Response
I was still working for the Office of Enrollment Services during the tragic events of April 30. Although it was an incredibly sad time for UNC Charlotte, its staff and its students, working in a university office at the time taught me so much about crisis response and how an organization must communicate with its public following such events.
