Are we at the "let's table this until next week" part of Friday yet? 

🧵 — that's it, that's the headline  

Many higher ed social media managers were trying to unplug, as much as we ever can,  over the July Fourth week when bam, out of seemingly nowhere, Meta’s text-based Threads dropped on July 6. Less than a week later, 100 million+ people had downloaded it. We’re recovering from the thought of having yet another platform to manage but intrigued by the possibility of it being an alternative — or maybe even a replacement — for Twitter. There’s a lot to learn on the platform, and we are all discovering it together at the same time, which is exciting but also terrifying. 

Platform basics:
🧵 Posts can contain text up to 500 characters, links, photos, videos up to 5 minutes
🧵 Your feed is people you follow and recommended users (the algorithm will continue to get better as you use it)
🧵 There’s no search, private messaging, hashtags, ways to edit your post or trending stories – although that could all be coming later

Some initial Threads thoughts:

🧵 The Instagram connection: Go ahead and secure your institution’s account. But know that once you do this, there’s no going back because in order to deactivate the account, you’d have to get rid of your Instagram account, which you wouldn’t do.  You can hide your Threads account, though, and Instagram may be changing this inability to delete one without the other. This link to Instagram isn’t all bad, though:
One of the reasons this platform seems so viable is because of how it imports your Instagram followers and doesn’t make you start from scratch. 

🧵 This is not the time for strategy: Even the big brands are figuring this out at the same time, so just chill and spend some time watching what’s working and what’s not. There’s not even any metrics available to us at this point.
🧵 Here’s your chance to repurpose or reinvent: Try a little of both. Maybe it’s nice to have a clean slate and try a new style of posting or maybe you can repurpose some of your most successful content that you’ve had on your other platforms here to see if it performs well on Threads. 

Some institutions are jumping right in:

Back2School with TikTok

By now, we all know Gen Z’s affinity — or perhaps obsession with — TikTok. However, it seems many institutions are hesitant to formulate a comprehensive paid strategy for the platform. In case you needed that nudge, here’s some relevant stats TikTok shared last month in a Back2School webinar:

• TikToks with school-related hashtags are picking up billions of views, including #college with 83 billion views, #professorsofTikTok with 380 million views and #studying with 3 billion views.
• When it comes to deciding what institutions to apply to and what ones to attend, 1 in 4 undergrad students searched TikTok during both of those processes, and 1 in 3 grad students did the same. 
• 71% of college students say they plan to create their own back-to-school TikTok content, 86% say they plan to connect with communities of people with similar interests on TikTok and 69% say they will likely purchase a product through TikTok related to back-to-school.

The new school year is a great time to ramp your efforts up. Book an office hours session if you'd like to talk over TikTok organic or paid strategy. 

We all saw the headlines this week from a recent Gallup poll that determined Americans’ trust in higher education has plummeted to 36%. When I say I’ve lost sleep over this, I am not lying; I’ve spent nearly the last decade working to build that trust between our audiences and the institutions I’ve served. During one of my bouts of insomnia, I discovered that alarming figure is actually part of a larger survey about the trust in all sorts of institutions — military, police, church, etc. — and in nearly every category, Americans’ trust in these 17 institutions that they were asked about has dropped. Saving our colleges and universities is a priority for me, but I think we should also acknowledge that a lack of trust is a general trend among Americans’ attitudes. And given Gen Z’s traits, this will continue in the coming decades. We must use this warning sign to recommit ourselves to delivering the most authentic, transparent content possible on our social media channels, in our communications, on websites, postcards, billboards and everywhere else the public learns about us. Engage with those people in our communities who do believe in the value of higher education and let them tell their stories.

Around the socials

> Meta releases a Threads dictionary to explain app lingo

> TikTok tests ability to download videos without watermark

> Barbie movie leads to explosion of Pinterest searches

RWJ Social helps higher ed institutions shape social strategy through a variety of services, including influencer engagement, benchmarking, monitoring and more.

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