Week 7: Effectiveness of Visuals

While I'm certain that my department would benefit from most visual platforms, I feel the need to consider the effectiveness of each when compared to the required amount of time and energy to see a significant return. To be clear, our department is not selling a product or service. Our mission is to support student success by providing a variety of methods to disseminate information. One of the main methods, and currently most effective, is by meeting one-on-one with a counselor either by appointment or drop-in. However, given limitations in space, manpower, and time this is not always possible and very often a full 45 minute appointment is taken up for a matter that could have been answered in five minutes on our website.

With that in mind, visual platforms can play an important role in offering key deadlines and information in an easily accessible manner. A few weeks before this semester began, I started an Instagram account with that goal in mind. No less than once per week we post the daily drop-in schedule, an alternative to calling or coming in to the office. We have also been finding creative ways to provide information such as irregular closures and important deadlines. The front office staff plans to include social media strategy in our future meetings to explore the possible uses for our current platforms.

In addition to Instagram, we are in the process of integrating our slightly unused YouTube account. On of our counselors has created two videos in the past year to offer information about our services and how to prepare for a counseling appointment. In recent talks, we see this as a great way of creating informal videos every month or so in an effort to keep students up to date on school policies and motivated in their studies. 

It is difficult enough finding creative options for Instagram, that I don't feel there is any benefit in implementing a Tumblr account. Many of our staff members have expressed several times an aversion to being in any pictures or videos used for media or marketing.

Pinterest is the last piece to this puzzle, and one that I was initially on the fence about leaning more in the direction of Tumblr. However, after reading the lecture and giving more consideration, I have since changed my view and have decided to create and account and carefully implement. I say carefully because the information we offer using this platform needs to be supervised and checked with caution. I have had experiences in the past of pinning infographics to my personal account without looking at it thoroughly, only to find that it offered incorrect information, bad grammar/spelling, or inappropriate language. Being that this represents our department in a way, we want to hold our pins to the same standards that we hold ourselves to, or at least as closely as possible.

Our department is lucky in the sense that we have a few staff members interested in collaborating in our social media. However, this can also serve as a detriment in an age when information can become outdated very quickly. It is important for us to begin and build slowly with these platforms to not become too overwhelmed. To restate an earlier point, one of our main goals is to provide information in the most effective manner. Given our limited resources in such a busy department this may mean offering only one or two high performing platforms at first, rather than many platforms with out of date information.