NEW WILMINGTON, Pa. — Seems like there’s a social media account for everything on campus, right? Someone has to lead them, but who is it? While marketing, coaching and faculty run some, many are led by Westminster College students.
From Greek life to sports, a student helps keep people informed of happenings from campus organizations. Some students even manage more than one account, like Sabrina Slagle. She not only manages her personal accounts, but also Westminster’s Zeta Tau Alpha Instagram and Facebook pages, Westminster’s Tennis Instagram and Westminster’s SAAC Instagram page. She knows the work of managing a social media account better than anyone, and as her fellow social media managers know, it’s more than meets the eye. Slagle creates a variety of posts, from senior spotlights to graphics for fundraisers and videos for his sorority. Every post takes time, so she’s sure to have them created the day before they’re published; Slagle uses Adobe Photoshop and InDesign to create some of its unique content. Chloe Jaworski, who manages the Disability Awareness Club and Team One Love Instagram pages on campus, also admitted to spending a decent amount of time on each post; sometimes it takes him up to an hour to come up with the design, filters and caption for a post!
These women prove that running a social media account is like having a job on top of existing careers and college work. Most of the time, however, these roles are unpaid, perhaps because others tend to believe that operating an account is; one thing that Jaworski, Slagle and Marcus Tokar (social media manager for Westminster’s Phi Kappa Tau) all agree on is that the job isn’t easy.
Slagle said of the difficulty level of his position, “If it’s easy, you’re not doing your job right. I think the most important job is to create content that people will share to grow the account, and posting content that people are willing to share is not an easy task.
Between helping grow one or more accounts and the rest of life’s responsibilities, student social media managers have their work cut out for them. Take the time to think about what’s behind that graphic or video in your feed, and if your organization has a student who manages their social media, take the time to thank them for their hard work and creativity.
