The #CSUSocial squad, aka Team Social, spends a lot of time together. Each person on the team is tasked with various and distinct daily responsibilities but when opportunities and projects arise that require us to tackle as a team, we each bring a unique set of skills and strengths to make a project truly shine.
Let’s go behind the scenes with #CSUSocial on some of our favorite (and most successful) social media projects in the past year.
Hugs and High Fives
During finals week, we surprised students studying in the library with our mascot, CAM the Ram, who was offering hugs or high fives. This project is one of my all-time favorites because there is something incredibly moving seeing students truly appreciate getting a little boost from their mascot. Watch the Hugs and High Fives video here.
From left to right in above pic: Jen directed the filming and scouted out the students; Ashley would follow up with each student after they got a hug or high five to get their permission to be in our video; Chase filmed all of the footage; CAM the Ram doing his thing and giving a student a hug; not me pictured… Me… I was responsible for being an extra set of eyes and to help run interference if someone was asking why in the world we were walking around the library with the mascot.
Another shot in-between Hugs and High Five filming at the library.
Commencement
We pull out all of the stops when it comes to covering Commencement on social media. When we provide live social coverage at events, we divide and conquer posting to Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and Vine. Here Jen is taking a Vine video and Ashley is Snapchatting a special message to graduates from CSU President Tony Frank.
Dear Ram
For CSU’s Spring 2016 Commencement, our team produced Dear Ram under the direction and leadership of Chase Baker. This was without a doubt one of the most meaningful projects I’ve ever been a part of and am grateful we experienced it as a team. We shot Dear Ram in a studio on campus and in this photo you can see Jen running a camera on the left and Chase is on the ground getting the tight shots. Ashley and I are off-screen wiping away tears.
Hollywood Ram 🎬 ⭐️
Thanks to a heads up from our friends Gretchen Gerding from the College of Health and Human Sciences and Jeff Dodge from the PR team, we had the chance to meet 2011 alum Derek Theler, star of the TV show Baby Daddy, during his visit to campus. It was awesome to meet Derek and our fans loved knowing that we have a Ram in Hollywood. From this meeting we arranged a day for Derek to takeover our ColoradoStateU Snapchat account.
I Love CSU Day
CSU has its own holiday. Every April 18th, the governor of Colorado proclaims the day as I Love CSU Day. It’s a prime opportunity for us to engage with our fans on social media and learn why they love CSU. This year Jen and Chase collaborated on a sweet video concept that illustrated different reasons why people love CSU. Watch it here.
Puppies on the Oval
Needless to say, it didn’t take a lot of arm twisting to get the team on board to shoot a video featuring puppies at a beloved location on CSU’s campus, the Oval. Jen and Chase shot video of the adorable puppies and Ashley and I took care of Snapchat. The resulting video was too cute. And this.
Facebook Live with NASA Astronaut Kjell Lindgren
Ashley Manweiler led our first-ever Facebook Live session with CSU alum and NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren. This was another experience where we divided responsibilities to cover the live event. Jen managed the camera for Facebook Live, Chase Periscoped, Ashley was answering questions on Twitter and Facebook, and I was on Snapchat duty.
April Foolin’ with Jimmy Fallon
We pulled a fast one on our fans for April Fool’s Day this year. Believe it or not, this post holds the record for the most all-time reactions we’ve ever had on Facebook. Pretty incredible. In order to make the photo of Jimmy Fallon look realistic, we needed a body double. Enter Chase 🙂
CAM’s Birthday
CAM 25 – Colorado State University’s 25th Rambouillet ram mascot – is a fan favorite. Whenever we post something with CAM, it generates lots of engagement for our social accounts. February marked CAM’s 62nd anniversary as CSU’s official mascot so naturally we had to note the occasion with a special photo shoot.
Hello Spoof with CAM the Ram
During the 2016 winter break when students were away from campus and Adele’s Hello was on heavy rotation on the radio, Jen led our team’s spoof of Adele’s Hello music video featuring our very own CAM the Ram. Watch it here. We spent an afternoon running around an empty campus filming CAM for this video with the wonderful Ram Handlers, students who take care of CAM. We’ve become good friends with the Ram Handlers and their faculty advisor — without that strong relationship, we won’t be able to do such fun things with CAM on social.
2016 Homecoming & Family Weekend
In an effort to drum up excitement among our fans and welcome alums back to campus for Homecoming & Family Weekend, Chase directed a clever video shoot with our two-legged mascot walking through campus. Watch it here. A lot of logistics went into the creation of the video and it took the whole team to help pull off the filming. We had a blast roaming through campus on a golf cart with CAM. This would not have been possible without a good relationship with our two-legged CAM mascot friends from the Athletics department.
Winning a Webby with Temple Grandin
In 2015, #CSUSocial was honored with winning a Webby Award for our work with Dr. Temple Grandin on Reddit. Love this shot of us with Dr. Grandin and her amazing PhD student, Ruth Woiwode.
Takeaways for Tackling Projects as a Team
Give everyone a role. Whether it’s responsibility for Snapchatting, running interference during a video shoot or running the camera, make sure each team member has a role to play.
Have a plan. Seems like a no-brainer but it’s really important to have a game plan in place but also be willing to be flexible as things never go exactly as planned.
Foster relationships. This has been critical for #CSUSocial. We work hard to make and maintain positive relationships across campus.
Have fun. I truly believe our best content is created when we are working hard and having fun together as a team.
