Getting Your Name Out There Using Social Media

It is every sorority girl's and general organization member's dream to be that number one organization on campus and to be known by every student on campus. I wanted to share with you some tips, tricks and ideas I have learned firsthand from my position as Public Relations Vice President and Vice President of External Recruitment.

First, let me tell you a little bit about me, that way you will have full confidence that you too can make anything Public Relations possible. I am going to be a senior at the University of Nebraska-Kearney (UNK) and at my campus there hasn't been much of anything PR wise except for the last two years. In November, I was elected to both of my current positions which one is all about publicizing my chapter, and the second publicizing sorority recruitment to all of the new and current UNK students. I had no experience and I had never seen anyone really do PR who held the position before me. Have no worries though! I was able to teach myself how to use new programs and to learn from others.

To better your PR take a look at what other campuses or chapters on campus in your area are doing to get their name out there. If you see something that another chapter is doing that you like, take it, adapt it, and make it better. There is always improvement for whatever is being done, so don’t worry that you feel like you are copying someone, you are simply just building off of what they have done before. Don’t forget to check out what the fraternities are doing also! I have adapted some of their great stuff to work for my chapter!

Create pages and utilize social media for your organization. I have done this both for my chapter and our Panhellenic Council. One site is never enough! Not everyone uses the same types of social media, you want make sure that you are reaching all of your audiences! Some of the hot social media sites to use right now are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

This is the sorority life page I created for the University of Nebraska-Kearney with influence from the Sorority Life at Indiana State University page. 

Facebook will allow you to reach to your current members, those new to your school and alumnae as well! Not only can you reach a wider audience, you will be able to post longer stories, share what others have to say and can have members promote more prominently than twitter! Twitter is great for the sweet and short to the point updates! One thing to consider doing is promoting your longer Facebook stories that exceed the 140 character limit by linking them in your tweet and having all of your chapter members re-tweet the story. Instagram is great for showing what is happening now, in present time. Pintrest is any easy way to show your chapter style, collect future ideas and share with the world your old ideas.

This seems super overwhelming right? Don’t let it be! There are great programs out there that let you plan out your posts! My favorite is HootSuite. You can plan out your posts in advance allowing you to get a great deal of your posts done in between 8-5, rather than feeling like you have to sit at your computer with your sites pulled up at all hours of the day. Also learn to delegate. It helps to have one person in charge of each social media, so that way they can implement your ideas but keep track and have more time to work on each of the social media platforms.

I hope you have found this post useful on how to integrate social media sites in promoting your chapter or council! Have questions or comments, feel free to leave them and we will get back to you! Once again thanks for coming to the LP Blog!