With social media's growing popularity, student organizations at USC have found ways to grow their reach and add a personal touch through their online presence.
Many student-run organizations maintain Instagram or TikTok pages to promote themselves, share events, recruit new members and celebrate accomplishments. Many of these pages have thousands of followers, such as the USC MIND Instagram or Cockappella TikTok. As such, managers have to keep them running smoothly with continuous flows of new posts and content both during the school year and over breaks.
After becoming the manager for Cockappella’s social media pages at the end of last semester, second-year political science student Vincenzo Coppola said he has spent one to three hours weekly in the role. He manages the club's Instagram page with 3,000 followers and TikTok account with 34,000 followers.
Being in the political science field, managing social media accounts wasn’t directly related to Coppola’s studies, but he was able to help develop and grow the pages he manages. He said collaboration with other Cockappella members promoting the posts on their own accounts often helps generate new interactions with viewers.
Social media managers at USC also can find ways to both develop their design skills and help support students who may not always feel heard or included. Second year visual communications student La'Deja Williams, who manages the Instagram and TikTok accounts for USC’s Association of African American Students, said she has found her role to be a way to accomplish both.
“I have had so much fun running (this) page," Williams said. "Being the PR chair for the organization honestly taught me a whole lot more about design just by … utilizing software that I’ve never utilized just to make sure that this is a good graphic. I feel like that’s helped so much in not only building my portfolio but making sure that I’m giving good content out to our members and the people who see our page.”
For Williams, running the page is a highly collaborative effort, and she said she makes sure people feel heard when they give their input.
“When I post content, the big thing is I’m looking forward to is actually talking to people behind the page," Williams said. "I think of all of our members as one big family."
Williams said that her PR manager position is an opportunity to promote inclusivity and inspire other members of the club and the campus community in general.
“With us being at a predominantly white institution,” Williams said, “I feel very passionately about making sure that people who look like me and who are in our organization actually feel heard by their tech board.”
Second-year retail management student and co-manager of the USC Fashion Board Instagram and Tiktok Carly Goldberg said that gathering inspiration from and collaborating with different USC student pages is an important part of her job.
"We take a lot of inspiration from other USC social media pages," Goldberg said. "A lot of times, (we look at) sorority Instagram pages, HRSM retail pages for what we post."
Beyond gathering ideas, the Fashion Board also does direct collaborations with other pages, such as a recent one with music promoter Local Mojo, where collaborative posts were made to both Instagram pages.
Coppola said smart strategy and putting in work over breaks is a major part of being a social media manager.
"We just recorded a bunch of videos before leaving for break," Coppola said. "Each week, I'll post a new video."
Williams said student social media pages is also often a rewarding experience, both to step out of major-specific activities and to practice collaboration between members and non-members.
"We all still give input,” Williams said. “Just so (our page) gets across what everybody wants it to get across.”