Smile, You’re on Candid Camera: SLU Snapchats

By BRENDA WINN
NEWS EDITOR

On Friday, January 29, the St. Lawrence Social Media Team unveiled their latest project – A SLU Snapchat account. The account was kept a secret until the reveal Friday morning, a great way to kick off the semester, and the beginning of Winter Weekend. Users can log into Snapchat, add “stlawrenceu” as a friend and then see the story every day. The SLU account is not following back any friends, so they are unable to see the user’s stories, but the users can still see the SLU story.

Associate Director of Marketing Meg Keniston said that the Student Social Media team and she first discussed the idea of a SLU Snapchat about 18 months ago. At that time, they agreed that the student body wasn’t ready for the account. Snapchat did not have the brand presence from national companies that it does nowadays. SLU decided to wait for this reason, also because they did not know if and when “Campus Stories,” run by the Snapchat company itself, would be accessible on campus and what that would look like. Because of this, the social media team held off creating any SLU Snapchat account.

At the beginning of the Fall 2015 semester, Snapchat had not yet chosen SLU to receive a Campus Story account, as the company was mainly targeting larger universities. SLU and the social media team had no control over whether we would be chosen for a campus story. Because of this, the social media team revisited the idea of a SLU Snapchat account. This account would be different than a Campus Story, in case SLU is ever selected for one. According to Keniston, the Campus Story accounts are managed by Snapchat, and if SLU ever were to get one, this would be monitored by Snapchat, not the University.

The “stlawrenceu” Snapchat account is different because it is managed by the University and the Social Media Team. This means that when people send the SLU account a snap, it is a staff member who opens it.
“I have heard from a few colleagues at other institutions that their university Snapchat accounts sometimes receive less-than-wonderful snaps,”

Keniston said. “I hope our students are smart enough not to be sending those messages, but if they are sending them, I hope they make sure they aren’t accidentally sending them to us!”

In addition, the campus story accounts only allow those on campus or in the area to see the story, but the social media team decided they want all Saints – alum, those abroad, even prospective students wanting to get an idea of what SLU is all about – to look at and use the account.

The social media team spent the entire fall semester researching, following, and dissecting other schools Snapchat accounts. They noted what they liked, didn’t like, and what got their attention the best. Additionally, they had to discuss how this account would be different from St. Lawrence’s other modes of social media.

“We need[ed] a purpose for the channel,” Keniston said. The group put together a proposal that was then presented by Keniston and Rachel Sullivan ’16 to Vice President for Communications, Melissa Farmer Richards. She approved the proposal in December, giving the social media team time to plan the launch at the beginning of this semester, when students were still re-acclimating to campus life. “I’m so thankful [to Melissa] and that she is letting us run with this Snapchat idea,” Keniston said.

Snapchat is now the sixth social media platform that SLU has utilized. The SLU LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts hit all the big events on campus. Keniston said she is hoping that Snapchat will serve to fill in for all the other things that happen on our campus on a daily basis.

“We wanted an outlet to fill in little things going on around campus in the moment, and some behind the scenes,” said social media team member, Emily Parent ’18. “We also hoped that students would interact with us on Snapchat, as well as participate in our contests.” She said the goal of the account is to make St. Lawrence’s authentic identity shine through via Snapchat.

Paige Friedlander ’16, social media team member, said that Snapchat is a new and innovative way to share things about the campus. She said Instagram has been great, but no one wants to see a ton of pictures every day, so they have to be more selective about what they post.

In addition to using Snapchat to show the little stories, Keniston said that she is hoping that students will see something on the Snapchat story, and be inspired to put their phones down, get up, and do it, and further immerse themselves.

“I am not sure what the presence of SLU Snapchat will look like in a year,” Keniston said. She said the team is willing to alter or change the account based on what the audience likes. They did a lot of work to see what they liked or did not like about the other school’s accounts, so they have a pretty good idea of how to initially make the account what they think students will like.

The team did not know what to expect with the Friday launch. Different members thought there would be different results, but the highest prediction was about 300 followers. By the end of Friday, there were over 1,000 followers. The team decided to open the account by asking for welcome snaps, and they received a ton, particularly from alumni. Then, at the White Out Hockey game, they asked for snaps from the game, and received 60. By the end of the day, 158 followers had interacted with the SLU account.

The social media team does not initiate any interaction; they only respond or reply if the follower contacts them first. “I was very overwhelmed by the response, in a good way,” Keniston said. “I’m so happy the response has been so positive so far.”

Parent has received lots of positive feedback as well from students, even though the account has only been active for a few days.

A really big intention of the SLU Snapchat was to engage Saints all across the Globe. “My hope is that anyone who follows [the account] feels more connected to campus and can [be a part of] the Laurentian experience,” said Friedlander. “It was really hard for me to go abroad because I missed St. Lawrence so much, I wanted to see more than the Facebook articles of past events. Snapchat is a solution to that.”

The Hill News Arts and Entertainment editor Alexa Mitchell ’16 states, “I really like the SLU Snapchat. This morning, I was able to look at it and see that it was going to be raining on campus…I didn’t even need to check my weather app! There are some great stories on it and I love staying connected to SLU in this way.”

Keniston encourages students to send feedback about the Snapchat account, or any SLU social media account, to social media@stlawu.edu. “Feedback only makes our accounts better,” she said, “so please let us know if there is some improvement or some other account that is doing something well that you think we should too.”