Students design social media campaign for Guy Harvey Research Institute

During the Winter 2021 semester, undergraduate Communication students in COMM 4300: Social Media Theory and Practice had the opportunity to put their social skills into action and design a strategic social media campaign for NSU’s Guy Harvey Research Institute. Each winter, the course, offered through the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, partners with a real-world client seeking to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity with its social media presence.

“The best way for students to learn how to conduct a bona fide social media campaign is by partnering with a real client with a real need, and we were excited to have the chance to work with Dr. Shivji and the Guy Harvey Research Institute,” said Whitney Lehmann, associate professor of communication for the Department of Communication, Media, the Arts. “Dr. Shivji had a very clear, strategic vision for the GHRI’s social presence, and it was an invaluable learning experience for students to work with him and his team to design a unique and effective campaign tied to their organizational goals.”

Students kicked off the semester by conducting an initial client interview with Mahmood Shivji, Ph.D., professor for the Department of Biological Sciences and director of the Guy Harvey Research Institute and Save Our Seas Foundation Shark Research Center. Following the interview with Shivji and Tyler Plum, the GHRI’s social media manager and a master’s student in the Department of Biological Sciences, the undergraduate students conducted an audit of the GHRI’s social media presence and presented Shivji and Plum with proposed objectives, strategies and tactics tied to priority audiences and organizational goals. Campaign deliverables included new social media branding, a social media manual, targeted Twitter lists for networking with members of the media, and a revamped YouTube channel for archiving and curating GHRI video content.

“Working with Dr. Lehmann and her students was not only tremendously informative for us in terms of learning better strategies for social media platform construction and use, but it was also a pleasure interacting with the impressively creative undergraduates,” Shivji said. “The end result of this campaign is a vastly better social media platform for the GHRI to disseminate our work.”

For more information about the B.A. in Communication program, COMM 4300: Social Media Theory and Practice and other courses offered through the curriculum’s Strategic Communication concentration and minor, click here.

Follow the Guy Harvey Research Institute on social media @nsughri, the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences @nsuhcas, and the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts @nsu_dcma