By Connor Johnson, reporter

Edited by Mikenna Gaukel, editor

MOUNT BERRY, Ga- Berry College and its many organizations are branching out onto various social media platforms to spread their reach to a broader audience.

These organizations are using platforms such as TikTok and Instagram to reach out to students to further connect with them as well as try and recruit new ones. The pages employ many different strategies to achieve their goals on the platform such as frequency, entertainment and information spreading. However, they all share the same goal of attracting new students and increasing participation within their respective groups.  

Students run most of the social media pages throughout campus, with the more professional groups having jobs specifically for their media teams. One such organization is Berry College Recreation whose social media account is run and managed by students. Sarah Agullo, the Assistant Director of Marketing and Communications, is one of the students who oversees most of Recreation’s social media posts and creates them as well. She is in charge of making sure that the posts accomplish the goals laid out by the Recreation staff as well as what sort of strategies they will use in order to accomplish them.

“Success for our pages would be increasing participation in all Recreation events,” Agullo said. “We want to promote student’s recreational achievements and promote better health through personal fitness.”

Success within these social media accounts is not just relative to the organization’s goals but is also dependent on the student’s viewing them. A page such as Berry College Recreation might have the goal of increasing participation, while Berry’s main pages showcase the beauty of the campus. But the students may have an entirely different objective when viewing these accounts.

One of the main challenges in running a social media page is trying to narrow down what your audience likes and their objectives, and then using that to achieve the objectives of both the audience and the organization. Students may be more casual with their objectives when looking through social media. Molly Maddox, a Berry College student has fewer priorities when looking online.

“I get all I need out of the accounts,” Maddox said. “I don’t go to them for entertainment or cool pieces of art. I just like the deer pictures and event information.”

The success of Berry College’s many social media accounts is dependent on the strategies they employ, the quality of their content, and how they market themselves to their target audiences. Success is derived not only from the goals of the organization but also from an individual basis and cannot necessarily be measured from an objective standpoint. But through branching out onto the various platforms and increasing interaction, Berry has only served to enhance the student experience.