How tweet it was.
From Twitter posts about finding a study spot in Love Library to Instagram photos with classmates hanging out at the Nebraska Union Plaza to hourly mad scrambles to nab a coveted “PerlPrize,” UNL students, staff, faculty and alumni seized the day on social media on Sept. 24.
Dubbed #UNL24, the 24-hour-long social-media surge encouraged students, faculty, staff and others to share their experiences on any number of social-media platforms. All told, the posts told the collective story of what it was like to be a part of the university community during the 24-hour stretch.
Anyone with a connection with UNL was urged to use Twitter, Instagram, Vine and other social-media platforms throughout the day to post about their experiences. The hashtag #UNL24 made the digital content easy to find and organized.
“We’ve had great participation and a high volume of content,” Tyler Thomas, UNL’s social media coordinator, said just after 4 p.m. – some 16 hours into the second-annual event. “We’ve gotten a bit of everything: posts about dancing, posts about studying for tests, posts about classes, posts simply noting good friendships.”
Chancellor Harvey Perlman got into the act, too, tweeting clues to the location of “PerlPrizes” tucked away on campus, on the hour every hour.
By the afternoon, prize-hunting became a campus sport of sorts: “Making it my goal to get a #PerlPrize by the end of the day,” junior mechanical engineering major Jayden Prauner tweeted at 4:11 p.m.
Others had a range of thoughts:
“Enjoying my job at #TheBob watching #Volleyball,” junior Jake Thomas posted, along with a photo of the Bob Devaney Sports Center volleyball court.
“Officially declared my major today,” tweeted freshman Alison Drey.
“I’m not proud of this but I tell ya what, LeAnn has some good study jams,” tweeted sophomore Ashley Esser, along with a screen capture of a laptop screen full of LeAnn Rimes songs.
This is the second year for the #UNL24 campaign. Like last year, the university created a website with featured posts at http://unl24.unl.edu. Thomas said UNL planned to create a roundup of the day on Storify to feature some of the hundreds of Tweets, Instagrams, Vines and Facebook posts.
The wide range of content was what officials had hoped to see when announcing the social-media push, Thomas said.
“It’s been eye-opening to see outside your own bubble, to get a look what goes on across campus among any number of people, groups and organizations,” Thomas said. “We were looking to capture a snapshot of life at UNL, and that’s happened.”
