This fall semester, I had the honor of serving as coordinator of the HASTAC Communications Team at Arizona State University. As the Director of Digital Content and Special Programs at the new ASU hub for HASTAC, these past few months have been our official transitional period into co-institutional hub responsibilities, and communications was one of the most important of these new duties.
Beginning in early Fall 2017, Jennifer Byron, Scott Caddy, and myself transitioned into the communications role previously filled by our (brilliant) colleagues at Duke University. It’s been a rewarding semester, filled with hours of platform analytics, newsletter drafting, tweeting, and social media strategy meetings. Our success was largely due to the support and encouragement of our colleagues at Duke University and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York – thank you, all!
HASTAC @ ASU partnered with Connected Academics at ASU to fill our HASTAC Communications Intern positions with two qualified and passionate ASU graduate students: Jennifer Byron is a PhD Candidate in Spanish Cultural Studies and Scott Caddy is a PhD candidate in English Literature. As part of the Connected Academics program, Byron and Caddy received a professional development stipend, access to Connected Academics programming and networking at ASU, and mentorship from ASU faculty and staff in the Nexus Digital Research Co-op.
2017 Successes
In our wrap-up meeting earlier this month, we chatted about the new skills they’ve learned and our favorite accomplishments – let’s celebrate these successes, which influence all nodes on the HASTAC network – together.
- By the end of the semester, we were successfully using the integrated Drupal and Mailchimp system to send monthly HASTAC newsletters to our over 15,000 HASTAC community members.
- Using analytics from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Hootsuite, and more, Byron and Caddy wrote an analysis of our HASTAC social media audiences, networks, platforms, and effectiveness.
- Byron and Caddy began tracing communication networks via Twitter and Facebook analysis, determining not just where our core community lives, but how we can promote resources, opportunities, and emerging scholarship more effectively for our members.
- We also began brainstorming new projects, both related to HASTAC and related to our scholarly interests, that would use the social media analytics, metrics, and tools used this semester.
2018 Goals
The team is looking forward to 2018, and we already have a wish list for and set of goals to accomplish in the new year – we’ll be sure to keep the HASTAC community updated as the semester unfolds.
We’re thrilled for 2018 to be the year of:
- promoting HASTAC @ ASU events, resources, and news more regularly (via the #SouthwesternDH hashtag and more!);
- being on the cutting-edge of CFPs, job opportunities (ac and altac track), and fellowships for our community of scholars;
- interacting more directly with our current HASTAC Scholars cohorts;
- crafting a more robust social media strategy for all HASTAC community platforms (especially Facebook and YouTube),
- finding ways to archive past HASTAC Storify’d events and twitter chats before the shutdown in May 2018,
- meeting in comfy coffee shops and other public spaces for long newsletter co-working hours (working environment matters!).
Our team is prepped and eager for 2018 to begin – thank you, HASTAC, for making our transition into this role so very fulfilling. From your HASTAC Communications Team at ASU: happy global December holidays!
