University Union took a new direction Sunday night when it announced this year’s artists for the MayFest celebration in Walnut Park.

Beginning at 8 p.m. and continuing every 30 minutes until 10 p.m., UU announced a new artist on its Twitter account, @UUInsider. Each tweet tagged an artist and provided a link to one of the artist’s YouTube videos so students unfamiliar with the performers could check out their work.

In the digital age, UU’s use of Twitter to announce the artists was an effective use of social media. The announcements promoted discussion on campus through Twitter. Students were able to listen to the artists’ music and follow them on Twitter if they were interested. The 30-minute wait between artists helped build up suspense and excitement for MayFest, an event which is often secondary to Block Party.

But there are ways UU can improve the system if it wishes to continue announcing artists via Twitter.

UU should better promote the announcement. If students do not know to check the UU Twitter account at a specific time, then they could have missed the announcement altogether. Perhaps UU could have promoted the announcement earlier in the week so students would have known to pay attention to their Twitter accounts Sunday night at 8 p.m.

UU must find alternative ways to reach students for students who do not use Twitter. Perhaps UU could have sent an email to students after the event with the same information as the tweets. This would have been repetitive for some students, but it would have been a way to reach a broader range.

Social media is becoming increasingly important to break news. It’s encouraging to see UU beginning to try to find ways to utilize its Twitter account.  

Published on March 26, 2012 at 12:00 pm

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