Early in my tenure with the A. James Clark School of Engineering, I established the Clark School's Instagram account and built our followship from the ground up. Prior to launching the account, I wrote a plan for how I would generate several types of recurring content in order to jumpstart followship growth. One of the early content features that was established is called #TakeoverTuesday: members of the Maryland Engineering community take over the @umdclarkschool handle for the day and share about their experience as an engineer at the University of Maryland. Current students are most frequently featured, but alumni, faculty, and staff members have also taken over the account on occasion.
In order to protect the integrity of our Instagram account and to ensure content aligns with our institutional brand, the takeovers are not conducted in real time. I crafted a process for content creators to submit their content in advance of their takeover date.
The takeovers have proven so successful that other colleges and units on campus have reached out to inquire about the process for acquiring user-generated takeover content on such a consistent basis. The Instagram takeovers have also made their way into print—several takeover students were featured in the Spring 2023 issue of Engineering at Maryland magazine.
© 2023 Kristen Marie Byers