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This post was co-authored by Amanda Sampol and Phoebe Huang.

Did you know that visuals are processed 60,000 x faster in the brain than text?

We were asked to create a social media guide for our team, and thought to ourselves what better way to showcase this than through an infographic? But we didn’t want to create just any infographic. It had to be different, interesting and relatable. So we decided to show it in the form of a burger, because who doesn’t love a burger?

An Unlikely Combo

But why did we choose a burger? What does a burger and social media have in common you ask? To us, effective social media posts are contingent on a combination of certain elements, which can be compared to key ingredients that make for a delicious burger. With this multi-layered analogy in mind, we would like to share our recipe for social media success.

Cooking Up a Storm

Now enough enticing, let’s get to it! Let’s introduce you to the elements we’ve included in our recipe and what they represent.

Our Recipe for Social Media Success

Burger_Infographic
Click on the above image to view the entire infographic

#1 The Bun – Higher Education and Teaching and Learning

  • Like a burger bun, the foundation for any successful social media engagement is content that explicitly represents an organisation’s key messages. In our case as the Institute of Interactive Media and Learning at the University of Technology, we are passionate about Higher Education and Teaching and Learning, therefore a majority of our posts should be learning and teaching ideas, tips and examples.
  • Like a freshly baked bun the posts should be fresh and current. Although you can recycle old posts nothing beats a freshly baked bun.

#4 Salad – Links and Resources

  • Salads are very customisable to your own taste, much like that of the resources that are available to us, it is simply a game of curation. Curating the appropriate elements to support the patty and the bun.
  • For example, if I wrote a post about “why we need Graduate Attributes in Higher Education”, a ‘salad’ post to go with it may be a link to an article from ABS with student employment rates, or a ‘key skills employers seek’ listicle.
  • Don’t forget – You don’t make friends with salad. Our ‘salad’ are posts relating to helpful resources for our core content. We know that it is good for us, but it is often not the first thing we gravitate towards. Think about these posts as the less interesting content which does not appeal to all, but we know is good for us to read.

#5 Onion  – Updates

  • Some love it and some hate it! Unlike actual onions though, this content won’t leave a stinky smell after you consume it. These posts are the practical ‘updates and notices’ posts that will leave you highly informed. They work in conjunction with other posts such as the ‘patty’ post to add sustenance for a more enriching experience.
  • These update/notice posts are necessary and a great addition to strengthen and appeal to audiences outside of the tertiary education realm, to invite discussions about the pedagogical and technological space in general.

#3 Cheese – Miscellaneous

  • Cheese, although not mandatory, makes for a very welcome addition. The cheeses of our burger are the miscellaneous and fun stuff – the real reason we are on social media in the first place.
  • There is a fine line between the fun and serious topics. We must find a balance to ensure that the cheese does not overpower the other elements that we have worked so hard to prepare for.
  • Consumption in large doses are not recommend, however we can all too often get drawn into such gluttony. A cheeky post or two throughout the week should suffice cravings. They include but are not limited to cultural content, light-hearted content, memes, funny graphics and stories.

­­­­#2 Patty – Current and Successful Projects

  • What is a great burger without a patty? The patty is a core component and has the potential to take the burger to the next level. So what is our patty? Content that is current and that showcases UTS successful learning and teaching projects, events and strategic initiatives such as learning.futures.
  • Although these posts can be quite time dependent, they should be announced where possible, as they will help to form our unique selling proposition when paired against other tertiary education institutes.

#6 Condiments

  • And now for the secret ingredient to lightly garnish our burger – condiments. Sure you can eat your burger without condiments, but we all know that it definitely tastes better with them. It’s what turns a normal burger into a monster burger. These are the sprinkles of multimedia joy that you add to your post to make it just that little bit better and more appealing. Things like images,  infographics and video content.

Remember burgers are customisable to your palate, you may choose to include or exclude particular ingredients. It is entirely up to you – You are the head chef.

So let us know what kind of combo works for you in the comments below!

Disclaimer: It must be noted that this has been created based merely on our own opinions of how these concepts and elements interrelate with one another. By no means can our infographic definitively represent all the elements for social media success or be applied to all platforms.

Burger by Freepik was modified for use in this infographic.

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