Social Tools: WhatsApp
Communicate easily & seamlessly
We’ve all been there —you’re at an event and ask someone to send you a picture and it ends up coming back compressed and verrrry wonky.
The truth is, communication can be very rough between different operating systems. Apple & Android just do not communicate. Have no fear, we have a solution.
✨ WhatsApp ✨
WhatsApp is a mobile and desktop application that allows you to send messages, pictures, documents and video to users without compressing the file or freezing your phone. It’s a great way to centralize your messaging between people that may not all have the same type of phone.
Group Messaging & Live Coverage
Keep in touch with your campus contacts by creating a group messaging feed. With group chats, you can share messages, photos, documents and videos. You can also name your group, mute or customize notifications, and more.
If your team is out and about — WhatsApp is a perfect way to communicate and share content.
For our NAU Social team, we use WhatsApp every day. We have a NAU Social group message with our entire team where we send out weekly assignments, share ideas and collaborate.
For event coverage, this is our go-to communication method. On any given day, one of our interns will cover an event and send us pictures/videos in real time.
A great perk of WhatsApp — you can share up to 30 pictures/videos at once — making live coverage quick and easy!
Group texting overload
Yes, you can avoid this too!
We create groups based around specific event coverage — NAU Move In, Football games, etc. We add in those assigned to the coverage so if you’re not part of it, your phone won’t go off every five minutes 😉
Another plus of group chat — everyone has access to what’s been shared in the thread. This is especially important for longer events that may drain your battery. If one person’s phone dies, all the material isn’t lost. Someone else can easily post what they had sent in the thread to Facebook, desired social platform.
Campus Collaborations
We also have groups with other departments on campus that we collaborate with often, like NAUPD and Athletics. This is a great way to streamline communication and have it sent straight to your phone rather than waiting for an email reply.
For NAUPD we formed a group to keep up with real-time traffic updates during move-in.
When traffic conditions would change, NAUPD would text us and we would get the latest information out on our Twitter-- further streamlining communication.
Keep the Conversation Going
With WhatsApp on the web, desktop, and mobile, you can seamlessly sync all of your chats on all your devices — whatever is most convenient for you.
When sending email type messages — using the desktop version is amazing. When looking through content to post to social, having it right there on your phone is 👌🏼
Document Sharing Made Easy
Lastly, you can also send PDFs, documents, spreadsheets, slideshows and more, directly through WhatsApp. Simply drag and drop them into your text feed and you’re good to go! You can send documents up to 100 MB, so it’s easy to get what you need over to your team.
Available on Almost Every Platform
The best part about WhatsApp is that pretty much every operating system can use it:
