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New face of the workplace: Female-led SFA social team

Date postedOctober 2, 2022
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New face of the workplace: Female-led SFA social team

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This story is part of our 360 package for October 2022, to view more stories, click here.

Pictured above: Beth Waguespack (top left), Colbie Balsamo (second from left), Angel Suarez (bottom left), Hannah Hatton (top middle), Kiersten Hart (far right), Natalie Wright (bottom right).

Q&A with Dennis Driscoll, Stephen F. Austin University Associate Athletic Director for Strategic Communications as told to Barb Kowal, College Sports Communicators Director of Professional Development and External Affairs.

New face of the workplace: Female-led SFA social team

by Barb Kowal – College Sports Communicators, Director of Professional Development & External Affairs

When you attend a Stephen F. Austin athletic event, you’ll see them in force around the playing fields, courts and athletic facilities.

It’s the SFA social and digital communications team, 18 women strong. They are full-time professionals, graduate assistants and student assistants, all involved in coordinating and producing social and digital content for the 18 Lumberjacks athletics programs.

Associate Athletic Director for Strategic Communications Dennis Driscoll, the leader of the external operations and strategic communications department at this small D1 institution, is quite proud of the staff that’s been built. Competing in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), SFA is located in the rural small-town of Nacogdoches, Texas, two hours north of Houston and two hours west of Shreveport, Louisiana.

In addition to the 18 females involved in social and digital content, the SFA strategic communications department also employs five others, including Driscoll. Twenty-three strong.

Within the social media team, there are students who lead their peers as student director of videography (Kiersten Hart) and student director of photography (Hannah Hatton) and social media (Natalie Wright).

Direct supervision for the social and digital content is coordinated by new Director of Social and Digital Content Hunter Overholt, who just arrived from Division III East Texas Baptist University. Overholt fully understands the benefits of building a social and digital student staff as he was a graduate assistant at ETBU and helped the school become a leader in the D3 ranks for social and digital content, broadcasting and livestreaming.

Driscoll talked about how this impressive staff was built.

“This past summer, we sent messages on our SFA social media outlets that we were looking for student interns to work in our office,” said Driscoll. “We had a solid group of four or five returning, but our student intern roster has ended up growing to almost 20 individuals. After a candidate would reach out, we interviewed them and tried match them with an area of strength.”

Driscoll is quick to acknowledge that the social/digital team — full of paid positions — would not exist if it weren’t for the support of the SFA administration.

“I need to point out that these are paid positions, and I’m extremely grateful that our athletic director, Ryan Ivey, heavily supports our students and our office,” noted Driscoll. “The amount of talent among our student body is incredible, and because of the support we receive, we are so fortunate to have a lot of that talent working as part of our digital and social communications team.”

The female-powered staff was, in many ways, entirely unintentional, Driscoll said.

“When the positions opened up, we were not intentionally seeking an all-female leadership team. We simply wanted the most qualified and competent candidates available, and you see who emerged,” Discroll noted.

“By casting a wide-net in the employment process with an appeal to all across campus, the current staff was formulated. I think that’s the advice I would give others — cast as wide a net as you can for your staff. That will give you diversity and with diversity comes new ideas and approaches. Because we could build a big staff and have great direction in our social and digital content because of it, our coaches and student-athletes greatly appreciate the quality coverage and innovative content.”

Creating opportunities. That’s what SFA has done in their social and digital communications space.

The SFA social and digital media successes are a testament to those in athletic department and sports communications leadership or those in positions of influence, who create roles for young female professionals and students. Those like AD Ivey with his support and financial resources, and Driscoll, by recruiting and teaching them, are showing that they are champions of this young talent pool. In turn, the young creatives are empowered to develop and produce quality content. It’s a win-win.

Below is a more detailed Q&A with Driscoll about his social and digital media team.

Tell us a little about your staff leaders and the skills and talents they bring to SFA.

Driscoll: Each of our full-time and student staffers are making great contributions, and I’d like to highlight several of them. They all come from different backgrounds and majors, and those varied experiences really are beneficial for our efforts. Having students step up and manage in photography and videography gives them to chance to become leaders at a young age.

What set of skills do you believe are required to become a social media manager?

Driscoll: It’s not necessary a skill, but your experience in social counts. If you use social media on a personal level, it provides a solid foundation.

Who creates the SFA content? Does your social media team run the team accounts? And if so, how do they interact with coaches and share ideas? How do you work with coaches and student-athletes to ensure quality content and on-brand messaging?

Driscoll: It’s a team effort in content creation. We utilize graphic design templates that allow us to stay on brand. Each of our teams has a social media student that is assigned to that team, and they communicate constantly with the coaches. We talk with the coaches and see what their vision is for their program, and prioritize the work we’ll be doing for them. From there, we take that vision and mold it with the SFA brand guidelines that are in place.

What are some “early wins” for your social staff? Any great engagement for a graphic, a video, an interview?

Driscoll: In July, our head football coach Colby Carthel was a guest on the Paul Finebaum Show. It’s not every day that an FCS coach is able to be interviewed on a national outlet. Our social media staff, which is led by (Director of Social Media & Digital) Hunter Overholt, was able to amplify the interview with a post-interview video and it took off with 200K impressions. We were all really excited about that.

As a department, how do you deal with negative comments or a brand reputation crisis? Do you, as the department head, coordinate all this, and if so, with which staffers?

Driscoll: That’s a great question. When we started cranking content out in August, we received a lot of positive interactions. We all monitor the accounts to make sure that we are proactive if anything like this emerges. There’s always that one person who will not like what’s said or will question you or call you out for some incorrect information, and they’ll use their Twitter fingers to tell you that. At first, it shook the team, because they weren’t used to that. Then, we told them that we will make mistakes because we are human, and we’ll work to correct the wrong information.

Even though TikTok has exploded and changed how we approach digital marketing in general, it's still not suitable for all businesses and schools. What are your thoughts on TikTok?

Driscoll: Honestly, we still don’t know what to think about TikTok. We have an athletics TikTok account and we could probably do more on it. For right now, I’d like to focus our energy on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as we have some great engagements on those platforms.

SFA social and digital team photo

The Lumberjacks social media and digital team assembled in September for a group photo in the SFA’s basketball arena, the William R. Johnson Coliseum.

Women in the SFA social media team lineup

The Leadership Team

Student Assistants

Beth Waguespack
IG: @bethwaguespack Twitter: @beth_waguespack

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