Social media, tech help Liberty Dining engage during COVID-19

This semester, digital media is playing a critical role in engaging with students for Sodexo, Liberty University’s dining services provider.

In the past year, Liberty Dining’s student engagement doubled thanks to increased communications during the COVID age. In the time frame between March to September, Instagram engagement was more than 20,000, compared to 9,000 from that same time frame in 2019.

According to polls, more than 50 percent of adults are using social media thanks to the pandemic, an increase from 41 percent earlier this year.

“During any other semester, we’d host a themed-event in our dining hall where we’d see huge turnouts from our student body,” District Manager Duke Davis said. “Many of these events such as our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners are something students look forward to all year. But we also have a duty to keep them safe whenever they’re in our dining facilities and events of that size in this climate would not work.”

September marked the first virtual event: an Office themed Trivia Night via Microsoft Teams where teams of five competed from their dorm rooms. More than 30 teams participated.

“We love that students expect us to take things to the next level every year,” Davis said. “Something like Microsoft Teams let us still bring that factor they look forward to.”

The Office night is one of four trivia nights scheduled for the fall. The others include Disney/Pixar, Marvel vs. DC, and Christmas, before winter break.

The Nutrition and Wellness team is also implementing technology in their programing. Rachel Sanders, Liberty’s on-campus dietitian, is hosting Ted Talk styled seminars about topics such as carbohydrates and plant-based diets, which is a poplar topic among Liberty’s student body.

“What Rachel’s team does is so important,” Davis said. “This allows them to still have facetime with students and remind them we have this incredible resource available for them while they are students. Her team is constantly meeting with students and answering questions.”

Students who participate in all the talks receive prizes as an incentive.

Social media campaigns such as #WellnessWednesday, where a nutrition tip or hack is featured, and Student Takeovers also continued this semester. For the takeovers, students have a chance to feature their favorite campus locations and employees to help make dining more personal for students.

“Instagram is our biggest platform,” Marketing Manager Ryan Wheeler said. “We have more than 4,000 followers that are constantly engaging with our content and it’s a great way to build our brand.”

“We need to engage students on the digital side of things more than ever,” Wheeler said. “With the online push being so strong this year, investing in social media and technology is more vital to the long-term health of our brand than ever.”