Since the beginning of June, a new year-long social media project has been highlighting the history and prominence of NC State through Instagram, Twitter and Facebook posts.

Tim Peeler, community relations manager within University Communications, initiated the ‘This Date at NC State’ social media project by collecting facts about people, places and events around the world that NC State is connected to. Some of these include concerts at Carter-Finley, the opening of the new Student Center and prominent people connected to the University.

“I’ve spent, on and off, the last year or so collecting factoids or trying to put NC State in a place of things that have happened around the world, around the country, around the state, try to see if there are NC State connections to it, and tie it to a date,” Peeler said.

Peeler has been collecting events, facts and milestones through different campus archives, like past Technician articles, Agromeck yearbooks, NC State News articles and more.

“A lot of times, you can easily tie big dates to things,” Peeler said. “You know, when the university was founded, or when the physics department was founded, but I’m really hoping to stay away from that kind of stuff and keep it on the more engaging.”

Interesting events and facts are posted on one or more of NC State’s social media accounts, but Peeler said that the goal is to have all the posts archived by the end of the project.

“What you see on social media is a small fraction of those dates and events,” Peeler said “The idea is that at the end of each month, is to put that full list of dates and events and things that will live online. So that at the end of the year, we will have a pretty- what I hope is- interesting and engaging history of the University.”

According to Peeler, he submitted roughly 70 to 80 events for the month of June to Drew Sykes, digital content and social media specialist with University Communications who runs NC State’s social media, who then chooses which ones to post.

“My role is taking his editorial calendar, which is all a Word Doc, and sort of curating visuals to go with it,” Sykes said. “I choose where to publish and I choose the facts that will resonate well with our audience based on the platform they are going to go on.”

According to Sykes, events are posted on Instagram stories initially, and if the post is predicted to get a lot of engagement, it will also post on Twitter, and possibly Facebook. Sykes also said it is common to have a few days out of the week that will not have any event posts, which is due to a number of reasons.

“One, we don’t want to necessarily get content fatigue,” Sykes said. “People get tired of seeing the same stuff all the time, even though we are going to change it. And two, again, the fact has to be good enough to be considered different and nifty, something not everyone might know.”

Sykes also said that the social media posts will evolve as the project continues through the year and he also hopes to incorporate videos in the posts in the coming months.

“What we hope to do in the coming months, specifically before the students get back, is have more of a visual identity with these posts,” Sykes said. “So, if we don’t have a solid photograph, we’ll have some sort of design that will go well with the story.”

According to both Sykes and Peeler, This Date at NC State will only be a one-year project, going until May 2019. However, Peeler hopes that the project will not only build a library of history for the University, but also engage and inform those connected to the NC State community.

“What I want people to see is how engaged we are in everything that happens in the Raleigh community, in North Carolina and around the world,” Peeler said. “Because we truly are, as a university, sending people to do big and great things.”

Any NC State dates, events or facts can be submitted to Peeler at [email protected].