COM-310/Social Media students at Southern New Hampshire University. Nancy West photo

MANCHESTER – COM-310/Social Media is a course at Southern New Hampshire University that Assistant Professor Jon Boroshok has been teaching since 2015 and helping small nonprofits and startups along the way improve their social media presence.

 As an experiential learning project (20% of the course grade), students develop a social media plan for smaller nonprofit organizations or startups. “We try to work with nonprofits that might not be household names. Over the past 10 years, our students have helped 40-50 nonprofits and early-stage companies in New Hampshire and Massachusetts,” Boroshok said.

The Social Media Plan project helps students learn more about working with clients and helping them use social media. It offers direct experience collaborating on a professional level. Students discover how to work with different types of people, and how to overcome schedule difficulties, balance priorities, and perhaps even deal with an imperfect teammate, he said.

 “It will also build on the business and communication skills they’ve learned in earlier classes, such as Marketing and/or Public Speaking,” he said.

His students helped the New Hampshire Center for Public Interest Journalism, which publishes InDepthNH.org, audit its social media recently.

“All we did was give access to our social media to the students and they did the rest. They ended up doing a terrific, professional, in-person presentation that blew me away,” said Nancy West, founder of InDepthNH.org. “They were totally professional, handed me a thumb drive with all of the information I need and we are adopting their plan as we move forward.”

The student consultants for InDepthNH.org included Luke Therrien, Olivia Wilcox, Ethen Matthews, Scott Brown and Jacob Myers.

Therrien said it was a great learning experience.

“This project taught me the importance of branding and consistency as well as working with a team,” Therrien said. “These are skills that I want to continue to evolve and grow.”

Jon Boroshok joined the Communication faculty after 20 years of industry experience including years at TechMarcom, his own agency specializing in PR for established and emerging technologies.

  On the journalism side, Boroshok’s articles and columns have appeared in The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, ZDNet, CMP Publications, Mass High Tech, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, DM News, and PRWeek.

He earned his BS in Communication from Emerson College and an MBA in Marketing from Northeastern University.