Lesson 01
Reels bring people in
19K
average reach per Instagram reel, against 5.8K per carousel and 7.9K per static
Video is how the account met people who didn’t follow it yet. Reach is the one job no other format did as well.
UC San Diego University Centers · @ucsdcenters
760 posts in 17 months. 204 went out from my seat.
University Centers runs Price Center and the Student Center, and @ucsdcenters is where students find out what’s on: food deals, movie nights, First Friday. I was one of the student marketing assistants on it. I published posts across Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, built the calendar the team planned food shoots on, and wrote up the Sprout numbers for my supervisor.
My partI published 204 of the account’s posts, built the calendar the team planned food shoots on, and turned the Sprout export into reads for my supervisor.
- Role
- Marketing assistant
- For
- UC San Diego University Centers
- Timeline
- Apr 2025 – Sep 2026
- Platforms
- Instagram, TikTok, Facebook
- Tools
- Sprout Social · Claude Code + Supabase
- Team
- Student marketing team, UCEN photo team
204posts I published
1.28Mimpressions on them
+26%Instagram followers
From the Sprout export, Apr 2025 – Aug 2026. “Published” means Sprout lists me as the sender, which isn’t always who made it. Follower growth (11,808 → 14,839) belongs to the whole team.
ucsdcentersView on Instagram
1,257 posts + stories*14.8K followers3 networks
University Centers
YOUR student union. Price Center + Student Center, UC San Diego.
Me: marketing assistant, content + analytics.
*Apr 2025 – Aug 2026, all three networks · followers are Instagram’s, Aug 2026
University
Centers
Social content, campaigns and the numbers behind them for UC San Diego’s student union: Instagram, TikTok and Facebook as @ucsdcenters.
On set with University CentersSummer ’25 · First Friday ’25 · photos: UCEN photo team
01 / 11First Fridaydrag to spin · tap a photo
Ch. 01 · Content
The best of the feed
The top five Reels, statics and carousels from each quarter of 2025–26, ranked by reach. A student team ran this account, so most of these aren’t mine: the ones tagged Mine went out from my seat in Sprout. Every card opens the live post.
ReelsTop 5 by reach · Fall
StaticsTop 5 by reach · Fall
Ch. 02 · The calendar
PC Plates: the calendar behind the food posts
Food posts at Price Center needed a lot of people in the right place on the right day. For Spring 2026 I built the team one shared calendar with Claude Code: what gets shot, who’s on it, and where every post stands, synced live for everyone with no logins.
The plan: 29 posts across the quarter
Each dot is a post. The series follow the term: cheap eats early, late-night during midterms, finals fuel at the end.
WK 1
WK 2
WK 3
WK 4
WK 5
WK 6
WK 7
WK 8
WK 9
WK 10
Finals
Wrap
“You have a 9am. You’re already at PC. Stop skipping breakfast.”
Reel: morning pickup POV
“You survived midterms (almost). $6.99 panini. You’ve earned it.”
Reel: Friday-only deal reveal
“Finals week is here. Taco Bell is still open.”
Reel: Finals lock-in starts now
How a post moves
The same five steps for every post, tracked in one place.
Plan the post
Series, spot, what to order, the format, the opening line, and what it costs.
Put people on it
Every post is assigned to named marketing assistants and PAs, up to two of each.
Shoot on the food date
A “due soon” flag lights up when a shoot is a week out and nobody has filmed it.
Post two days later
Every entry carries both dates: when it’s shot, and when it goes up.
Move it along
Scheduled, recorded, posted. Everyone sees the same board, live.
Try it
This is the actual app, rebuilt as a demo: open a post, reassign it, drag it to another day, flip its status, or switch to the week, timeline and vendor views.
Demo copy: no database, teammates shown as MA 1, PA 1 and so on, and your changes stay in your browser.
Open full-screen ↗Under the hood: React with a Supabase database for live sync, an import from the team’s Google Sheet, a vendor directory with hours and dietary tags, and six views (month, week, list, timeline, overview, vendors).
Ch. 03 · Results
What @ucsdcenters actually did
1,257 posts and stories across Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, from the full 69-column Sprout export. Sort the best posts, scrub the year, see which ones I published, and read what it all taught me.
Account totals: a student team ran it“Mine” = sent by me in SproutViral Reel held out of ratesApr 1, 2025 – Aug 31, 2026
3.1Post explorer
Which post did what
The 60 strongest posts of the year (top five Reels, statics and carousels each season). Pick a metric and they re-rank; pick a post to see it the way it looked on the feed. 10 of them went out from my seat. Spoiler: the most-seen post (“A Twilight movie marathon is com…”) isn’t the one people forwarded most per view.
Reach: Unique accounts that saw the post. Average here: 16K.
Number on the left = rank out of all 60 top posts, top 8 shown · dashed line = average · — = not reported · click a row to open it · ↑↓ to move
Fall · Static #1#1 of 60 by reach
ucsdcenters A Twilight movie marathon is coming, and we have only one question:…
Reach39K#1 of 60
Views—n/a
Likes1,296#9 of 60
Shares1,728#1 of 60
Share rate4.4%#7 of 60
Saves226#2 of 60
Past the hook—n/a
Reach: this post vs the other Fall statics in the top five
This post39K
Their average25K
3.2The year
Month by month
One Reel on Jul 29, 2025 (“they fit right in”) did 3.53M impressions, 34% of the whole window on its own. It’s held out by default so the other months are readable. Flip the switch to see what it does to a chart.
17 months, one account
In-feed impressions per month across all three networks, with the posts that made them underneath. Hover or tap a month.
Oct ’25
898K impressions
Posts
62 · 24 mine · 60 stories
Biggest post that month
“A Twilight movie marathon is coming, and we hav…” · 138K · Instagram ↗
impressionsposts, teamposts, sent by me
3.3My part
The posts with my name on them
A student team ran this account. Sprout remembers who pressed publish, so here’s my slice of it: how much, where, and which ones did best.
My seat in Sprout
Sprout records who pressed publish. These are the ones with my name on them.
204
posts I published
27% of all 760 in-feed
1.28M
impressions on them
19% of the account, viral Reel aside
1.1K
hours watched
across my Reels and TikToks
6.4K
shares
sent on to someone else
Instagram83 of 364 · 23%
TikTok56 of 120 · 47%
Facebook65 of 276 · 24%
106 Reels58 TikToks & videos28 Statics12 CarouselsJun 3, 2025 → Aug 17, 2026
My six biggest
Ranked by impressions. Tap one to open it on the platform.
- 1Color Hunt challenge at Price Center Our photography team g…57K
- 2Celebrating Día de los Muertos at UCSD Join us Wednesday, O…50K
- 3"This is the skin of a killer, Bella" but make it a Thursda…48K
- 4
Winter at Price Center except it doesn't feel like winter Y…37K - 5Okay so the keychains were cute but POSTERS for the final m…35K
- 6Artists, this one's for you We're looking for sticker desig…33K
Sent by = who hit publish in Sprout, not always who shot or designed it. Stories and anything posted from the Instagram app carry no name at all, so this undercounts me rather than overclaims.
3.4Networks
Where the effort went
Three networks, one calendar. The share of posts each took, against the share of attention each gave back.
Effort in, attention out
The share of posts each network took, against the share of impressions it gave back.
5.5% ER7.3K hrs watched
TikTok
6.9% ER517 hrs watched
3.8% ER55 hrs watched
3.5Formats
Which format does which job
Reels, carousels and statics aren’t competing. Each one wins a different metric, and switching the metric shows which.
Which format does which job
Every Instagram in-feed post in the window, by format: 155 reels, 98 carousels, 111 statics.
19KReels
5.8KCarousels
7.9KStatics
Avg reach: accounts reached per post. Leader: Reels.
3.6Video
Did anyone actually watch
7.9K hours of video were watched in the window. Two numbers the curated dataset never had: how fast Reels lose people, and where TikTok’s viewers come from.
Where the hook breaks
Instagram's Reels skip rate: the share of plays that swipe away in the first few seconds. 91 Reels with 1,000+ plays. Lower is better.
40
545
550
1455
1860
1565
1870
475
1180
185
avg 66%% of plays skipped → · average watch 5.9s per play
Best held
TikTok is a stranger engine
Where the views on 120 TikToks came from (56 of them mine). 280K attributed views.
78%
from the For You feed
people who didn’t follow us
1.0%
from followers
people who already follow us
8.7%
watched to the end
average full-view rate
For You feed 78%Search 10%Other 6%Business accounts 6%Followers 1%Unspecified 0.1%Sounds <0.1%
3.7Stories
Off the feed: stories
Stories carry no likes or saves, so they’re kept out of every number above. What they do have is taps.
What people did with a story
497 Instagram stories reached 784K accounts (1.6K a story). Here's what people did with each frame they saw.
67%tapped forward · the normal way through a story
14%swiped out · left the story completely
5%tapped back · went back to look again
Per 100 story impressions. Replies all year: 51. Stories were a noticeboard, not a conversation.
Stories per month
3.8Timing
Is there a best time to post
Hover a cell. Pink beat the average, teal fell short.
When the feed was listening
Average reach of an Instagram in-feed post by day and time posted. 358 posts, viral Reel held out. Cells with fewer than 8 posts are hatched: too few to trust.
MorningMiddayAfternoonEveningNight
Mon
Tue
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
Monday · midday · 11 posts · 12K avg reach · +52% vs the 7.7K average
3.9Audience
Did the audience grow
Followers on all three accounts, first reading to last. Hover a line to read any month. Dots mark every thousand crossed.
Instagram @ucsdcenters
14,839
+3,031 since Apr ’25 (+26%)
TikTok @ucsduniversitycenters
1,810
+360 since Apr ’25 (+25%)
Facebook UCSD University Centers
6,461
−116 since Apr ’25 (−2%)
3.10Playbook
What the numbers taught me
Six things I’d do again (or never again), each resting on a number you can check above.
Lesson 02
Statics get sent to the group chat
1.8×
the share rate of carousels (2.57% vs 1.42% of reach)
One image with the what, when and where on it is the easiest thing in the world to forward. Movie nights, finals hours and new openings lived here.
Lesson 03
TikTok finds strangers
78%
of TikTok views came from the For You feed, 1.0% from followers
I published 56 of the 120 TikToks. Almost nobody there follows a student union, so every video had to work on someone who’d never heard of Price Center.
Lesson 04
Facebook costs more than it gives
36% → 1.1%
of in-feed posts, for that share of impressions (viral Reel aside)
276 Facebook posts returned 77K impressions. The same effort on Instagram would have gone roughly 63 times further per post.
Lesson 05
The first second decides
46%
skipped on the best-held Reel, against an average of 66%. The 3 that lost people fastest were mine (84%–86%)
In my year review, the best-held Reels all opened on a person or a direct question. The ones that lost people fastest were my food specials. Lesson learned in public: give people a reason in the first second, then show the menu.
Lesson 06
Timing is a nudge, not a strategy
+52%
average reach for Monday midday posts (11 of them) over the 7.7K average
The best slot helps, but every cell under 8 posts is noise, and one great post beats a great time slot. Post when students are between classes, then make the post worth stopping for.
YOUR student union · data: Sprout Social export, 1,257 items, rebuilt Sep 25, 2026
Ch. 04 · Reporting
The year, against the year before
On top of weekly checks in Sprout, I put together a full-year read for my supervisor: 2025–26 against 2024–25, from the complete export (4,205 posts), not a window picked to look good. Output more than doubled and the engagement rate barely moved (5.88% vs 5.91%). That’s the part I cared about: the growth came from posting more, not from one lucky post.
Finding 01
Volume found its ceiling
October did 898K impressions from 62 posts. May did 438K from 105. After March, posting more stopped reaching more people.
DoCap output near 60–70 posts a month and move the hours into Reels and carousels.
Finding 02
One network costs 38% of the calendar
Facebook took 232 of 614 posts and returned 66,674 impressions, 1.1% of the year, with 289 interactions in twelve months. An average Instagram photo post got 25,469 impressions; an average Facebook post got 291.
DoCut to a mirror of major announcements, about two posts a month.
Finding 03
The hook is the weak link in the best format
Instagram Reels earned 2,337 hours of watch time, but the average Reel loses 66% of viewers in the opening seconds. The four best-held Reels all open on a person or a direct question, and each kept 52–54% of viewers.
DoOpen on a face or a question inside the first second; drop the title card.
How I put the read together
Five steps, written down so next year’s read can be held up against this one.
Pull everything
The complete Sprout export, 4,205 posts back to 2020, not whichever window looks best.
Fix the rules
Reach is summed per post, never “unique people”. The one viral Reel is left out of every comparison.
Compare like for like
This year against the same stretch of the year before, per platform and per format.
Write it plainly
Each finding in a sentence someone outside social could repeat.
End on a “Do”
Every finding carries an action, like capping output near 60–70 posts a month.
What this shows
- PC Plates: a live food-content calendar I built for the team with Claude Code
- A year-end read for my supervisor, built from the full Sprout export
- Numbers turned into operating calls: a monthly posting cap, and cutting Facebook
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