Northwest's Social Media Leads in Meaningful Social Engagements and Impressions
Senatobia, MS (09/22/2026) — Northwest Mississippi Community College's social media pages have been leading in meaningful social engagements and impressions among their competitors against community colleges in the state of Mississippi.
"Northwest's social media success is about more than the size of our audience; it reflects the strength of the connection people have with our college," said Dr. Brad Smith, vice president for Institutional Affairs. "These results are a credit to our Strategic Communications team and the talented individuals across Northwest who consistently identify, create and share the stories that make our institution special. Ranking first in Facebook engagement and generating more than twice the Instagram engagement per post of our nearest competitor demonstrates that our content is not simply being seen; it is inspiring people to respond, participate and connect with the Northwest story. As we build on this momentum, our focus will remain on producing meaningful content and converting that engagement into measurable outcomes for enrollment, fundraising, event participation and community support."
Northwest's Assistant Director of Social Media and Digital Marketing Carly Fox-Mayo of Hernando, who primarily runs the college's Facebook, Instagram, X, and Tik Tok accounts, said this is an honor and great accomplishment to her. Across Facebook, the college's account has had 85,228 engagements with the third largest audience, and three times the average competitors' engagement per post. With nearly half the posts of other institutions but more engagements, it's proven that Fox-Mayo's social media strategy is winning.
"Our team's goal is for every piece of content that is posted, no matter how big or small, to be done to the best of our ability and to the highest quality possible," said Fox-Mayo. "We prioritize high-quality photography, videography, and graphic design that reflects the strong community, success, and diversity of our college."
Fox-Mayo's approach has been simple: understanding different audiences and utilizing strategy to appeal to them. For Facebook that audience is a mixture of alumni, students, parents, the community and employees. Instagram and Tik Tok are more "trendy" based, focusing on highly- curated student and event- focused content.
But Fox-Mayo isn't a team of one, utilizing work from other members of the Office of Strategic Communications and Marketing as well as her student workers, affectionately known on campus as Northwest Content Creators. They help her come up with ideas, film and photograph content, and execute making social media posts happen.
As a testament to excellence, Northwest's social media accounts have received numerous awards for social media, photography, video content and more at the state and national level through CPRAM (College Public Relations Association of Mississippi) and NCMPR (National Council for Marketing and Public Relations). Northwest's channels are considered by many colleges nationwide as a benchmark for creativity and strategy in the social media marketing sphere.
One post Fox-Mayo is most proud of is the photography coverage from the UCA / UDA Championship on Facebook, which garnered 33,974 cumulative engagements (through shares, likes, comments, and reactions on shared posts). This post recently placed in the top three in District II of the NCMPR Medallion awards competition.
"We are very fortunate to be in a fast-growing area of the state, which inevitably brings in more of an audience," said Fox-Mayo. "However, I do believe the hard work that our team puts into social media, as well as the hard work of all Northwest leadership to make this school so amazing, is to be credited more than anything. Having an awesome college makes it easy to make awesome content."
Outside of work, Fox-Mayo was recently married on Sept. 19 to Dalton Mayo and is on her honeymoon out West exploring America's national parks. When at home, she loves to spend time with their three cats Puppy, Cricket and Mona, and watch movies or TV shows with her husband. She also enjoys hanging out with her friends, trying new recipes, playing video games and spending time outdoors hiking.
Media Attachments
Northwest Cheerleader Davis Hayes III of Cleveland celebrating a win at UCA National Championship at ESPN Wide World of Sports at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. Photo by Carly Fox-Mayo.