What I Learned About #SocialMedia Editing Social Works

What I’ve learned about #socialmedia

Michael Stoner

PRSACHE 2013

We’re not in a post-social era, we’re in the post-hype era.

Time to make social work for us.

Social media = web-based tools used for social interaction. The most important brand names are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr, though blogs are an important component of any social strategy.

Social networking is what people do with social media: rank, comment, share, post, rant, etc.

Social Worksmstnr.me/TkXwLu

Campaign:a focused effort to achieve goals using a variety of channels appropriate to the results sought

Social Works: How #HigherEd Uses #SocialMedia to Raise Money, Build Awareness, Recruit Students, and Get Results is unique. The 25 case studies in Social Works demonstrate that social media has the maturity and reach to be an integral component of campaigns focused on building awareness, recruiting students, engaging alumni and other key audiences, raising money, and accomplishing important goals that matter to a college or university. The case studies in Social Works will inspire college and university communicators, marketers, web team members, and other staff, offering models and details for highly successful initiatives. And, they will convince presidents and other senior leaders that social media is not just valuable, but essential, to achieving institutional goals. In short, Social Works belongs on the shelves (or on the e-readers) of college and university staff who want to learn how to get results with social media. Published 25 February 2013 by EDUniverse Media.

“By three methods we may learn wisdom:First, by reflection, which is noblest;

Second, by imitation, which is easiest;and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”

Confucius

1.Social media ≠

technology.

2.Social media ≠a magic bullet.

There were many, many predictions about how Second Life was going to revolutionize learning, teaching, and student recruitment:

Ohio University went further to build its virtual community in Second Life through the exploration of teaching/learning. The university has a well constructed campus in Second Life with various buildings such as a student center, learning center, and arts and music center. Students may explore the virtual campus and join real student organizations at the student center. Student groups can meet and collaborate on the virtual campus just as they might on the real one. There is also a virtual art and music center where students may meet artists and listen to live music in the cyberspace (Briggs, 2007). (From http://deoracle.org/online-pedagogy/emerging-technologies/second-life.html)

2.(corollary)

There isno magic bullet.

3.Everything

is connectedto everything else.

[bit.ly/9uemQS]

This is Barry Commoner’s first law of ecology and mStoner’s first law of branding. It’s essential to keep in mind when structuring communications and marketing activities. Because of the way the world works today, it’s easy for organizational anomalies to be observed and amplified. Consistency counts. Not only in appearance (do your communications look like they come from the same organization?) but voice.

Furthermore, your online presence doesn’t occur in a vacuum but is also connected to everything else you do:

People’s experiences with your staff when they visit your office.A customer’s experience with your accounting department.The condition of your buildings.

Your ecosystem ...

• Compelling brand: aspirational but grounded in institutional reality.

• Powerful stories: reinforce brand, multiple media, well-told, shareable, demonstrating value.

• Compelling creative: a strong visual vocabulary for your brand & stories

• Strong channel strategy: well-managed, connected, curated

4.Social is important

in a campaign.But there’s a lot more toa successful campaign.

Case 25: “Promoting Faculty Experts: The University of Nottingham and the Election of 2010,” Social Works, pp. 215-222.

The communications and marketing team at the University of Nottingham created a campaign focused on positioning Nottingham as the definitive source of expert commentary on the 2010 UK elections. This involved both staff members in the communications and marketing team as well as faculty with expertise in politics. By live blogging 24/7 during the election season, they wanted to draw the attention of reporters and major media , scholars at other institutions, the general public, potential students, and public opinion influencers. Before the effort began, they developed a series of goals to which they attached specific numbers. For example: “to generate 20 pieces of national and international [media] coverage…”; “… to help increase applications by at least 5%.” In preparation, the team researched reporters, bloggers, and experts, developing extensive lists of media contacts. One staff member worked closely with the faculty experts and bloggers to time tweets and posts in response to developing election themes. Traffic was largely driven by Twitter (123 tweets with 7,779 click-throughs), online PR, and linked placement of faculty experts supported by their blog posts and traditional PR work. By the campaign’s end, 104 blog posts had delivered more than 90,000 page views. The campaign exceeded all the targets set by the office. And: “Every item of national media coverage on Election Day featured a University of Nottingham spokesperson,” for a total of 466 national media hits. Applications to the School of Politics & International Relations rose 15%.

Relevant URLs

electionblog2010.blogspot.com www.youtube.com/user/60secondpoliticsnottspolitics.org

Channels: Election 2010

blog posts expert commentary

YouTube explainers about key topics & issues

email reporter updates & reminders

Twitter reporter updates & reminders

website updates, links to key articles

Social woven into campaigns

2013

2012 41

52

Roughly what percentage of your campaigns* included social channels?

*campaign defined as “a focused effort to achieve goals using a variety of channels appropriate to the results sought”

From CASE/Huron/mStoner Survey of Social Media in Advancement 2013

In the past two years we probed if (and how) institutions were using social media in campaigns, which wedefine as “a focused effort to achieve goals using a variety of channels appropriate to the results sought.”

Note that this definition can (and sometimes does) include efforts to raise money, but is intended to acknowledge that social media is often incorporated into initiatives that have objectives other than just fundraising.

5.There’s a lot more

to social mediathan Facebook.

Facebook: still the dominant channel for social media in .edus according to CASE/mStoner/Slover Linett Survey of Social Media in Advancement 2012. But there are challenges to relying on Facebook.

ROI: There are simple metrics we can get — reach, comments, shares, likes, etc — but because of Facebook’s one-page-fits-all model, it remains a challenge to tie them to concrete business goals. Posts have a short tail; compare that to your website or blog (on mStoner’s blog, several of our posts from 2009 are among the most accessed today): Facebook posts get half their reach within 30 minutes of publication [www.marketingcharts.com/wp/direct/facebook-posts-get-half-their-reach-within-30-minutes-of-being-published-24453/]

Engagement fatigue: Michael Stoner, mstnr.me/Ux1CLI; Facebook Usage Declining: mstnr.me/PXzkya

Underfunding in .edu for social media: Chief Marketing Officers of 249 U.S. companies in August 2012 said they would increase current spending on social media from 7.6 percent of their overall marketing budget to 10.7 percent over the next 12 months. They expected to see that number rise to 18.8 percent in the next five years, according to a survey from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. Is your institution keeping pace? [Moorman, Christine, and T. Austin Finch. The CMO Survey. Duke University, Aug. 2012. Web. <http://cmosurvey.org/files/2012/08/The_CMO_Survey_Highlights_and_Insights_August-2012-Final.pdf>]

Source: http://www.slideshare.net/tkawaja/social-lumascape-8223008

@mstonerblog modifications of a widely shared infographic about social media

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

YouTube

Blogs

Flickr

Web.edu

Vendor community

Home-built community

Geosocial

Pinterest

Instagram

Google+

Tumblr

-25 0 25 50 75 100

0

0

0

0

-2

7

-1

-9

-13

-13

-2

7

2

0

9

22

27

28

15

20

32

34

38

42

71

75

82

96

% Use % Growth

Channel use/growth


This chart shows the percentage who say they use each social media channel (at all), and the lighter green shows how this has changed since last year.

The lower section shows the social media channels we asked about this year for the first time.

While Flickr shrinks, Instagram grows; Pinterest and Tumblr may be taking some of the share that Blogs held in the past

Responding to options• Many recommend a thoughtful approach about whether to adopt

new social media channels:“Attempting to be everywhere by jumping on the latest platform without a clear sense of purpose is wasted effort. This is a case where more is not better.”

• A sense of how the platform connects with your audiences is key:“Research where your audience is, and survey where they want to see you! If no one is on Google+, then it is a waste of time to add this to your efforts.”

“Targeting platform to audience—i.e. current students via Facebook, alumni via LinkedIn and Twitter, integrating strategy and selecting what platforms make sense and what platforms not to utilize, don't be on all platforms in small ways, strategically select key platforms and focus resources on those few.”


6.Don’t neglect the

channels you own.

Pushback from small companies, nonprofits: Facebook is screwing brands, driving reach down so brands will pay for more posts: “Facebook: I want my friends back!” [dangerousminds.net/comments/facebook_i_want_my_friends_back];“Facebook's EdgeRank Changes: A U.K. Company Claims They're Killing Small Businesses” [readwrite.com/2012/11/05/facebooks-edgerank-changes-a-uk-company-claims-theyre-killing-small-businesses]. Josh Constine, “Killing Rumors With Facts: No, Facebook Didn’t Decrease Page Feed Reach To Sell More Promoted Posts,” TechCrunch[http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/07/killing-rumors-with-facts-no-facebook-didnt-decrease-page-news-feed-reach-to-sell-more-promoted-posts/] says that the actions by Facebook’ that sparked the blog post at Dangerous Minds are beneficial in that they reduce spam in newsfeeds and therefore are good for brands. What’s striking to us is the lack of trust in Facebook, which makes Dangerous Mind’s claims entirely plausible. Todd Sanders (@tsand) offers another view in “Facebook decreases reach… grab your torch and pitchforks” (http://blog.uwgb.edu/social-web/facebook-decreases-reach-grab-your-torch-and-pitchforks/), arguing that if you’re awesome, people will respond, no matter what the aggregate data says or how Facebook changes their algorithms.

Underfunding in .edu for social media: Chief Marketing Officers of 249 U.S. companies in August 2012 said they would increase current spending on social media from 7.6 percent of their overall marketing budget to 10.7 percent over the next 12 months. They expected to see that number rise to 18.8 percent in the next five years, according to a survey from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. Is your institution keeping pace? [Moorman, Christine, and T. Austin Finch. The CMO Survey. Duke University, Aug. 2012. Web. <http://cmosurvey.org/files/2012/08/The_CMO_Survey_Highlights_and_Insights_August-2012-Final.pdf>]

Website 90%Email 88%Social media 79%Blogging 27%SEO or search engine marketing 24%Internal publications 68%Direct print mail 54%

External publications (not your institution’s pubs) 22%

Outreach and marketing at events 59%Radio 7%

TV 5%Other 3%

Promotion & marketingWe use mostly online tools to promote your social media initiatives, but also many offline ones.

Up 7% from 2012

Up 4% from 2012


7.Planning is your

friend.

“In preparing forbattle I have alwaysfound that plans are

useless, but planning isindispensable.”

General Dwight D. Eisenhower

A good plan includes

1. Goals and objectives. 2. Audiences. 3. Channels, tools, and assets.4. Marketing & promotion.5. Timeline and budget.6. Benchmarking & measurement.7. Reporting.

William & Mary Mascot Communication PlanFebruary 2009 - September 2009

Status Deadline CommentsPLANNINGBrainstormingCreate an concept/identity for the mascot project complete 2/1/09 Joel Pattison designed - Mascot SearchBuild a website complete 1/31/09Create a blog complete 1/31/09Send graphic and concept to campus stakeholders complete 2/26/09 for their use in print and on the web

KICK OFFMessage/announcement from President complete 2/27/09 Release from University Relations complete 2/27/09 Spot in Alumni Magazine (March issue) complete 3/28/09

REINFORCE KICK OFFAnnouncement in WMDigest complete 3/4/09 post asking for feedback on guidelinesAnnouncement in Student Happenings complete 3/4/09 post asking for feedback on guidelines thru 3/16Announcement on myWM complete 3/4/09 post asking for feedback on guidelines thru 3/16

Announcement in eConnections complete 3/12/09eConnections goes out 2nd Fri of each month; deadline is 1st Thurs of month

Announcement in Momentum complete 3/20/09goes out to 46,000 monthly; includes faculty/staff/currentparents

Unveil Colonel Ebirt Blog complete 3/2/09 in FAQ and on Ebirt's facebookSend Release to all three student newspapers complete 2/27/09 Announcement on Tribe Athletics website complete posted week of 2/27 and week of 3/9Announcement in Tribe Pride Newsletter complete March Announcement on W&M Alumni site complete 2/27/09

Mascot Search Widget for www.wm.edu complete 6/5/09

placed in Campus Life section and "M"; 4/9 added to Communities page; added to Alumni and Current gateways on June 5 - June 30

Added Mascot Search link to Athletics bridge page menu complete 4/15/09Sent blurb and graphics to Business School complete 3/25/09 Included in Mason Experiences March 2009Sent blurb and graphics to Law School complete 3/31/09 will appear in Law eNews for late March

Portion of plan for William & Mary Mascot Search developed by Susan T. Evans, who ran the campaign at William & Mary.

8.Goals.Goals.Goals.

Goals/results: Election 2010

Involve 4 fac in media relations 8 academics became involved

position fac as experts continued momentum in media requests

20 pieces of intl. coverageEvery item of national media featured a University spokesperson. 466 items achieved, over 75% of them national or international.

build media networks: 5 new outlets

Bloomberg, Reuters, the Guardian, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, BBC.

recruitment: 5% app increase 15% increase

try out new online PR approach approach was basis for many subsequent projects

gain experience with online & social media

“The campaign built skills and capacity and has improved confidence and creativity.”

1. To involve at least four new Politics academics in media activity by the end of the campaign and to develop their media expertise.

2. To position Nottingham academics as key political commentators.3. To generate 20 pieces of national and international coverage, attaining an estimated advertising value/

ROI on budget of Elm (an ROI of 66,567%).4. To build media networks for the School and wider University, establishing links with five major new

media outlets.5. To support recruitment activity and help increase applications by at least 5%.6. To trial successfully a new approach to online PR that could be used as a model in support of profile and

impact to feed in to the Research Assessment Framework (REF).7. To gain experience of using blogging, Twitter, online tracking and other digital tools to build capacity

within the Communications Team.


“The campaign's value for money can also be measured in relation to the "legacy value" of the media connections built which continue to feed in to Nottingham's growing PR profile, a profile which has seen coverage double overall during the course of the [2011] year. Thanks to Election 2010, the School of Politics and International Relations at Nottingham has just launched a new, permanent blog - Ballots & Bullets - averaging a new post every day.

“It has been successfully received by other members of the academic community and has also helped to improve the profile of the Communications Team. It prompted colleagues to speak to the Communications Team first and has, so far, made savings against the planned use of external consultants totalling approximately £50k as internal colleagues see what can be delivered internally by a newly invigorated team.”

Goals/results: Election 2010


Measuring ROI“It is difficult to measure ‘return on investment’ from the use of social media”

2010

2011

2012

2013 38

33

32

34


Donations are not primary outcomes for socialHow do you measure success for your SM activities?

Outcome MeasuresRated in top two

(quite a bit/extensively)

Number of active “friends,” "likes" 73%Volume of participation 57%Number of “click-throughs” to your website 53%Event participation 40%Anecdotal success (or horror) stories 26%Penetration measure of use among target audience 19%Volume or proportion of complaints and negative comments 12%Donations 15%Number of applications for admission 10%Surveys of target audiences 9%


You see that donations are pretty low on the list of ways that CASE members typically gauge their success in social media. We are looking at mean ratings on a scale from 1 to 5 where 5 means it is used extensively.

Top metrics are • Number of active “friends,” “likes” • Volume of participation• Number of “click-throughs” to your website, but the field is pretty

wide.

Perhaps it needs to be even wider, or more precise, because the sense of difficult in ROI is, if anything, growing over time.

The benefit of metrics• Many of those who reported their social media initiatives have

not been successful noted that metrics were lacking.

• By contrast, those who report their social media use has been very successful also say they have robust tracking mechanisms:

“We’ve created a weekly dashboard of target metrics for all of our social platforms and our main websites that shows changes and topics that resonated. This has greatly elevated awareness of our efforts among university leadership.”

“We don’t think, we know. Calculations and reports are submitted monthly on SoMe successes and returns, both subjective and objective. We’ve boosted ticket sales to events, recruited students, and increased awareness about many different things.”


We have a question on the survey that asks respondents to evaluate themselves on how successful they have been in their use of social media, and why. We see a relationship where those who say they were most successful also talk about a dashboard of metrics that they look at weekly or monthly.

Were they able to achieve success because they were tracking what worked and then did more of that, so the metrics enable success? Or is it that they can speak confidently of their success because they have the metrics? We heard the comment “we don’t think, we know,” which is certainly a satisfying thing.

9.Your team needs your

support. And the CEO’s.

Barriers to success persist% who see this barrier in their unit “quite a bit” or “extensively 2013 2012

Staffing for day-to-day content management 55% 49%

Staffing for site development 44% 42%

Lack of relevant human resources in my unit 40% 37%

Slow pace of change 31% 22%

Expertise in how to implement it 25% 23%

Funding 26% 22%

Lack of IT resources 22% 20%Lack of institutional clarity about who is responsible

for social media initiatives 22% 20%

Concerns about loss of control over content and tone of postings by others 19% 17%

Lack of commitment by decision-makers 19% 17%


Need for experienced staff• Many believe that lack of staff devoted to social media hampers their

success and that they could improve with help from ... “Dedicated staff person(s). Currently this responsibility is an add-on to current staff positions and responsibilities . . . .”

• There are advantages to concentrating social media duties in fewer staff people with greater expertise and sense of the big picture:

“I think we could do more to collaborate with other campus departments. In addition, our small staff . . . does not allow for social media to be an explicit part of someone's job description. If someone was able to focus on it day in day out, we would be pretty amazing at it. As it stands now, we all collectively try to post when we can.”

“We do not have in-house expertise to help establish strategic initiatives or to ensure our messages are consistent and aligned with other University messaging.”

“At our level (a college within a large university) we have been very successful because we hired someone with solid social media experience who is in charge of all of our social media outlets. This person has set clear goals and has integrated social media into the majority of our campaigns.”


In open-end responses, we heard that this add-on method has its detractors. There is an argument to be made for a concentrating social media expertise in staff members who are more expert and more dedicated to social media as opposed to adding it on to the duties of many staff members in many units. So there is some call for collaboration between units to pool human resources on social media.

Champion, expertise key to success

2010

2011

2012

2013

80

72

61

63

52

“A champion is essential to the successful implementation of social media in our institution”

“Expertise to help our social media efforts is readily available”2010

2011

2012

2013 34

31

28

26


I will end with this final look at some keys to social media success. In light of the comments we looked at in the last couple slides on the importance of expertise, it is heartening to see that the sense that expertise is available has increased over time.

I find it somewhat unexpected that the sense that a champion is essential to success of social media has only increased over time. But let it be a challenge to any of you in the audience who might like to take up that mantle: you are needed.

10.Don’t be everywhere

until you can be awesome everywhere you are.

(@mstonerblog + @tsand)

CASE/Huron/mStonerSocial Media & AdvancementHandout from CASE Social Media & Community conference with key highlights: mstnr.me/Zs90hD

Topline Results from 2013: mstnr.me/ZBzoli

2012 White Paper (focuses on campaigns using social media): mstnr.me/CASESMA2012

Michael Stonerpresident, [email protected]@mstonerblogmStoner.com/EDUniverse.org

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What I Learned About #SocialMedia Editing Social Works