Over the past Summer and Fall semesters I took on a primary leadership role as a Social Media Strategist with Clarion University. What does this mean? Essentially, I analyzed processes and best practices for how to engage our various target market segments; potential students, current students, and non-traditional students (individuals pursuing Higher Ed later in their career or life path). This involved seeing what our competitors (other Universities) were doing in terms of channel utilization and gathering data via surveys from potential and current students at on-campus open houses and other various events.
What we saw wasn't too surprising, an overwhelming majority of people are on Facebook. From Universities, to students, to parents, they all have a profile. For the sake of capitalizing on market channels though, it's important to note that the next largest Social Media channel people use is Twitter, the micro-blogging platform. But how do you reach out to an audience in 140 characters or less, and more importantly, how do you measure your impact? Let me share a few tips and tricks I picked up during my journey.
Content, Content, Content, but not too much...
The first thing to understand is the rate of consumption and thus limit to said consumption Social Media users expect and experience on their favorite platforms. People get on Facebook and twitter and they expect to see updates from the various individuals or organizations they follow, but the last thing you want to become is a troll on their feed. What does this mean ? I'm sure we all have that friend who constantly posts about every little detail of their life. It gets to the point now matter how much you like the individual, you may find yourself un-following them. You want to avoid this at all costs!
From a Higher Education standpoint, 2-3 posts a day is the maximum unless contingent situations demand otherwise. If it's during the semester, try to share any exciting events that are going on campus. Perhaps you're running a promotional event? Make sure to give everyone an update on the status of that event. Remind them if it's starting up, or perhaps it's closing soon, either way, make sure you get the message across without flooding their screens. You have to tweet at the right time with valuable information. If you tweet too much, no matter what you post, people will tend to see less value in what you say. Which brings up my next topic of discussion.
Timing is Everything!
Put yourself in the shoes of your consumers. The average individual will check their Social Media channels a few times a day. Once in the morning, perhaps at lunch, and then later in the evening. If you have something great to share, focus on getting it up between 8 AM to 10 AM, 12 PM to 1PM and 5PM to 8 PM.
If you follow that rule, you're posts are going to get exposed to the highest audience. If you miss those times, the world isn't over, but you risk getting flooded away in the sea of tweets. No matter how strong of a swimmer you think your post is, try to avoid playing in the water when the tide is going out.
# Branding
One thing I found to be great is creating a consistent set of hash tags. What's that you may ask? Essentially it's search engine optimization, a meta tag if you will. It creates a staple on your post that cascades and connects to any other staple of its exact kind that has ever been posted before. For Clarion University, I made sure to follow most of our tweets with #ClarionU. It helped create a unique, but appropriate Social Media brand, that allowed consumers to become acquainted with our content and presence. Furthermore, it's a great way to start a trend and measure your impact. What do I mean? Well...
Finding and Engaging Your Audience
Twitter allows you to search for anything that is currently trending. But by using hash tags, you can specifically search for the staples I just mentioned above. For example,every morning I would log on and search for #ClarionU or potential variants such as #Clarion #ClarionUniversity #CUP and so on. If you do this, your eyes will instantly light up with the amount of people talking about you or your organization. Furthermore, you can now directly engage these people. For the sake of Clarion University, a lot of students would share exciting stories such as their acceptance to the school, or perhaps they received an award, or just had something nice to say. Either way, this was the perfect time to reach out to them. A simple tweet back to them saying, "Congratulations!" or ,"Way to go! We're excited to have you here!" could make their day.
Don't believe me? Well, let's say I tweeted at someone in the morning saying something along the lines of what I just spoke about and then did another #ClarionU search later in the afternoon. There was almost a 100% rate of direct engagement afterwards. Sometimes they would "Favorite" the tweet, "Retweet" it, or say something back, either way, I just engaged Clarion's audience. Better yet, if they perhaps retweeted back with your #ClarionU, our exposure rate just exponentially increased by having everyone in their closed audience (their follower list) see it. Success!
Be Social!
Lets not forget that Social Media is not the run of the mill marketing channel. This is your chance to show people your personal, fun, yet professional side. People don't want to always see serious posts. I'm not saying you shouldn't, for all means you should have tweets with links to interesting and important articles, but it shouldn't be the basis of your strategy.
The most successful tweets and posts I've seen in the history of Clarion University's Social Media years mostly consisted of something exciting with a photo attached to it. Whether it be a picture of people walking across the stage to grab their diploma with some text saying, "Congratulations to the #ClarionU #ClassOf2013. Spread your wings and take flight!", a neat photo of people cheering at a volleyball game, or even a photo of Founders Hall during a wonderful winter snowfall, people will love it. It helps foster school pride and social solidarity, and in the end, that's the best ROI you can ask for in a Higher Education Institution.
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