Social Media Superstar

1. Social Media Superstar Taking your institution’s social media strategy to the next level Presenters: • Sara Villegas, Regis University CPS • Doug Stewart, Colorado Mountain College Marketing

2. Social Media

3. Here’s a little bit about me. I AM! • Responsive • Intuitive • Conversations • Always on • Relationships • Interactive • A billboard • A push medium • 100 percent, hard-core branded • Authoritarian • The only answer • The Field of Dreams No, seriously. I wanna be friends. I AM NOT!

4. I’m affecting the buying process. *Harvard Business Review

5. I’m affecting the buying process. *Harvard Business Review

6. Investing in the Intangible How to allocate your resources, and what you’ll get in return.

7. Find Your Evangelists Let others help carry the load. • Choose a team that will help you, and your institution, grow. • Success will foster organic growth. • Don’t push it off on the interns. • Create a face-to-face training program.

8. We chose to spend money on technology and fabulous prizes. • Turns out, it was worth it. • Contest participation. • Student-produced video. Cold, Hard Cash Sometimes you’ve just gotta lay down some money to make things happen. You can’t put a price tag on those results.

9. Many Happy Returns Touches • Social media can give you customer touches that traditional medial buys cannot guarantee. • Facebook Insights • Bit.ly links • Google analytics • Calculators and/or old-fashioned math and good sense You can’t ask a print ad a question. Tools

10. Inching toward ROI: Captured the “Daily Stream” stats from Facebook. Plotted this against total views on our website and other web properties. Compared total number of “touches” we had on Facebook with those engaged with CMC online… Use your impressive numbers to convince administration.

11. How we measured success

12. How we measured success: Using bit.ly we also monitored clicks on blogger and other links shared through Facebook. Bit.ly convert links to a personal url. For CMC, is it colomtn.me. (unfortunately, bit.ly only provides data for the previous month.) Use this to determine what interests your audience.

13. Staying on Message A content strategy will keep your pages relevant and your audience engaged (And your posts on the newsfeed)

14. Set Solid Goals, Strategies and Tactics • Too often, we decide to “do social media” without a clear idea of what we hope to accomplish. • It helps to start out with solid, and in some cases measurable, goals that tie in to institution-wide marketing strategies. You wouldn’t spend your marketing budget without a plan. Your time is valuable too.

15. Set Solid Goals, Strategies and Tactics • An example from Folsom Lake College in Folsom, CA: • Increase visibility, awareness of Folsom Lake College (FLC) • Create positive perceptions of FLC • Want social media to reflect FLC mission/vision • Promote FLC’s programs and services • Drive traffic to regular college website • Inform people about FLC • Promote FLC “brand” as friendly, modern, and comfortable with open dialogue • Get people to interact and engage with FLC; generate feedback • Listen to our key audiences

16. Set Solid Goals, Strategies and Tactics • An example from CMC: • Goal: The core strategy of social media marketing is to create rich content that is relevant and engaging to prospective students and potential referral agents. This approach will let us tell the Colorado Mountain College story from many more perspectives than would come from the professional marketing staff at the College.” • Strategies: Twitter, Facebook, our eNews site, Flickr, YouTube and our student blogging program • Tactics: specific goals and initiatives within these different platforms

17. Set Solid Goals, Strategies and Tactics • Overall: Humanize the brand • Social media is the place where your students can find a community – it should be your goal to foster the community and voice of your institution. Give it a human – and non-corporate – face. Be a good friend: dependable, relatable, and not overbearing.

18. Voice and Personality • Every institution has a story. This is your chance to tell it in a unique and interactive way. • Think of your audience when developing your voice and personality. What will they relate to? What will resonate with them ?   If your school was a person, what would he look like?

19. Voice and Personality • Skittles • Starbucks • RedBull • Uncle Billy’s BBQ

20. Reimagining Content Twitter eNews Various Facebook Pages Event! Older audience, community impact, news outlets Web visitors, more detail, PR-focused Younger audience, interaction, call to action Remember to cross-post new content! YouTube Flickr Blogs Highly visual, show and tell, varied audience Supplemental visuals, repurpose on other platforms Authentic voice, prospective students

21. Reimagining Content YouTube Flickr eNews Facebook Website Applications for this program are up!

22. The most important voices • Don’t be afraid to use the stories of your students – in their voices. • One of CMC’s most successful social media ventures hinged on our student blogs (one of our bloggers won a national contest and blogged from the Vancouver Olympic Games ). The exposure was invaluable at an event that was so closely tied to CMC’s story. • Microsoft flew Dylan to Dallas for an interview on the NBC station’s evening news • Feature in the Plano, TX Star • Multiple mentions in local media • Features in Microsoft’s News Center • Mention in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

23. The most important voices • Sometimes, it is scary to hand over control of your story to a student. But! They can also tell the most compelling side of things. • If you engage them, they will engage you. • They will go beyond their job description if you remove their borders. • Recruit your bloggers. Ali Ben Jenifer Dan

24. Viral Vs. Campfire • Everyone wants to be this guy:

25. Viral Vs. Campfire • But it is better to be these guys:

26. Viral Vs. Campfire • Build a campfire with your content. • Little by little, get to know your audience and post about what they care about. • Build on their participation by listening and asking/answering questions. • Become a destination – a community where people want to hang out. So you went viral. Now what?

27. A Reason to Respond • Social media is not a “push” medium – it is an engagement medium. • People love: Answering questions, giving their opinions, getting freebies, asking questions (and getting answers), behind-the-scenes info & promotions, and commenting on photos…and the weather. • Capture and funnel the passion of people in your community—good ideas come from everywhere—let them participate in decisions and development. • Be a resource • Use it as a tool to get to know your audience – informal polls, online “suggestion box” Never forget: people love to talk about themselves.

28. Planning your campfire content

29. Tips, Tricks and Tools Get everyone on the same Facebook page

30. How Facebook Works • Ensure your posts are read. • Engagement is king • Newsfeed vs. Most Recent posts • More interactions = higher scores • Delete posts if they go 24 hours with no responses • 350 characters or less • Organize page around conversations • Amplify your key messages • Embed links • Facebook video is trackable, consider FB and YouTube versions of videos Top of feed = top of mind.

31. How Facebook Works • Not all posts make the newsfeed • Only .5 to 5% of all posts make the newsfeed • About 14% of users check most recent Without the feed, you’re invisible

32. How Facebook Works • Make the feed with interesting stuff! • The News Feed algorithm bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or status update). — Facebook Comment & like

33. How Facebook Works • Make the feed with the right content! • Links, Photos and Videos. Links proved more potent than status updates in making it past Facebook's filter, so did photos and videos. Here, too, it is likely a matter of engagement. Think about times you've spotted a thumbnail-size photo from a friend in your feed and clicked to see it full-size. Facebook likes clicks, and photos deliver them. — The Daily Beast (one month experiment by Tom Weber) FB Loves Links, Photos & Videos

34. Create a style guide It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Or their dignity. • Control the beast • Make it clear who administers social media accounts. • Address every aspect of your platform in your style guide. • Vet your potential new administrators. The KCTCS is a great example of SM standardization!

35. Work It Landing Page Consider setting a custom tab as a landing page for new visitors. You can set your custom page as the landing page in the “edit page” area. Include “call to action” Community College of Aurora John Tyler Community College Lord Fairfax Community College Glendale Community College

36. Work It Landing Page Tabs Consider setting a custom tab as a landing page for new visitors. You can set your custom page as the landing page in the “edit page” area. Include “call to action” Create additional custom tabs that highlight your other social media outlets. Community College of Aurora John Tyler Community College Lord Fairfax Community College Glendale Community College

37. Work It Landing Page Tabs FBML Consider setting a custom tab as a landing page for new visitors. You can set your custom page as the landing page in the “edit page” area. Include “call to action” Create additional custom tabs that highlight your other social media outlets. Learn to use FBML, Facebook’s custom HTML coding system. If you don’t have a web developer or aren’t familiar with coding, many organizations can create this custom content for a reasonable price. Community College of Aurora John Tyler Community College Lord Fairfax Community College Glendale Community College

38. Thanks for joining us! Comments? Likes? What I want to know is _____! http://facebook.com/coloradomtncollege http://youtube.com/cmceagle http://coloradomtn.edu/blogs