Building an Effective Social Media Team for Your College

1. Online Marketing Creating Your Social Media Team Search Engine Optimization KCTCS Tweets

2. Creating Your Social Media Team

3. Social Media Teams Overview: Why you need one How to form it Who should be on it How to train them

4. Social media teams Why you need one. Social Media is not an island unto itself…. You cannot conceivably manage a comprehensive and properly integrated social media presence with one person!

5. Social media teams Three parts of Social Media

6. Social media teams Engage • Where the majority of communication takes place • Comments • Complaints • Questions • Engagement (polls, trivia, pictures, etc.) • Two-way communication daily • Customer Service begins here!

7. Social media teams How to form it. Escalating issues • Financial Aid • Bookstore • Student Affairs • Business Office • Student Organizations • Specialty Departments (Theatre, Art, Music) Community Manager Community Support Members Providing SM content

8. Social media teams CommunityManager • Community Manager • Manages the day-to-day communications on social media channels • Owns the editorial calendar • Escalates issues and questions to Community Support members

9. Social media teams • Community Support Members • Contacts in multiple departments that the Community Manager can escalate questions and customer service issues to as needed: • Financial Aid • Bookstore Staff • Student Affairs • Business Office • Help answer online questions relevant to their department • Provide social media content based-off information coming from that department Community Support Members Engage

10. Social media teams Who should be on it: What questions/issues do you see the most? What internal groups are the most active on campus? Who has shown and interest in participating with your college’s social media?

11. Social media teams • How to train them: • System – Develop a presentation template to provide the framework around training: • KCTCS social media channels • Review of the KCTCS official channels and their audience • Social media best practices • How to communicate on social media • Writing posts • Character limitations • Posting images, videos and links • Social media responsibilities • Acceptable turn-around times per channel

12. Social media teams • KCTCS Plan for Social Media teams: • Colleges will identify community support members based on audience need and/or desire to participate (Recommending: Financial Aid, Business Office, Bookstore and student organizations to start) – October 14 • Colleges to set up training for new social media team: October 28 • Training completed and social media team in place: End of November

13. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Guess the Google!!

14. SEO Overview: • What is SEO • Why it is important • How it works • Our Plan for KCTCS SEO

15. SEO Search engine optimization is the science behind how search engines work.

16. SEO Why science? … Results are controlled by algorithms … Adjusted 600-700 times a year … Major changes monthly … Each engine has its own algorithm … Algorithms are confidential

17. SEO • Why is SEO important ? • 85% of online visits start on a search engine • 92% of adult internet users in the U.S. use Search Engines online • 56% of online users are searching for information about jobs • KCTCS and Horizon Insights market research showed increased dependence on the web when looking at higher education institutions. May 2011- Pew Internet and American Life Survey; 2011 – Horizon Then and Now Market Research

18. Prospects are collecting more information and requesting more feedback than ever before as they consider their educational alternatives. This is especially true for the older prospects. Percentage Point Change From 2006 High School Students Information Sources Used Older Prospects Parents Friends Websites Family Members Campus Visit Brochure TV/Radio Mail Teacher/Counselor 18 29 7 12 17 11 13 7 7 3 11 3 1 29 1 1 9 22 9 16 11 8 4 16

19. Websites have become an even more important part of the information collection process, especially for older prospects. Website Visitation Of College Considered -4 +15 +11 -5 Any Website KCTCS Website Any Website KCTCS Website Older Prospects High School Students

20. SEO SEO starts here Need Question Want Problem

21. SEO For 92% of adult internet users in the U.S. – that question leads them here May 2011- Pew Internet and American Life Survey

22. SEO

23. Keyword Search SEO Paid Results Organic Results SEO is Organic Search and accounts for 75% of clicks on search engines.

24. SEO Our goal: For your college website to rank on the first page and above the fold for optimized key terms.

25. SEO What Determines Rank? A LOT!

26. SEO What are we going to focus on? Content and Meta Data

27. SEO Meta Data: What a Search Engine sees… Title tags – 75 characters w/ spaces . Tells a search engine what this page is about. (Source Code) Descriptions – 155 characters w/ spaces. Tells the search engine more information about what can be found on this page. (Source Code) Headers – Found on the page. Tell a search engine the outline of the content on this page.(Content)

28. SEO • Content: • Quality of content matters- • Plenty of content – more content = more knowledge = more information for users • Keyword rich – keywords are stored by SE and can be identified using keyword research • Updated often - fresh content is viewed by a search engine as being up-to-date and therefore more reliable information • Actually needs to be relevant to keywords optimized for in SEO

29. SEO White Hat- Good! Black Hat – Bad! Keyword Stuffing Shallow content Hidden Content

30. SEO • KCTCS Plan for SEO: Phase 1 • Colleges will identify 10 programs that they would like to focus their SEO efforts of for this year. (recommendation: HWHD) – October 7th • System will create keyword strategy and delivery to colleges– October, 2011 • System will create templates for SEO titles and descriptions – October/November, 2011 • Colleges to populate SEO templates for identified programs – November, 2011 • System to provide SEO content management training for colleges – January, 2012 • Colleges to populate SEO titles and descriptions in content management system – January/February 2012

31. Twitter

32. Twitter • What it is • How it works • Our plans for KCTCS Twitter

33. Twitter • Repurposing Twitters API to serve as an INTERNAL student communication tool. • NOT a replacement for your official Twitter.com account

34. twitter How it works Twitter.com Current Student Homepage

35. twitter How it works in the Colleges: • Social Media Team/ Marketing - Hold informational/training sessions for college departments and organizations • Department / Organization - Departments complete sign up form and sign commitment agreement • System Marketing – Provides outlines and templates for unique avatars and twitter account naming • Social Media Team/ Marketing - Create Twitter Service account

36. twitter THE PLAN Colleges: • Designate 10 departments and organizations to participate • Name twitter lead on SM team • Train department and organization representatives on Twitter System: • Create training template • Create Avatar and naming template • Create sign up form • Create commitment letter

37. twitter THE PLAN Department and Organizations: • Attend training • Complete sign up form • Sign user commitment letter • Provide 160 character description of department or • Tweet! Tweet!