Social Media Strategy: A to Z

Most of us are using social media for communication and we’re doing it on a shoe string. If you are lucky, you have a social media coordinator on your team. More commonly, the social media role is shoehorned into the job descriptions of several people with other primary responsibilities. While we wait for the number of dedicated positions to catch up with the importance and impact of social media for our campuses, writing a social media strategy should be a priority.

Why? Because strategy will actually help you achieve more with less. So whether you are the only social media evangelist on your campus, or one of several, your strategy should include these elements:

• Purpose: Why do you use social media? Do you use all platforms in the same way to accomplish the same things?


• Values: Is your voice the one that matters most? Is criticism and disagreement allowed in your community?


• Measurement: What statistics and data do you track? What quantitative goals do you have?


• Content: Is it only about you and your brand? Is there a focus on interaction? Is it more than words?


• Engagement: How do you ensure that you’ll hear from your followers? What will you do to encourage a conversation?


• Policy: Is profanity okay? Do you remove hate language if posted as a comment on one of your channels?


• Oversight: Do you manage departmental and student organization channels centrally? Are there visual standards?


• Brand Management: Does your content support your messaging? Are you reinforcing your reputation through social media?


• Techniques: Do you integrate multiple channels? Do you rotate responsibility for posting content?

With a series of blog posts, I’ll tackle each of these elements and offer some suggestions and detail for your evolving social media strategy. Let’s start with the letter T: Techniques within your strategy. The three techniques I recommend all revolve around one theme:

Play nice with your website.

It’s hard to find an .edu website that does not include social media icons in the footer of every page. (Go try it, I’ll wait.) This strategic technique is expected…and not enough. The key is to create an intersection between social media content and your .edu content. Your social media strategy should address the idea that the relationship between your public website and your social channels should be a positive one. No competition and no conflicting messages. (Ooops, we’re slipping into content and brand management. The many elements of a social media strategy do overlap. More on those two in a later post.)

Here are three techniques that support the intersection between social and .edu content:

1. 1. Get endorsement from visitors.
   Include a way for your website visitors to indicate interest in the content on your pages. We explored this technique with the University of Idaho. Using the Facepile plugin you can display the Facebook profile pictures of those who connect with your page.
2. 2. Bring in a social media feed.
   Give your website visitors proof about what you claim within your content. One technique for showing the goods is to integrate a Flickr feed as a sidebar on high-traffic pages. The Clarkson University Admissions website uses this technique.
3. 3. Use mobile to drive traffic to social channels.
   Offer the right content on your mobile site and throw in the fun and and the emotional as a bonus. During orientation, William & Mary’s mobile site offered access to need-to-know student orientation info along with move-in pics from the #wmmovein hashtag stream on Flickr and a YouTube video of the W&M Choir singing the Alma Mater (a must learn for new students).

Use these two bonus ideas to punch up your list of social media techniques:

1. 1. Technique: Experiment with a personal account before stepping into new channels. Back in the day, you could experiment with a new social platform by using an account tied to your institution. The risks to that approach are greater now because social is so widely adopted. We enthusiastically support the technique suggested by University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Todd Sanders, “Play with ‘the tool’ on a personal account before using it on a university account.” Thanks, Todd.


2. 2. Technique: Build benefits into your channels. If you’re doing it right, you’re following the advice of Webster University’s Patrick Powers and your technique is to post awesome content. Read what he has to say: “A social network is supposed to be about the people who use it, not the brands pushing products through it.” Thanks, Patrick.

Posted by Susan Evans
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mStoner takes over Higher Ed Live

Last week could have been dubbed “mStoner week” on Higher Ed Live, a live weekly web show network exclusively focused on the world of higher education.

I really enjoyed my conversation with Ashley Hennigan on AdmissionsLive where we discussed how to use video in student recruitment.

During our conversation we tweeted out links to a number of research studies and videos. Here is a list of the resources we provided the live viewers.

Research from comScore:

• Next Generation Strategies for Advertising to Millennials
  
• 2012 US Digital Future in Focus Report
  
• January 2012 US Online Video Rankings

Videos and blog posts:

• University of Rochester: Remember oUR Name
  
• University of Huddersfield: Aliens in the Hud
  
• Central Institute of Technology in Australia: It’s a snap
  
• Murray State Anthem Video and Blog Post
  
• Towson University: I Tell ‘em
  
• TED Talk: Andrew Stanton, The clues to a great story
  
• Marketing With Mallory: A new trend in higher ed video?

Susan T. Evans, senior strategist, joined Seth Odell to talk about project management in higher education.

Key takeaways from this episode include:

• Why it is essential to have a designated project manager.
  
• Project managers need people skills in order to succeed.
  
• Committees are for making decisions, not sharing updates.

Have follow up questions? Leave a comment for Susan or me.

Posted by Mallory Wood
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Facebook Timeline Cheat Sheet

If you are in charge of your institution’s Facebook Page, get ready. Facebook will automatically push Timeline to all pages on March 30. Your institution has a wonderful opportunity to tell its story in a more visual and dynamic way. Change can be a good thing!

Download the Facebook Timeline Cheat Sheet to take full advantage of the new features Timeline offers, see size measurements for various images, and learn tips and tricks.

And when you “go live” with your updated Page, tell us! Leave a link in the comments and let us know your favorite new feature.

Posted by Mallory Wood
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Three conference presentations worthy of your time.

Last October three team members from mStoner landed in Austin, Texas for the 2011 HighEdWeb conference. If you missed the conference or didn’t make it to our sessions, you are in luck. Below you will find links to our slidedecks and podcasts. The recordings are courtesy of the wonderful HighEdWeb team.

“Creative Services, Anyone?”
presented by Senior Strategist Susan T. Evans in the Marketing, Management, and Professional Development Track

This session covered what it takes to set up a unit on your campus that operates like a successful in-house creative agency. Susan shared her experience establishing and building a creative services team at the College of William & Mary.

Listen to the podcast
View the slides

“Beyond Blogging: Create an Integrated Online Student Ambassador Program”
presented by Marketing Manager Mallory Wood in the Social Media Track.

This presentation focused on how to expand, integrate and manage your institution’s student bloggers’ presence across multiple social networking platforms.

Listen to the podcast
View the slides

“On Your Mark, Get Set, Mobile”
co-presented by Tiffany Broadbent of the College of William & Mary and mStoner Creative Director Doug Gapinski in the Content Track.

This session was a primer for thinking about an institutional mobile site and covered the types of information you should offer in mobile format, the decision to create a mobile app or a mobile website, trends and guidelines for styling and coding, and examples of mobile content from colleges and universities.

Listen to the podcast
View the slides

Susan, Doug, or I will be happy to answer your questions after you review any of the presentations. Please leave a comment and we will respond soon!

Posted by Mallory Wood
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EDUniverse Launches!

Someday you will find me caught beneath the landslide in a champagne supernova in the sky.

But until then, you’ll find me and the other members of the mStoner team on our newest site: EDUniverse.

About a year ago, we started a project that had a very specific goal in mind: create the best knowledge hub for brand, web, tech, and marketing professionals in higher and secondary education. Today, we brought the site live.

Probably the coolest feature of the site is how easy it is to import RSS feeds from other places you’re posting content, including blogs and Slideshare.

Thanks to our superstar alpha contributors and beta invitees, we’ve got a wealth of content already, and ~200 profiles on the site! We hope you’ll join us in the nebula.

Congratulations to the entire mStoner team.

Posted by Doug Gapinski
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“Murray State Anthem”: As a Team Triumphs, a Rap Video Goes Viral

The story of the Murray State University basketball team’s march to a 2012 championship season is still being written: right now, the Racers are ranked #12 in the NCAA. But there’s no doubt that the university’s “Murray State Anthem” has already triumphed. The rap video, produced to build support for the team and exposure for the university, has already gone viral and is poised for even more views if the Racers continue to win games.

Murray State, located in Murray, KY, is a four-year public university that enrolls nearly 11,000 students. Its well-known for its basketball program, cited by ESPN as one of the top 30 basketball programs in modern history. The Racers have made 14 NCAA Tournament appearances, most recently in 2010, when Murray State defeated Vanderbilt and won its second NCAA tournament game.

Last fall, Dana Howard, who manages social media for the university, said, “We heard students talking about a rap song written about the basketball team by two students who rap as Trubz ‘N’ Matlock. When we realized that they didn’t have a professional video version of the song, we quickly asked them if they wanted us to help them produce one.” Howard was hoping that the video would support the team’s success and raise awareness about Murray State. Little did she know what was to come.

Murray State Digital Media Services too about two weeks to shoot, edit, and produce the video. In addition to Trubz ‘N’ Matlock, it features students, the Murray State mascot, the cheerleaders/dance team—and, of course, the basketball team.

The premiere

“Murray State Anthem” premiered at a home game right before the team came out on the floor and the crowd, young and old, stood and danced. Then, Howard pushed out the url for the YouTube version via Twitter and Facebook during half-time.

She reports, “In less than 24 hours, we had 10,000 hits on the video and in 10 days, more than 80,000; 1500 mentions of the official name “Murray State Anthem” on Twitter; 400 shares on Facebook. And in the next week the song had been embedded and talked about on many national blogs, including Yahoo Sports, CBS Sports, SBNation, NBC Sports, and USAToday. And countless sports bloggers have tweeted about it.”

Indeed, when I Googled “Murray State Anthem,” mention of the video on USA Today’s Campus Rivalry blog was the second result. Blogger Nicole Auerbach remarked, “Yes, the Racers are good at basketball. The whole undefeated and ranked in the Top 10 thing is great, but not as awesome as this video.”

Howard adds, “On the blogs, the video has been compared with those from other universities, but more importantly, in one contest, it was mentioned along with the Giants SuperBowl Anthem. Since this happened during the week of the SuperBowl, I believe it put us in some of the top web searches at that time. And CBS picked it up and will use the anthem video on their weekly shows in the weeks leading to the NCAA tourney.”

Some of the people involved with “Murray State Anthem” show off the hashtag shirts that have become quite the item on the university’s campus.

Swag

About those t-shirts. Murray State created t-shirts to thank everyone involved with the video. Howard said. “The front of the t-shirt includes our sub-branding (We Are Racers) in a new format, WAR, which we’ll use through the remainder of the year. On the back of the shirts, we printed some of the hashtags that MSU alumni, students, and staff used in tweets during this year’s basketball season.”

She noted, “In a way, the t-shirts provide a timeline of this historical season for us, including the song #MurrayStateAnthem, which is now a unique milestone in the season all its own. University staff and the rappers from the video wore the hashtag t-shirts to the game the night of the “Murray State Anthem” video debut. The campus bookstore decided to print them—and now, they’re a top-seller. And of course, Howard said, “We also used the shirts as prizes for 50 lucky people who shared the video on Facebook or Twitter.”

Hashtags used on the t-shirts are showing up in other university materials, such as these banners. One banner represents the season, the other banner a definition (in hashtags) of what Murray State stands for or how people recognize it.

Lessons Learned

So what lessons did Murray State learn from this experience?

Howard observes that the video provides insights into the culture, creativity, and spirit on campus in a way that a win for its basketball team won’t. “There are elements that come together in the video—the student rappers along with the other participants, not to mention the production values.” And there’s timing and luck, too: “We decided we had to plan and push this out at the peak of the national buzz. It was perfect: immediately after we released the video, we became the only undefeated team in the nation. That created the perfect stage for the song, the video and the marketing that complemented it.”

So to me, the formula looks like this: opportunity + creativity + hard work + timing + luck = success. Maybe the Racers themselves will take a similar path in the remaining weeks of the NCAA.

Note: Many thanks to Dana Howard, who brought “Murray State Anthem” to my attention.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Consider Attending #casesmc

2012 brings the third annual CASE Social Media and Community Conference. I’ve never attended this conference but I remember reading some tweets from San Francisco in 2011. In fact, I think I first heard about #casesmc via social media from @rachelreuben. That was back before I met her live and in person.

In case you’ve missed the build of 2012 tweets about #casesmc, I’m super thrilled to announce that, this year, I’m serving as the conference chair.

For the past several weeks, I’ve been working with Jen Lichty at CASE to identify faculty and speakers for this event. I’m pretty excited about the program we’ve put together. It starts with a Social Media 101 pre-conference workshop designed to orient social media newbies just in time for the conference that follows. We are very lucky to have Patrick Powers leading the workshop. If you need a knowledge base about social media, you can rely on Patrick to deliver. He’s sure to be awesome.

The conference gets underway mid-day on April 18 with sessions and keynotes that will be varied, on point, and useful. (I promise to do my best on that commitment!) The full program with session titles and descriptions is on the conference website. Along with me, the mStoner contingent at #casesmc will include Michael Stoner. Here is a bit about the presentations Michael and I will offer:

From Michael

• Succeeding with Social Media (co-presented with Cheryl Slover-Linett, Slover Linett Strategies): In this session, we’ll look at what we learned in our third year of conducting the CASE/mStoner/Slover Linett survey on social media in advancement. What’s changed—and what has stayed the same? How have schools, colleges, and universities responded to external demands for stronger, more engaging social channels? How have staffing, management, and policies shifted internally to keep up with these needs? We’ll explore these and other findings. This year, we focused more sharply on success, probing on particular tools, practices and tactics of social media that help institutions to achieve successful outcomes. We’ll look at what our data reveals about the characteristics of successful campaigns and institutions on social media.


• Social Media and the President: Today, social media is pervasive. Not only are presidents expected to communicate with important constituents through social tools like Facebook and Twitter, but many recognize them as channels that allow them to amplify their messages. This session offers ideas on how presidents can maximize their use of social media—and why social channels are an important component of today’s communications mix.

From Susan

• What do I say? Some content ideas for your social media channels.: It bears repeating, content is king. If you are just getting started with a social media channel, it can be daunting to figure out what to say. Even those of us who have been doing this for a while experience an occasional dry spell or suffer through good, old-fashioned writer’s block. Whether you are a newbie or a seasoned pro, coming up with good stuff to use on your institution’s social media channels is sometimes challenging. This session will present a few (many!) suggestions.


• Connect Your Own Dots: Social Media Integration as a Best Practice for Marketing and Communications (co-presented with Nyleva Corely, UT Austin): Your audiences experience your brand and hear from you through a long list of social media and non-social media channels and you shouldn’t expect them to connect the dots. You need to develop an institutional plan that will allow you to stay on message across multiple communication channels using everything from social media aggregators to editorial calendars to social media campaigns. Not only that, a social media strategy isolated from your broader communication strategy is a risk. We’ll share specifics and demonstrate best practices through case studies from educational institutions.?

It’s not too early to register for this Chicago event to be held on April 18 – 20. And, while you’re looking at the 2012 #casesmc website, check out the list of faculty and speakers. I think we’ve pulled together some of the most experienced and expert thought leaders within the social media discipline. I hope you agree. What a Tweet up this will be!

Just in case you’re not convinced, here are, straight from the CASE website, the official benefits of attending. These bullet points work well for the request-to-attend email you might need to send to your boss:

• For the social media novice, you’ll receive a practical orientation to the most widely used social media platforms. Get comfortable getting started.


• For the more experienced social media professional, you’ll engage (face-to-face) with respected educational leaders and be inspired by some of our advanced sessions.


• We’ll discuss the results of the third CASE/mStoner/Slover-Linnett survey on the use of social media in advancement.


• You’ll discover how educational institutions are tracking, assessing, and evaluating the effectiveness of social media channels.

Did you plan to get more social in 2012? Are you deciding now which conferences you’ll attend this year? Then join us at #casesmc in Chicago.

Posted by Susan Evans
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EDUniverse Launch Party!

And you’re invited.

EDUniverse is a site for you. For education professionals who are looking to make their life easier, spend less time searching the web, and who want to discover relevant industry-related content. This party isn’t just a celebration of a site launching. It’s a celebration of the people who work in education, from student affairs to alumni and development to marketing professionals and everyone in between, who are helping shape the future of this industry.

We hope you will join us. This party and EDUniverse will only be successful if you attend.

When: Friday, February 24, 5:30 – 7:30 PM
Where: SCVNGR Headquarters, 175 Second Street, Cambridge, MA 02142

Please RSVP by February 15 via our Evite invitation.

Since the announcement of EDUniverse our team has been working hard to get the site ready for beta users. Interested in getting early access? Sign up at EDUniverse.org.

Questions? Email Mallory Wood, Marketing Manager. Or leave a comment!

Posted by Mallory Wood
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mStoner’s top picks for 2011

For my last blog post of the year I have enlisted the help of the mStoner team to bring you mStoner’s top picks for 2011. In this post you will find the sites, tools, and designs we fell in love with this year. Picks include everything from iPad apps to our favorite uses of social media in higher education.

Without further ado…

Design

Moment Skis
We think this site is cool because of the way it uses horizontal and vertical scrolling to fill the landcape of the screen. It layers several carousels of different types of content including profiles, video, products, and slideshow based photography. The design uses texture and a muted color scheme to give it a mountainy-vintage feel. This is future forward design that’s breaking the boundaries of link by link categorized navigation and molds well to any mobile device. Now, where are my Rossignols?
– Anne Glista and Kevin Rieg, Interactive Designers

Ampersandbox
My favorite project of 2011 was the “Ampersandbox” undergraduate enrollment project we did for the College of William & Mary. They wanted a new viewbook with a dedicated web component that together would capture the personality of William & Mary and set it apart from its peers and competitors. We gave them a box of postcards that superimposed funky, evocative word pairs over photos we pulled from their Flickr feed. I liked it because it was a former client coming back to us for more work, which is always validating. I liked it because the William & Mary client trusted us and was bold enough to consider ideas that were designed to appeal to the right prospective students rather than the most prospective students. I liked it because the creative process was fun and very collaborative. And I liked it because it was successful. William & Mary’s admission counselors tell us the cards have been a hit at college fairs, and the web component, a site that allows visitors to create their own word pairs, photos and stories, has had lots of traffic.
-Mark Sheehy, Creative Director

Blogs and other online tools

The Project Management Hut
As a project manager, this site is very useful to me. I like that articles are contributed by many people, so you aren’t stuck with only one person’s point of view. In addition, the articles are based off of experience and not just what the “tech books” say.
– Beth Lee, Project Manager

Disqus
The slickest snippet for enhancing the social media aspects of your website for 2011 is not up for discussion. It is, in fact, Disqus. Disqus is a unique tool allowing a developer to place a small snippet in any page or template. This quick inclusion immediately allows for inline commenting. It has support for nested responses, a sweet “ajaxy” style, as well as a back end administration site which includes: reporting, user management, moderation, ranking, and much more.
– Kevin Zink and Jim Johnson, Senior Technology Consultants

Seth Godin’s Blog
This year I discovered the writings of Seth Godin. I am currently working through his books and his blog is one of my favorites. Godin’s posts might vary in topic and length but these daily updates never lack inspiration. His stories are relevant, his ideas are thought-provoking, and his encouragement to become a linchpin is motivating. I’m better at what I do because this blog challenges me to think in new ways, work harder, and take risks.
– Mallory Wood, Marketing Manager

Social media in higher education

University of Nottingham’s Election 2010 blog
My hands-down favorite is the University of Nottingham’s Election 2010 blog and social media initiative, which won a CASE Gold in 2011. This is an incredibly smart blend of social (using a blog, Twitter and YouTube) and traditional PR outreach to bloggers and traditional reporters and newscasters with the goal of sharing insights from the University of Nottingham’s political scientists about the 2010 election in the UK. The results are impressive: those experts were quoted in every item of national election coverage on Election Day 2010 and the effort resulted in exceeding all the objectives created for the campaign.
– Michael Stoner, Co-Founder and President

UT Austin’s Know
The best content hub that I’ve seen in 2011 is UT Austin’s Know. This site offers a substantial stream of content, including a way to submit your own. The site navigation is exceptional, the structure is driven by both topics and mediums, and the design supports the comfortable consumption of a wealth of information. The Know social media directory is extensive and likely represents the future for higher ed social media.
– Susan T. Evans, Senior Strategist

Apps for the iPad and iPhone

Dropbox
Is this the most original choice on this list? Not by a long shot! Is Dropbox the one app that has changed the way I work most? Absolutely. This year I had an onsite client visit where I was able to use the iPad to read my usability testing script, revise the site IA, review the project timeline, and make minor edits to a change order. Because of Dropbox I could easily access, edit, and change those documents. My iPad has turned into the swiss army knife of productivity toolsets. And that is largely thanks to Dropbox.
– Jeremiah Worth, Project Manager

Flipboard
The app I used on my iPad more than any other in the last year is Flipboard, the pocket-sized social magazine. It’s a place to discover new, curated content and it connects to many of the social networks I use every day. Flipboard connects with my Facebook account to keep me up to date on my friends and family. I use Twitter as a way to keep up with industry thought leaders, and I can view their tweets from the app. I can share content, save it to Instapaper for later, and keep up with my Google Reader. Even better? A new iPhone version was released this week!
– Rob Cima, Co-Founder and CFO

Books

Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs defined innovation for our generation. This book is fascinating.

Mobile First
A terrific case for inverting the traditional approach to designing websites as more people use their smartphones and tablets as alternatives to laptops and desktops.
– Voltaire Miran Santos, Co-Founder and CEO

Do you have a top pick for 2011 that you would like to share? Leave a comment.

On behalf of the entire team at mStoner, there is no time more fitting to say “thank you” for everything you do for the education community and to wish you a happy holiday season. See you in 2012!

Posted by Mallory Wood
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How to do Facebook tabs right: Inspiration from outside .edu (Part 4 of 4)

I have thoroughly enjoyed writing this series of blog posts on Facebook tabs. It has been fun to explore how other industries are engaging their customers, viewers, and supporters in social spaces. Sadly enough, all good things must come to an end.

The Book of Mormon on Broadway



You probably know that Facebook users no longer need to “like” your Page before they interact with wall content. But, did you know that Facebook tabs have a nifty feature where you can limit tab content to those who have not “liked” your Page? Encourage the “like” by telling potential-fans the value that exists under the hood, the value they can only get by clicking the “like” button.

The Book of Mormon, NYC’s hottest show on Broadway, gets your “like” by allowing you to stream the cast recording for free. And there are few things better than free, especially when it comes to streaming music.



See how the tab changed after I “liked” the Page?

The ability to listen to the soundtrack for free is a great way to introduce the show to the un-initiated or give super fans a reason to keep coming back to the Page. Book of Mormon identified the number one value-add they could provide their Facebook community and they were smart enough to require you to “like” their Page first. Kudos!

How do we make this apply to .edu?
I rarely see .edu Pages taking advantage of this feature. The tough part is figuring out what value you can offer to your audience.

If you have a Page just for your institution’s alumni you could place videos from reunion or information about upcoming events under the hood. Or draw inspiration from Indiana State’s approach and offer a roommate finder to your incoming class.




What are your favorite Facebook tabs from outside .edu? We’d love to hear your thoughts and see your examples.

Posted by Mallory Wood
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