Using Social Media Insights to Drive Offline Outcomes
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Learn why your social media work should not be solely focused on followers, like, engagement rate, and reach. Learn how to connect your social media efforts to outcomes like admissions inquiries, alumni engagement, better media pitches, and effective marketing campaigns
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Using Social Media Insights to Drive Offline Outcomes
- 1. Using Social Media Insights to Drive Offline Outcomes Dr. Liz Gross CUPRAP 2018 Fall East Workshop
- 2. The internet is real life
- 5. Using insights from what other people do online to inform what you do offline Connecting what you do on social media to what happens offline
- 6. Connecting Social Media Efforts to Offline Outcomes 1. Know what you’re trying to achieve
- 7. social media goalssocial media goals How you use social media to contribute to department or institutional goals • Increase inquiries, applications, or enrolled students • Increase retention or graduation rates • Improve awareness of your campus • Increase earned media placements • Increase event attendance • Increase number of alumni donors, number of gifts, or total donations
- 8. Connecting Social Media Efforts to Offline Outcomes 1. Know what you’re trying to achieve 2. Put your social media strategies and tactics in context with departmental and institutional objectives Determine your KPIs
- 9. Admissions Goal Strategy/Tacti cs KPI Increase enrollment confirmations Accepted student campaign + hashtag Social visits to campus.edu/confirm Increase campus visit registrations Paid social media campaign Visit registrations referred from social media Increase new student applications Student ambassador Instagram campaign App starts and finishes referred by Instagram
- 10. Marketing Goal Strategy/Tacti cs KPI Increase brand awareness Highlight news and human interest web stories on social media Visits to campus.edu/news from social media Increase ticket sales for guest lecture series Paid social media campaign Tickets purchased online from social media ads
- 11. Alumni Goal Strategy/Tacti cs KPI Increase participation in the Annual Giving Day Paid social, alumni social ambassadors, social challenges New donors referred by social media Increase signups for the alumni association credit card Card benefit promotions on Facebook App completions referred from Facebook Increase alumni volunteer signups Instagram alumni ambassadors Signups referred by Instagram
- 12. I practice what I preach
- 13. Connecting Social Media Efforts to Offline Outcomes 1. Know what you’re trying to achieve 2. Put your social media strategies and tactics in context with departmental and institutional objectives Determine your KPIs 3. Connect the dots between online activity and offline outcomes
- 16. UTM Parameters Paramete r Purpose Example utm_source The site that referred the traffic utm_source=facebook utm_medium The type of link utm_medium=social utm_medium=display utm_campaign The promotion or campaign utm_campaign=GivingDa y utm_campaign=2018Yiel d
- 17. UTM Parameters Say What? • How many people applied, signed up, donated, etc. from social media • What posts/messages are most effective at provoking the desired offline action • The results of paid promotion on social media • The aggregate outcome of a series of related social media content (campaign)
- 18. Put UTM Parameters In Action• Create URLs with parameters using Google’s URL builder • Automatically populate in some CRMS (e.g., HubSpot, Salesforce) and some social media management software • Manage manually (if necessary) using a spreadsheet with common parameters • Analyze results in Google Analytics or similar
- 19. Data Drives Decisions Kayla Lewis, Seneca College (Toronto) • Tracks social referrals to Apply page • After launching Instagram with a focus on 16-18 year-olds, saw an increase in application referrals from Insta. • Increased Instagram advertising spend, seeing increased results
- 20. “Don't just go for vanity metrics. What's most important is bums in seats. Show your bosses how you put people in the classroom.” Rema Tavares Seneca College (Toronto)
- 21. Using insights from what other people do online to inform what you do offline Connecting what you do on social media to what happens offline
- 22. Social Media = The World’s Largest Focus Group “Companies using social listening and social intelligence tools have access to the largest publicly available archive of human thought.” -Will McInnes, CMO, Brandwatch
- 23. strategic social listening real life: transcribed, categorized, and analyzed to provide your institution with the insights it needs to support data-driven strategies
- 24. Social listening to understand student journeys and improve web experience
- 25. Great Lakes Gives The Student Loan Party We Didn’t Know They Wanted Standard passive-aggressive tweets from 2014-2015
- 26. Great Lakes Gives Borrowers The Student Loan Party We Didn’t Know They Wanted We got the message and delivered
- 27. Social listening to identify unknown campus brand attribute
- 28. Spring Hill College Embraces Family
- 29. Spring Hill College Embraces #SHCFamily
- 30. Social Listening to Improve Earned Media Coverage • Monitor journalist coverage of particular topics to identify pitch opportunities • Receive alerts when individual journalists post – Often researching story ideas
- 31. What would you do with an always-on focus group? • What topics are top-of-mind with newly-admitted students? • What pop culture trends do our students follow that we could use to inspire programming or messaging? • How do our alumni talk about spending their money, supporting philanthropy, or their education?
- 32. You do so much more than attract followers and collect likes and retweets
- 33. Get My Slides + Resources info.campussonar.com/cuprap @LizGross144 (Twitter + Instagram) Linkedin.com/in/lizgross www.campussonar.com www.lizgross.net
Editor's Notes
- I’d like to start by saying something that may be obvious, but needs to be said: Online is Real Life. I’ve been repeating this on stages like this one for the last year, and yes—I know that this is a social media conference. But I still find MYSELF referring to “online” or “IRL.” This is not a dichotomy and we need to remove that qualifier from our language. People work, learn, celebrate, hurt others, get hurt, protest, and even get married online. A friend of mine recently pointed out that it’s silly we ever developed the phrase IRL. Outside of literature and storytelling, how can something a living, breathing person does NOT be real life? - Maybe this is changing in the era of Cambridge Analytica and fake news. But in the last few years I’ve spoken with leaders of large organizations who believed what people said about them online didn’t matter, because most people online were just “complainers,” and “trolls.” That’s a big generalization about 90% of the US population.
- This is why I spoke with a reporter from Inside Higher Ed for almost an hour this summer as she was writing this article exploring the role of a social media manager on campus. If you haven’t read it, add it to your reading list. What struck me as I spoke to this reporter was her surprise when I talked about the job’s stresses – not just dealing with campus emergencies, but private messages to campus accounts that include reports of sexual assault and suicidal thoughts. When someone is messaging your organization’s Facebook page when they’re thinking of ending their lives, it certainly doesn’t feel like an online-only incident. I’ve been there, I know. - When the reporter asked me what I thought a campus social media manager’s nightmare would be, I said – being mentioned in a tweet by President Trump. Not only will it hijack your day, but it will land your institution on Fox News and CNN within hours. That kind of blew her mind.
- This is a conference about the changing social media landscape. I think the biggest change is that social media has woven itself into the daily fabric of most Americans—and most organizations. It’s no longer enough to “just be there.” Because the internet—and social media—is real life, social media managers (and their bosses, and their grand bosses) should be able to articulate how their work contributes to key institutional priorities. If you haven’t been asked about this already, you will be. And mumbling something about your followers, retweets, and story views will not be enough. I know you can do it, and today I want to make sure you’re equipped to do so.
- I used to teach an online professional development course called Social Media Measurement in Higher Education. Between 3 and 10 students would work through 4 weeks of reading, discussion, and assignments so they felt confident and competent measuring and reporting on their social media efforts. I taught almost 100 students in this course, so I’ve glimpsed behind the curtain of social media strategy at both the campus and department level at all types of institutions. The first question in the first discussion was, “What goals are you using social media to achieve?” For some students, this was the hardest question in the course. And not just because I’m a tough instructor who refused to accept “Increase followers” as a goal. Some of them had literally never been told what objectives they were supposed to work towards. - I’ve experienced this too. When I was hired as a social media strategist, I asked my interviewer how my success would be evaluated. I give him points for honesty, because he said, “We’re hoping you can tell us that.” That might seem like a chance for me to coast, but when I was called in front of the board three years later to explain the purpose and outcome of our social media program in 15 minutes, I was glad I chose goals that corresponded with business goals and designed my strategy and measurement accordingly.
- As you think about what it is you’re trying to achieve, I’d like to encourage you to strike the phrase “Social media goals” from your vocabulary. Instead, consider how you use social media to contribute to departmental or institutional goals. Depending on the role you play on campus, those goals may include one or more of the following. [list] Is this resonating? Are there department or institutional goals you support that aren’t included here? - These are goals that resonate in executive offices and the board room. In most cases, “social media goals” like followers, shares, views, comments, and reach are easy and maybe fun to report, but they do not demonstrate impact.
- Don’t ask me how many followers my company, Campus Sonar, has on social media. I don’t know. And we don’t have a goal for that. What I do know is how many leads came from social media, our blog, and our newsletter. And soon I’ll be able to tell you what type of content converts to leads at the highest rate. You can do this to! I’m going to walk through this conceptually, and at the end of my talk I’ll share some supporting resources in case you want to go back to the office and study up, or preach to your colleagues the gospel of outcomes-based measurement.
- A lot of offline outcomes, like applications, donations, or awareness, include online conversations like inquiries/application submissions, gifts, and website views. The key to tying these conversation to social media likely lies in your web analytics software.
- A lot of offline outcomes, like applications, donations, or awareness, include online conversations like inquiries/application submissions, gifts, and website views. The key to tying these conversation to social media likely lies in your web analytics software….not in any kind of social media metrics.
- Otherwise known as the gobbledygook shown after the question mark in a URL. Who knows what they are?
- Don’t stop at social! This same structure could/should be built into all of your digital marketing – including emails, display and mobile ads, and search engine marketing or other CPC ads.
- Now it’s time to take a different perspective. This is just an introduction to an idea. I’ll be back at the Spring conference to share more about this in depth during a breakout session.
- Looking at the owned and earned content, Emily’s analysis found that “family” organically surfaced in SHC’s content and it was well-received by prospective students, current students, former students, and their families. Many of the posts were often retweeted and shared by the SHC audience. A marine biologist alumna currently serving as the Foreign Affairs Specialist—Office of Law Enforcement for the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration in Washington, DC, has 1,538 followers on Twitter. She received her BS in Marine Biology from SHC in 2006. In 2015 she retweeted an article about SHC history, calling her time at SHC the “best years of her life” and saying she missed her SHC family. The granddaughter of a prominent alumna occasionally tweets about the legacy of her grandmother who was the first black graduate from an all-white university (SHC). Her tweet celebrating her grandmother is currently pinned to the top of her profile and has been retweeted over 2,500 times.
- You can do some of this without fancy software with a combination of advanced Twitter search and Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, maybe even IFTTT.
- Social media is an important part of campus life. What happens there can contribute to real-world outcomes like enrollment, retention, press coverage, brand awareness, alumni engagement, and fund-raising. The people managing social media—likely many of you in this room—do so much more than attract followers and collect likes and retweets. My hope is that you’re able to adequately capture the impact you have on campus outcomes, so your work is taken as seriously as it deserves to be.