Billy McDonald has spent the past two years of his college career monitoring Web traffic. He has worked diligently to discover the most efficient method for integrating social media into everyday marketing strategies. McDonald will graduate with a double major from MSUM in May. He will receive a degree in mass communications with an emphasis in public relations, as well as a degree in business administration with an emphasis in marketing. In January 2011, McDonald accepted the position of social media ambassador for Dragon Athletics. During his time with Dragon Athletics, he has discovered that social media is responsible for 25 percent of the Web traffic for the Dragon Athletics website. In order to conduct his research, McDonald worked on multiple dashboards, which allowed him to manage multiple accounts, browse the Web for valuable information and monitor keywords posted on Facebook, Twitter and Google. With the use of “Google Analytics,” traffic created from a special formatted click-through on a social media site is easily measured and studied. McDonald has always taken an interest in social media. “I used to joke that Facebook was my major during my freshman year,” says McDonald. After taking a year off from school, he came back and added mass communications with an emphasis in public relations as his second major in addition to his degree in business administration. During his time away from school, McDonald spent much of his free time researching media and learning Internet codes. It was then that he discovered a social media-driven career was what he wanted to pursue. Before finding success with Dragon Athletics, McDonald paved the way for himself at Absolute Marketing Group, a full-service communications firm dedicated to creating effective marketing campaigns for Fargo area businesses. While working for the company, McDonald promoted Twitter and Facebook pages along with a text club for the local Pancheros restaurant. McDonald was responsible for the text club’s growth from 50 members to 800 members. It was after this experience that he bought his first book about social media. Recently, the mass communications department at MSUM has added a class about social media, which McDonald applauds. However, he wishes the class had been available previously so he could have enrolled in it. “Social media is an integral part of mass communications,” says McDonald. All of McDonald’s progress is just a small-scale trial of the type of social media marketing he hopes will become large scale for the entire university. “The larger implications of my findings is that social media is always evolving, so there is no way to forecast its growth in our culture perfectly, but surely it’s not going away.”

1. The World of New Media
Communications via
Dragon Athletics Department
Presenter: Billy J. McDonald
@BillyJMcDonald
Social Media & Communications Coordinator
of Dragon Athletics

2.  Senior in Business Administration
emphasis in Marketing, and Mass
Communications emphasis Public
Relations.
 Social Media Analyst for MSU-
Moorhead for 16 months
 Work under Jon Wepking, Interim
Athletics Marketing Director
 Marketing Coordinator of the
Dragon Entertainment Group
(2years)
 Looking for a job in social media
marketing
Who am I?

3. What it is about…
Relationship
Communities
Customer Service
Media Relations
Internal Communications
Community Support
THE STUDENTS
Athletes

4. What it is not about…
The Tools
Size
Numbers
Money
Intangible gains far exceed the bottom
line
Pride

5. Goals of Social Media
Business Partnerships
Increase Traffic to MSUMDragons.com
Generate Leads
Increase Revenue
Build Brand Value and Awareness
Improve Dragon Athletics SEO
Brand Advocacy
Reduce CRM Cost

6. Dragon Athletics Rules of Social
Engagement
 The tone of all messaging is to be positive, transparent and
Authentic.
 Playful banter is okay, as long as it’s engaging. There is no point
in just amusing yourself and present the university as arrogant.
 All content must be relevant. Otherwise we are just spamming
our audience.
 Timing is everything. We want our influencers to tell our story,
but we need to be the provided them leads.
 Admit mistakes

7. What channels are Dragon Athletics
currently using outside of social media?
Email Websites the frequently generate
 Dragon Weekly content about Dragon Athletics
 Dragon Fire Newsletter  http://www.inforum.com/
 Scores and New Updates  http://msumadvocate.com/
Direct-mail  http://news.mnstate.edu/category/drago
 Sent when deemed appropriate in such ndigest/
events such as (Holiday cards,  http://www.wday.com/
Homecoming, Dragon Fire events)  http://kfgo.com/
 http://www.theguillotine.com/
On and Off Campus Print Publications  http://www.northernsun.org/
 Alumnews  http://www.kvrr.com/
 The Fargo-Moorhead Forum  http://www.valleynewslive.com/
 The MSUM Advocate  http://www.740thefan.com/
 Pioneer Press
 Etc.

8. Social Tools that should be used and
the potential/purpose:
Google Alerts
Google Analytics
SocialMention.com
Hootsuite Social Platform
Meltwater Press

9. Twitter Key Influencers
External Twitter Influencers for  @GoAugie
Influencers for @DragonAthletics  @MSUMavericks
@DragonAthletics  @ADDougPeters  @WolvesAthletics
 @DomizzoWDAY  @JonWebbie  @SCSUHuskies
 @KVRRTV  @BillyJMcDonald  @CUGoldenBears
 @KunkelW  @MSUMoohead  @WSCWildcats
 @JimNelsonFox  @Nemzek Noize  @WSUWarriors
 @FargoBigE  @UMDBulldogs
 WDayNews Competitor Twitter  @BSUBeavers
 @WDayAM970 Accounts  @UMarySports
 @MidcoSportsNet  @NDSUAthletics  @MSUBeavers
 @SidearmSports  @CobberSID  @SMSUMustangs
 @ElsenMidcoSN  @UIUPeacocks
 @FargoMoorhead  @USF_Cougars
 @fmwfchamber
Internal Twitter NSIC Twitter Handles

10. Shifting Personalities
of the Internet

11. How to deal with negative
comments
1. Identify the Issue
2. Humanize Your Responses
3. Be Prompt
4. Get Your Customers Involved
5. Think Twice Before You Delete
6. Go to the Big Dog

12. Facebook fan page(s)
 Post positive media mentions
 Encourage interaction on pages,
events and groups
 Content should be timely,
Social
relevant, authentic and not
repeated Networks
 Interaction between the pages
and events will encourage growth
across all pages
Short term
 Create unique posting schedule
the alternates message delivery objectives:
across fan pages
Google+
 Develop new social network
 Items like create circles,
encourage interaction, create
content
 Also, participate in Q&A, other
groups, etc.

13. Micro-Blogging Short Term
Objectives (Twitter)
Short term objectives: Key Metrics:
 Use Twitter list  850 Friends/Followers
 Promote dept. post through other  1260 2nd‐order followers
Dragon Athletics accounts (follower’s follower count)
 Communicate to users about  2 Velocity‐ avg. of first‐ and
support issues such as broken second‐order followers attracted
links and event times/details per day since the account was
 follow‐up established
 Build reputation
 Promote other social networking
activities/sites through Twitter

14. Short term objectives:
Increase engagement
 Create sharable content that is relevant
 Encourage comments; submit RSS feed to sports
forums and local publications.
 Write more opinionated to drive a conversation
 Increase Subscribers through campaigning Blogging
Short Term
Objectives

15. Short term objectives:
 Update videos on social video sites and link to core site
 Create video series for YouTube


Include full bio and caption story with every video posted
Produce only quality video for channel
Video-


Review and critique each video as if you were the viewer
Increase subscribers (71)
Sharing


Use keywords with videos to improve SEO
Include videos in playlist
Short
 Keep records of Social clicks
Term
Objectives

16. Google Analytics
Now its about the numbers. Well, sorta…

17. What is Google Analytics?
 Website Traffic Measurement Tool
 Onsite Metrics Collection
 Page Tags
 Cookies
 Think of it more like a thermometer for you website.

18. Overview of Impact of Social
Media Usage to Web Traffic

19. Overview Referral Traffic by
Month

20. 09-10 vs.10-11

21. 08-09 vs. 09-10

22. Where is this increase in Web
Traffic Coming From?
 This years traffic has increase 29 percent
 14 percent can be contributed to the Universities new landing
page
 The other 15 percent is from Social Media.
- Facebook 9 percent
- Twitter 5 percent
- YouTube/Etc. <1 percent

23. Offsite Metric Click
Measurement

24. Additional Social Marketing
Benefits Branding
 YouTube views <51,000
 Blog views < 21,000
 Twitter @DragonAthletics 850+ follows
 Facebook <3650 ‘Likes’ on 13 pages
ALL in 16 months…
Other Social Networks on the move:
- Google+, Pinterest,

25. Problems in Google Analytics and
Offsite Data Collection
 Hootsuite Account Collection Error
 API Server Failure
 Tracking bit.ly (and other short URLs) in Google Analytics
 Bounce Percentages (Pages/Visits, or New Visits
Miscalculations)
 Cookie Transmissions, IP Addresses <10.5 avg.
 Search Engine Spiders (???)
 Missing Page Tags

26. How to deal with Accuracy Issues
 Supply each intern with necessary tools
 Page tags
 Follow bounce rate trends in 2012-2013

27. Any Questions?
PLEASE stop me later if you would like to talk to me more
about the more technical side of web analytics, or social media
strategy.