An overview of the social media used at the USF Alumni Association and goals for improvement. This was a project I completed for my "Social Media in Mass Communications" course at the University of South Florida in Fall of 2014.

1. USF Alumni Association
Social Media Analysis
Updated: 12/10/14

2. Why is Social Media Important?
“Social media is a low-cost, effective marketing channel that allows you to
empower your supporters to share your organization’s mission and
achievements. It also makes it easier for potential supporters to discover you.
Some of the benefits for utilizing social media include:
•Building awareness of your mission by driving traffic to your website and
social media properties.
•Growing your organization’s influence by cost-effectively acquiring new
supporters, donors and volunteers.
•Harnessing the passion of your most active supporters by empowering them
to promote your organization’s various programs.”
Source: “Going Social: Tapping into Social Media for Nonprofit Success” by Convio Services Team (2010)
www.councilofnonprofits.org/files/Convio_Social-Media-Guide.pdf

3. USF Alumni Association Facebook Page Overview
OUTTBBOUND CCOMMUNIITTYY HEEALLTTH OPPTTIIMIIZZATTIION CCONTTEENTT DEETTAIILLSS
26 Brand Posts
2,846
109 Engagement/Post
39k Total Page Fans
Avg. People Talking About
This (PTAT)
54
Most Engaging Content Type
Photos
Top Day/Time For Engagement
Thursday
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Most Engaging Post
"To Florida State University: The USF
Community sends our thoughts and prayers
to your students, alu…"
1,148 interactions (14.0x average)
0.1% Avg. PTAT as % of Fans
7.2% Engagement as % of Fans
Total Engagement on
Brand Posts
USF Alumni Association Twitter Page Overview
Twitter Follower Report
Followers Tweets
You
5,828
Audience (Avg)
3,603
On average, your audience has 1.6x as many
followers as users they are following.
(Lifetime)
You
4,203
Audience (Avg)
2,668
On average, your audience tweets 0.4 times per day.
Klout Score
You
52.8
Audience (Avg)
25.4
18% of your total followers are above the
Worldwide Klout Score of 40.

4. How do we stack up against other Alumni Associations?
62,148 likes on Facebook page
13.4 Twitter Followers
16,307 likes on Facebook page
9,542 Twitter Followers
39,444 likes on Facebook page
5,856 Twitter followers
20,272 likes on Facebook page
7,852 Twitter followers
Updated: 12/10/14

5. Content Performance: USF Alumni Association Facebook Page
EENGAGEEMEENTT PPEEAKKSS
MOST ENGAGING POST FROM 11/20/14
To Florida State University: The USF Community sends our
thoughts and prayers to your stu…
1,148 interactions, 73% of the total for that day
MOST ENGAGING POST FROM 11/26/14
Enjoy the rivalry responsibly. #GoBulls #BeatUCF
http://beatucf.com | Timeline Photos | ht…
274 interactions, 77% of the total for that day
MOST ENGAGING POST FROM 11/27/14
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/
v/t1.0-9/p130x130/1450279_101518174…
247 interactions, 89% of the total for that day
2.0K
1.8K
1.6K
1.4K
1.2K
1.0K
800
600
400
200
0
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Total Engagement
Brand Posts
Brand Posts and Total Engagement
Brand Posts Total Engagement
Content that performs best on our Facebook page is content that
alumni feel most connected with, such as photos from our events,
promotional materials and news updates about the university.

6. What content performs best on Facebook?
Example: Nov. 20, 2014 – The USF Alumni Association shared a
photo posted by the university’s main Facebook page to give
condolences after the shooting in the library that took place at
Florida State University earlier that morning.
Why it performed well: Alumni may be connected with FSU for
many reasons: employment, post-graduate school, or even family
members who attend the university. Connecting with those
affected gave alumni a chance to speak out and show their
support for FSU as well.
Answer: Content that
alumni can engage with.

7. What content performs best on Facebook?
Answer: Content that gets our
followers excited and makes them
see there’s something in it for
them.
Our Share the Love campaign led
to a big push in our social media
engagement.
Posts that have an incentive for
engagement, such as prize
giveaways or other goodies,
encourage Alumni to share our
content leads to the posts being
shared on their pages to their
friends, who are also Alumni!
In turn, we’ll gain more fans on
Facebook and more followers on
Twitter.

8. What content performs best on Facebook?
Answer: Content that makes
Alumni remember their
‘Good Old Days’ at USF
Posts about the history of USF
performs well because they encourage
Alumni to relive the days where they
too were a student at USF. This
reignites their connection with the
university, and leads them to engage
more with their Alumni Association.

9. Top Keywords used on USFAA’s Twitter Account
789
582
510
301
343
263
292 288
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
# Profiles
Audience Profile Analysis: Top Keywords
A hashtag is a tag used on the social network Twitter (and now
Facebook) as a way to annotate a message. A hashtag is a word or
phrase preceded by a “#”. Example: #yourhashtag. Hashtags are
commonly used to show that a tweet, a Twitter message, is related to
an event or conference.
Hashtags allow users to find our content more
easily when searching trends on social media sites.
Tweets with hashtags receive twice as much
engagement as those without (Source: The Daily
Telegraph).

10. What content performs best on Twitter?
Answer: Content that connects us
with the community.
Mentions (including another Twitter handle in a post) of other major groups and
organizations in our content exposes us to their followers as well, encouraging
more exposure in the form of clicks, retweets and favorites.
Organizations we connect with are likely to share our content to highlight
partnerships and expand their community engagement. It’s a win-win!

11. What content performs best on Twitter?
Tweets with images, videos and other
multimedia elements included receive
18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and
150% more retweets than those without.
(Source: The Daily Telegraph)
These type of posts stand out from
others in users Twitter feeds,
encouraging a higher click-through rate.
Answer: Content that provides a
multimedia element to stand out
from the rest of the clutter.

12. Goals for USFAA’s Social Media Pages
• Create a more consistently scheduled social media presence
through the creation of an editorial calendar.
• Outline a specific purpose for our Twitter account, to ensure
that it’s use to our followers is different from that of our
Facebook page.
• Create more content that pushes viewers/followers towards
the USFAA website so they’ll be exposed to membership
benefits and everything the organization has to offer.

13. Goal #1 - Creation of a Social Media Content Calendar
The content calendar has improved the overall organization of our various social media channels. Using the
Calendars function in Microsoft Outlook, we can look at what posts we’ve planned for our various social media
platforms, as well as for our text messaging services and website. We can fill holes with extra content as needed,
and use the information to determine optimal times to post.

14. Goal #2 – Finding a purpose for our Twitter account
On December 10th, we posted a Tweet
about the results of Giving Tuesday, a
worldwide day of giving for nonprofit
organizations. The short, sweet and to the
point tweet that we posted alongside the
YouTube video thanking our donors was
received well within our Twitter
audiences, and was retweeted multiple
times!
Twitter Best Practices:
• Less is more! Shorter tweets result in
more engagement.
• Engage more with our Twitter accounts
within the USF System and Tampa Bay
community.
• Use two or less hashtags per tweet to
avoid overbearing your followers.
• Asking followers to “retweet” or “RT” for
short results in more engagement.
• Posts with photos greatly out perform
those with no multimedia element.
When you start to
understand your
followers interests and
what they’re more likely
to engage with, you can
optimize your content to
fit their interests.
Our Twitter account performs better when our content is relevant to what it is our
followers want to see. Also, brevity is key! Posts that have had short, sweet but
interesting copy have outperformed those that would be better suited for our
Facebook or LinkedIn audiences.

15. Goal #3 – Create more of a push towards our website/benefits of USFAA membership
Posts that highlight freebies on our website, such as this post about the
Book of Bull, shows our followers that it’s not just about signing up for
membership when you visit our website.
Event promotions, such as highlighting the application season for our Fast 56
Awards program, gives followers notice of something they may not have seen
unless they went to our website. Then they’ll click-through to our site for details.
On Cyber Monday, we posted about a book sale that one of our Alumni chapters
was having. The post succeeded because it was relevant to what was on
everyone’s mind during the day: buying Christmas gifts online.
Relevancy is key! Always ask yourself
“Why should my followers care about
what I’m posting?” and make sure that
question is answered in your content!
To encourage more of a push towards awareness for what the Alumni Association
can provide its members, we’ve began posting more content about the benefits of
membership.

16. Things to Remember:
• Content performs best on Facebook what it’s content that alumni feel
connected with, that they can engage with and that shows them there’s
something in it for them when they like our page.
• Content performs best on Twitter when it’s is short and sweet, and
connects with other communities on the site.
• Tweets with hashtags receive twice as much engagement, but more than
two hashtags can hurt more than it helps.
• Through getting to know your followers’ interests and what time of day
they’re most active online, you can get the most our of your social media
content.
• Always ask yourself “why should my followers care about what I’m
posting?” and make sure that question is answered in your content.