NC State's approach to Content Strategy on the web and social media
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NC State's approach to Content Strategy on the web and social media - 2014 UNC System Advancement Symposium
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NC State's approach to Content Strategy on the web and social media
- 1. // Luis Chacon Director of Web Communications NC State University #ThinkAndDo @lrchacon
- 6. The planning aspects of managing and aligning content to business goals and analysis, influencing the development, production, presentation, evaluation and measurement of content, including governance. • Paraphrasing Content Strategist Rahel Bailie Content Strategy
- 7. Planning Process Flexibility BIG PICTURE
- 8. Editorial Calendar & weekly strategy sessions - NCSU.EDU homepage - Marketing landing pages - Schedule web & social content, “plan” for spontaneity - Monthly web analytics & social metrics analysis Planning
- 10. Part of content strategy is planning for content re-use in different channels. Integrated approach - WordPress manages the NC State homepage - Empower writers to draft social content with their story. - Demonstrate that Web and Social are integrated Web + Social
- 11. 45% increase in mobile traffic RESPONSIVE DESIGN
- 12. LONGER VISITS +26% FEWER EXITS -35% UNIQUE PAGE VIEWS 8.5 Million 3:20 +13% 45% PAGE VIEWS 27 Million
- 13. 79% 17% 6%CAMPUS TOUR 46,000 page views ALUMNI 24,000 page views CURRENT STUDENTS 749,000 page views
- 14. - Scheduling posts - Marketing Campaign Tracking - Metrics/Analytics - Monitoring - Automated email when fans comment Social Plans
- 15. Brainstorming and Structure: - Daily and Weekly sprint meetings with creatives - Plan out creative - 2-4 weeks to invest in high quality assets - Build to iterate - Share creative work as large group, smaller meetings with stakeholders Process
- 18. - Be human on social - Planning is great but who doesn’t love cupcakes?!? Flexibility
- 20. Homepage TAKEOVER We used the NC State homepage to celebrate the largest single gift in the university’s history. Transformational Gift PAGE VIEWS 27 Million
- 21. Park on Social Central channels working with campus partners Facebook, Twitter &YouTube
- 22. Park Website redesign: - New homepage - 3 goals: - gift announcement - drive traffic to giving - increase applications - Custom landing page for announcement - Revamped Giving landing page Park Website
- 24. // Luis Chacon Director of Web Communications NC State University #ThinkAndDo @lrchacon
Editor's Notes
- Before I get started on our approach to digital content strategy, I wanted to share a few slides that showcase some of our most recent integrated campaigns. What we’re projecting on all of our channels is a consistent visual design and overall user experience. Some of our fans might find us via social media, or email or from the NC State homepage. We strive to have all of these experiences radiate our new brand. This slide shows our integrated campaign for the Hunt Library dedication. Having an award winning library that is one of the most technologically advanced in the nation doesn’t hurt. We started the campaign with a full NC State homepage takeover. We had a time-lapse video of the Library at the top of the homepage that drove traffic to a microsite we built using the Hunt Library color palette. We used our secondary promotional areas on the homepage to point directly to the NCSU Libraries website and to strategic subpages in our microsite. That new website, which won a case regional grand award as part of an overall ad campaign – as well as honorable mention for a Webby, was a custom responsive/mobile friendly website that showcased the major elements of our library of the future.
- This slides shows the rollout for the Chancellor’s Report. We launch the new report via the NC State homepage that drives to a mobile friendly/responsive website with bold and colorful photography. All of our new websites are responsive, keeping with the spirit of our new brand platform. We use our digital channels to continue showcasing NC State as a cutting-edge research enterprise. We then use social media and email marketing to draw further attention to best of stories of the year – sharing the website with our students, alumni, donors and peers.
- Here you can see how we use consistent visual elements to promote our THINK and DO campaigns in our social channels. This slide shows how the NC State user experience connects our social media channels. Our goal is to present the same overall sense of brand on all of our social accounts, at the same time using channel specific strategies and tactics that resonate with our fans.
- I wanted to show you some visual examples that are the results of our approach to content strategy. For us, it’s about planning and aligning our content with the university goals and our new brand platform. We then measure the effectiveness of our communications and make adjustments. For us, it’s not just about getting our fans/visitors to read. We want them to take a measureable action. It might be applying, watching our video and sharing it with their friends and/or hopefully giving to support NC State.
- This is an overly simplified summary of how we tackle integrated communications in UCOMM. We’re big on planning, having an innovative process for developing and publishing content but are flexible and can take advantage of unplanned opportunities.
- As I mentioned we’re big on planning and strategy. We use an editorial calendar to manage our homepage and social content. We typically have our calendar planned out for 2-3 months. We meet weekly to review our plans and add new opportunities as they come up – especially for social media. We then meet monthly to review analytics and metrics and make adjustments when appropriate. We’re able to take advantage of our planned web and social content and engage our creative staff. We try to create one long form feature a month that uses all of our channels. This gives designers/photographers/writers a chance to plan more visually appealing content.
- This slide’s an example of how planning a highly visual web feature had both organic and paid marketing value. By organic, I mean content we own, our traditional communications. This was a homepage feature that we published for graduation. We wanted to showcase our career-ready graduates. We also used graduation for a short-term ad campaign. We had ads in the airport and on Facebook that echoed the content on our homepage. We also advertised on WRAL, knowing they annually cover graduations of the big three triangle universities. We wanted to be visible and use graduation to our advantage pushing what distinguishes us from other universities.
- Another part of content strategy is structuring your communications vehicles in a way that maximizes productivity and creativity. We use wordpress to power the NC State homepage. We’ve enhanced wordpress to facilitate the creation of social content while web content is being developed. This helps our writers think both web and social as part of a singular execution.
- Plan for success. After our 125th Anniversary, we redesigned our website for a second time in 2 years. We wanted to establish NC State as a leader in higher Ed marketing communications. As part of our mobile strategy, we launched a responsive (mobile friendly) website that had instant success. Over time our mobile traffic spiked. Campus partners took notice and adopted the responsive movement, developing websites that adjust depending on the device. Our 2 redesigns won CASE Regional Grand Awards and our Institutional Message responsive website went on to win a Circle of Excellence, Bronze Award at CASE National.
- Well before the redesign, we set aggressive goals for the new homepage and the site in general, wanting to increase overall engagement and content consumption. We also wanted to drive more traffic to admissions and our giving website.
- Our major landing pages also had increased traffic which lined up with our approach to improving the overall user experience throughout the site.
- I mentioned we plan out web and social content via our editorial calendar. We also use a service to schedule, monitor and track our social activity. We’re able to create messaging campaigns and reuse the same short urls across our different social channels. The service also lets us schedule posts when our fans are most active. After the traditional 8-5 work day and weekends are big with our fans and we want to engage with them when they’re most active.
- Our process gives us space for creativity and innovation. It enables us to produce higher quality marketing communications that increases engagement and showcases the NC State Brand
- Especially on social, you do need to remember to be flexible and interact like a human with your fans. The added bonus of scheduling out social posts, it gives us the freedom to take advantage of unexpected opportunities. You can browse your social spaces and share your colleagues work or interact with discussions in real time. We’ve also built in similar flexibility on our homepage. We reserve 3 areas that center around the concept of Our People, Our Place and Our Work. This space lets us showcase content from colleagues or to push unexpected opportunities.
- I want to end my portion of the presentation by walking through a few examples of how we announced the largest single gift in NC State history. Well, it’s impossible to summarizing the countless hours that went into making the gift happen.
- We wanted to use our primary communication channel to announced this historic gift. The NC State homepage receives over 27million pageviews per year and we wanted to make sure that all of our many audiences were aware of this great accomplishment. We created a new feature story that spoke about the transformational gift and the impact of the Park Scholarships Program.
- We also used our social channels to frame the message about the impact of the gift and to let our fans celebrate with us. We coordinated social postings between our central channels and the Park Scholars program.
- Anticipating the traffic spike on the Park Website, we worked with their team to redesign the site. We refreshed their homepage, building mechanisms that enabled them to showcase the new gift as well as meeting their overall site goals – increasing traffic to applications and their giving page
- We also created a more marketing centric landing page for the Park Endowment page and revamped the giving page to make it easier for their visitors to read about all the different giving opportunities and easily give on line.