I attended the CASE District VI Annual Conference in St. Louis earlier this month and wanted to recap some of the highlights from my favorite sessions:
A Comprehensive Social Media Strategy
presented by Heather Hickerson and Robin Krause, University of Central Missouri
- UCM has developed their social media strategy in this order:
- Set goals
- Identify audience
- Narrow focus
- Create content
- Engage audience
- Measure results
- They have posted questions to Facebook asking students what their favorite things are about their University, and then use responses from students in various publications like Admissions print pieces, etc.
- UCM closely tracks what is happening on their social media sites, like interactions, comments, wall posts, likes, retweets, and number of subscribers
Working With Admissions
presented by Mary Ann Grillo-Ellmo, St. Louis University
- SLU took the 6 C’s of marketing and created ‘The 6 C’s of Admissions Marketing”
- Collaboration – begin w/ the end product in mind, and develop a process and team
- Commitment – establish regular meetings and an operating plan
- Customer – find who you are talking to: students, their parents, or both?
- Concept – develop a brand process, hit key messages, and stay on-strategy w/ your brand
- Capability – build a creative team of writers and brand stewards, while always monitoring the budget
- Communication – build a media plan
Best Practices in Social Media
presented by Sree Sreenivasan, Columbia School of Journalism
- There are no social media experts; there are no rules. All we have at this point is a set of guidelines that change very quickly.
- We need to start using these tools now. If you suddenly need to use it and have to sign up to do so, you’re already too late.
- On social media sites you should always be personable and never use canned or default messages when communicating with others.
- What you say about others and who you say things about reflects either positively or negatively on you (LinkedIn recommendations is a good example).
- On Twitter, 1 in 5 tweets should be about yourself. You should also never use more than 120 characters in a single tweet, in case others would like to re-tweet it gives them an opportunity to add hashtags or their own comments.
I also presented Updating News Releases With Social Media In Mind at this conference with Andrea Mostyn, Assistant Director of University Communications.