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:
  1. Set goals
  2. Identify audience
  3. Narrow focus
  4. Create content
  5. Engage audience
  6. 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”
  1. Collaboration – begin w/ the end product in mind, and develop a process and team
  2. Commitment – establish regular meetings and an operating plan
  3. Customer – find who you are talking to: students, their parents, or both?
  4. Concept – develop a brand process, hit key messages, and stay on-strategy w/ your brand
  5. Capability – build a creative team of writers and brand stewards, while always monitoring the budget
  6. 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.