To help students, faculty and staff connect with Missouri State University’s public affairs mission, particularly the tenant of community engagement, the University sponsored its third-annual Community Engagement Project, Stomp Out Hunger, Oct. 1-24.
Stomp Out Hunger was a collaborative shoe drive with Drury University, Ozarks Technical Community College, Evangel University and Southwest Baptist University that benefited the local nonprofit Sole Food. The shoes donated to Sole Food were sent to Shoeman Water Projects where proceeds from their sale benefited Friends Against Hunger and supported clean water initiatives. In addition, the shoes were distributed in developing countries.
Stomp Out Hunger digital campaign
To help raise awareness for Stomp Out Hunger and to spur shoe donations, Web and new media created a digital promotion campaign that included:
- Assisting with optimization of the Stomp Out Hunger website
- Promoting Stomp Out Hunger on the Missouri State website through homepage photos
- Creating a custom Go Maroon spread for the Missouri State homepage
- Running an Instagram photo series that told the stories of individual shoe donors
- Posting a social media kit to the Web and new media blog and distributing it to social media managers of related University accounts
- Promoting social media engagement through Missouri State University’s accounts with the #CitizenBear hashtag
- Producing a video about Stomp Out Hunger that featured faculty member Lora Hobbs
Video highlights
Web and new media chose to create a new video for Stomp Out Hunger, which featured Lora Hobbs, a senior instructor in the department of religious studies and the founder of Sole Food. The video was created to help tell the story of Stomp Out Hunger and explain how donating one pair of shoes could make a local and global impact.
Video stats
- Total views: 284
- Average view duration: 1:06
Instagram photo series
A new Instagram series was created to tell the story of how donating a pair of shoes to Stomp Out Hunger gives the shoes a second life. For the series, we asked individuals to let us photograph them donating a pair of shoes that had significant meaning to them. The goal was to demonstrate how the shoes that had meaning to the donors would also have meaning to their next owners. There were four photos total- one highlighted the project overall and three featured individuals.
Instagram stats
- Total likes: 538
- Total comments: 10
- Total regrams: 1 with 62 likes
Other social engagement
Stomp Out Hunger was heavily promoted by Missouri State University’s social media accounts throughout October. Members of the MSU community were encouraged to engage in the social conversation about the project by using #CitizenBear.
Missouri State Facebook
Stomp Out Hunger – Oct. 1-24:
- Total posts: 4
- Total reach: 9,820
- Total engagement: 591
Missouri State Twitter
Stomp Out Hunger – Oct. 1-24:
- Total tweets: 6
- Total retweets: 12
- Total favorites: 6
Throughout October, a number of University accounts engaged with the #CitizenBear hashtag and helped promote Stomp Out Hunger including:
- Public Affairs at Missouri State University
- President Clif Smart
- MSU Graduate College
- MarooNation
- Missouri State University Family Association
- Missouri State University English Language Institute
- MSU Religious Studies Department
- Missouri State COB
Here is a sample of the conversation about Stomp Out Hunger:
Website traffic
Traffic to the public affairs website was tracked through Google Analytics.
- The community engagement project landing page was second only to the public affairs homepage in pageviews of the public affairs website from Oct. 1-24.
- From Oct. 1-24, 25% of all traffic to the public affairs website was to the community engagement project section.
- The public affairs campaign was the second largest campaign for the Missouri State website in October, accounting for 12% of all campaign related traffic. (Note: This campaign was also being used to promote the public affairs convocation at the same time)