Missouri State’s office of community involvement and service regularly hosts immersion trips, which give students opportunities to volunteer in communities throughout the U.S.

Missouri State homepage feature

During spring break, the immersion trips were featured from the Missouri State homepage — with particular emphasis placed on the students’ first-hand perspectives.

Each participant blogged about the experience via www.blogs.missouristate.edu/immersion. This blog feed was available from the main homepage feature:

A complete homepage “takeover”

Posts were filed in categories based on the issues participants were serving. Immersion blog categories were as follows:

• Health and Wellness
• Hunger and Homelessness
• Urban Development
• Working with Youth

These individual feeds were featured via smaller homepage features that linked directly to each service category.

Social media presence

The office of community involvement and service actively chronicled the immersion experience on social media. These posts were shared by other University accounts, including the Missouri State accounts.

#CitizenBear RT @MOStateService Sending MSU love from The Appalachians! Serving the community dinner tonight. pic.twitter.com/c2oCFGwskg

— Missouri State (@missouristate) March 9, 2015

Engagement and analytics

The homepage feature was successful at adding to the immersion trips’ visibility — even during the typically quiet spring break week.

From March 7, 2015 – March 15, 2015, the immersion blog received:

• 2,492 pageviews, making it the top Missouri State blog destination for the week
• An average time-on-page of 1 minute and 22 seconds, indicating that visitors were reading and absorbing the bloggers’ experiences

Top referral sources for the immersion blog were as follows:

1. The large homepage feature
2. The smaller homepage features
3. Missouri State’s Twitter account
4. Missouri State’s Facebook account
5. The Alumni Association’s Facebook account