The 2015 Public Affairs Conference centered on the principles of ethical citizenship. Specifically, the conference theme was The Ethical Citizen: Can You Make a Difference? The annual four-day event featured keynote presentations, panel discussions and special events on the Springfield campus of Missouri State University.

Digital promotion of the Public Affairs Conference

To promote the event, Web and new media partnered and engaged with Conference representatives and social media accounts across the university. These strategies included the development of a social media kit and strategic live social media posts.

Social Media Kit

The Public Affairs Conference social media kit contained a variety of tools that assisted university departments and individuals in sharing their conference experiences. These items included:

• Key details about the conference
• Tips for social media-savvy posts
• Promotion of the #CitizenBear hashtag
• Shareable visual assets including video and images pre-cropped for optimal use on Facebook and Twitter
• Sample social media posts

Social media analytics

@MissouriState on Twitter

• 126 new followers (147 percent increase over the 2014 Public Affairs Conference)
• Engagement rate of 2.8 percent (number of times users interacted with tweets divided by total impressions), a 65 percent over the 2014 conference.
• 279 retweets (73 percent increase)
• 332 favorites (63 percent increase)
• 48 replies (336 percent increase)
• 66 posts (68 percent decrease)
• 200,700 impressions (52 percent decrease)

MissouriStateU on Facebook

• 111 new fans (46 percent increase)
• Engagement rate of 5 percent (same)
• 2,000 engagements (1,463 percent increase)
• 8,000 average reach (789 percent increase)
• 2,900 stories created via shares (383 percent increase)
• 17 posts (13 percent increase)
• 138,000 total reach (930 percent increase)

Public Affairs pages on MissouriState.edu

The most popular page was the conference schedule, which was viewed 3,700 times (42 percent increase over the 2014 conference)

• 14,200 total page views (46 percent increase)
• 10,900 unique page views (43 percent increase)
• 93 seconds average time on pages (same)
• 37.70 percent bounce rate (3 percent increase)

Social media post highlights

These tweets received the two highest engagement rates of the week from the @MissouriState Twitter account. The Sean McEwen tweet checked in at 15.6 percent (432 engagements/2,770 impressions), while the Cal Ripken Jr. tweet was at 11.6 percent (886/7,669). The lesson: Celebrity is everything.

“How come nobody is asking me who ‘A’ is?” asks a smiling @SeanMcEwen1, who’s married to #PrettyLittleLiars actress @tamminsursok1.

— Missouri State (@missouristate) April 16, 2015

It’s Cal Ripken Jr. and @MSUBearBaseball. #CitizenBear pic.twitter.com/ABl4grt4u8
— Missouri State (@missouristate) April 15, 2015 

Sharing the wealth

Users also generated great content of their own, which was populated on the #CitizenBear Tagboard.

A Life Size Puppet. #Shatterer #PAC2015 #CitizenBear #Bread&Puppet #VSCOcam

A photo posted by Cassidy Flynn (@casssfrasss) on Apr 17, 2015 at 4:08am PDT

Did you know? Cal Ripken Jr. used to call the pitches for the @Orioles pitcher as a SS, not the catcher. #CitizenBear pic.twitter.com/ELXiZ6nL4t

— Matthew Lerman (@mattlerman18) April 15, 2015