The spring 2015 #BearGrads ceremonies honored 2,416 graduating students on May 15 at JQH Arena.
Digital promotion of #BearGrads 2015
To promote the event, Web and new media utilized a variety of communication strategies, including the development of a social media kit, live social media posts, and live streaming the ceremonies.
Social Media Kit
The #BearGrads social media kit contained a variety of tools that assisted university departments and individuals in sharing their commencement experiences. These items included:
- Key details about the ceremonies
- Tips for social media-savvy posts
- Promotion of the #BearGrads hashtag
- Shareable visual assets including video and images pre-cropped for use on Facebook and Twitter
- Sample social media posts
Social media analytics
@MissouriState on Twitter
- 45 new followers (114 percent increase over #BearGrads spring 2014)
- Engagement rate of 7.5 percent (number of times users interacted with tweets divided by total impressions), down from 8.3 percent in 2014
- 116 retweets (47 percent increase)
- 276 favorites (114 percent increase)
- 11 replies (83 percent increase)
- 31 posts (24 percent decrease)
- 70,200 impressions (43 percent increase)
MissouriStateU on Facebook
- 96 new fans (167 percent increase)
- Engagement rate of 9 percent (up from 7 percent)
- 17,500 engagements (775 percent increase)
- 16,199 average reach (277 percent increase)
- 9,856 stories created via shares (212 percent increase)
- 13 posts (86 percent increase)
- 210,000 total reach (598 percent increase)
#BearGrads pages on MissouriState.edu
The most popular page was the spring 2015 commencement hub, which was viewed 7,032 times in the month leading to May 15 (11 percent decrease from 2014)
- 34,043 total page views (38 percent decrease)
- 25,341 unique page views (20 percent increase)
- 69 seconds average time on pages (138 percent increase)
- 37.19 percent bounce rate (Up from 0.81 percent)
Social media post highlights
These tweets received the two highest engagement rates of the day from the @MissouriState Twitter account. The #MSUMortarBoardMadness tweet checked in at 22.7 percent (874 engagements/3,854 impressions), while the shoes tweet nearly matched it at 22.6 percent (883/3,907).
#MSUMortarBoardMadness pic.twitter.com/GL4BgCM2Jc
— Missouri State (@missouristate) May 15, 2015
The shoes that get these #BearGrads from Point A to Point B. pic.twitter.com/4IRAVTmk4a
— Missouri State (@missouristate) May 15, 2015
However, Master’s degree recipient Mandy Dovin and her service dog, Sonja, won Facebook and possibly the internet on Friday. Sonja received a hood and had her name read at the 10 a.m. ceremony.
The post:
- Received more than 2,000 likes and 225 shares
- Reached more than than 83,000 people
- Resulted in media calls
People love dogs. They also love good stories. This was the perfect storm.
Mandy and Sonja also received the highest levels of engagement on Instagram, clocking in at 466 likes and two comments. The second-most successful of the day was this one, featuring a graduate proudly holding up her diploma cover.
Tagboard
People from across the campus community utilized the #BearGrads hashtag to share their commencement experiences on Tagboard. A few highlights of their posts:
Graduated today. Turn up. #BearGrads
A photo posted by Alex (@alexdonaudio) on
A photo posted by @missouristatevolleyball on
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