Missouri State University students, faculty, staff, alumni and community members came together to celebrate the ways Bears have broken barriers during homecoming Oct. 11-17.

Homecoming promotion:

Homecoming was promoted in many ways for months leading up to the week of festivities. Promotional efforts online and through digital marketing included:

• Four homecoming invitation emails and a few event and audience-specific emails sent July-October from the Alumni Association
• A feature in the Bear Bulletin monthly newsletter in July-September editions
• A custom banner in MSU Mobile that pointed to the alumni homecoming website
• A feature and four featurettes on the Missouri State homepage that promoted key homecoming events
• A homecoming themed Instagram video featuring President Clif Smart
• Social media promotion through the MarooNation and Missouri State University accounts
• A social media kit posted to the Web and New Media blog and emailed to social media ambassadors
• Aggregation of conversation around #BearsHomecoming through Tagboard
• Live coverage of the Friday and Saturday alumni homecoming activities via the MarooNation social media accounts

Website traffic:

Last year, the homecoming website was converted to a mobile-friendly format. This proves to be a positive step as this year, 51% of all traffic on the Homecoming website was from a mobile device (up 10% from last year).

Traffic to the alumni homecoming website was tracked through Google Analytics. Here are some highlights from Oct. 5-18:

• Pageviews of the homecoming subsite (14,483) were up 22% from the previous year
• 64% of all pageviews on the alumni website were of the homecoming subsite
• 77% of all pageviews on the alumni homecoming website were unique
• 75% of all pageviews on the alumni homecoming website were from external users

The Homecoming campaign was the top campaign on the Missouri State website for both internal and external users in October, accounting for 28% of all campaign-related traffic.

• The Missouri State homepage was the number one referrer in the campaign (40% of all traffic)
• The Alumni Association Facebook page was the number one social referrer in the campaign, and third overall (5.6% of all traffic)
• From all accounts, social media led to the following:
  • Facebook: 12% of all sessions
  • Twitter: 3% of all sessions

Social engagement:

Homecoming was heavily promoted by the MarooNation and Missouri State University social media accounts leading up to and during homecoming. Members of the Missouri State community were encouraged to engage in the social conversation about homecoming by using #BearsHomecoming.

Facebook

Homecoming-related posts – Oct. 5-18

Missouri State Facebook:

• Posts: 12
• Reach: 64,107
• Engagements: 3,778

MarooNation Facebook:

• Posts: 30
• Reach: 49,155
• Engagements: 2,993

Homecoming Facebook event:

• RSVPs
  • Going: 2,809
  • Interested: 111
  • Invited but not RSVPed: 456
• Reach: 207,000
• Event page views: 12,000
• Event engagements: 3,200

Twitter

Homecoming-related tweets – Oct. 11-18

Missouri State Twitter:

• Tweets: 19
• RTs: 53
• Impressions: 489,800

MarooNation Twitter:

• Tweets: 51
• RTs: 62
• Impressions: 71,500

Public tweets with #BearsHomecoming:

• Tweets: 798
• Contributors: 421
• Accounts reached: 288,161
• Impressions: 1,230,343

Instagram

Posts with #BearsHomecoming – Sept. 29-Oct. 17

Missouri State Instagram:

• Posts: 6
• Favorites: 2,656
• Comments: 15

Public posts with #BearsHomecoming: 87