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Excited BearGrad

Fall 2015 #BearGrads Recap

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Family at commencement

The fall 2015 #BearGrads ceremonies honored 1,501 graduating students on Dec. 11 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 and website analytics

Statistics from the five days leading up to and including commencement day:

@MissouriState on Twitter

  • 127 new followers (55 percent increase over #BearGrads fall 2014)
  • Engagement rate of 4 percent (number of times users interacted with tweets divided by total impressions), up from 1 percent in 2014
  • 231 retweets (328 percent increase)Excited BearGrad
  • 1,200 favorites (876 percent increase)
  • 52 replies (271 percent increase)
  • 213,700 impressions (163 percent increase)
  • #BearGrads hashtag report
    • 1,162,029 impressions
    • 122,320 accounts reached
    • Top contributors were @MissouriState (939,500 impressions), @ClifSmart (44,600), and @JQHArena (10,900)

/MissouriStateU on Facebook

  • 190 new fans (68 percent increase)
  • Engagement rate of 10 percent (up from 5 percent)
  • 494,784 total reach (344 percent increase)
  • 13,373 average reach (92 percent increase)
  • 8,440 stories created via shares (144 percent increase)

#BearGrads pages on MissouriState.edu

The most popular page was the fall 2015 commencement hub, which was viewed 4,271 times in the week leading to May 15. More than half of all traffic came from mobile and tablet devices, representing a small uptick in that category from the fall 2014 ceremony. Other statistics included:

  • 19,173 total page views (7 percent increase)
  • 7,507 unique page views (6 percent increase)
  • 31 seconds average time on pages (same)
  • 4.24 percent bounce rate (Down from 4.95 percent)

Social media post highlights

Twitter

These tweets received the two highest engagement rates of commencement day from the @MissouriState Twitter account.

The post featuring four clever mortarboard designs checked in at 23.5 percent (978 engagements/4,154 impressions), while the wrap-up tweet was 22.6 percent (975/5,340).

Facebook

The top two Facebook posts of the week separated themselves from the pack.

#BearGrads Video

A video produced by Missouri State Photographic Services reigned supreme as a native upload on Facebook. The post:

  • Received 914 likes and 99 shares
  • Reached than than 39,900 people
  • Viewed 14,000 times

Student speaker photo

The second-most popular post was a photo of student commencement speaker Kathryn Blair, which:

  • Received 1,300 likes and 94 shares
  • Reached 33,900 people
  • Generated 42 comments

KathrynBlair

Instagram

Missouri State’s Instagram channel shared four photos throughout the day, including one overhead image that displayed the joy #BearGrads felt on their day.

In all, the photos generated 1,668 likes and 12 comments.

Celebrate, #BearGrads! Your future begins now.

A photo posted by Missouri State University (@missouristate) on

 Tagboard

Of course, students drive social media success, and this year was no different. Some highlights of student-submitted social media content that appeared on the #BearGrads Tagboard.

In the words of Elle Woods, “We did it!” #BearGrads

A photo posted by Kellie R (@kpr11) on