Web Strategy and Development Blog

Discover the power of analytics in higher ed

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Want to have a better sense of what analytics can do for your website and marketing strategies?

Then join us Feb. 12 at the Meyer Alumni Center for the 2020 Higher Ed Analytics Conference.

Web Strategy and Development will host a live stream of the conference in Meyer Alumni Center, room 505 . There is no cost to attend, but let us know if you’re coming. Seating is limited.

RSVP via email to attend

The conference starts at 10 a.m. and features a dozen, 10-minute sessions.  You can attend any session(s) and stay as long as you’d like.

There will be breaks and a question-and-answer session at the end.

Key details

Public Affairs Conference 2016 Digital Recap

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The 2016 Public Affairs Conference centered on health-related topics, but not just of the physical variety. The conference theme — Building Healthy Communities: Mind, Body and Spirit — encompassed the annual four-day event featuring 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.

New content

We generated a different and supplementary approach to digital promotions and produced a series of five public affairs blog posts.

Public Affairs pages on MissouriState.edu

The most popular page was the conference schedule, which was viewed 3,840 times, a marginal increase over the 2015 conference. Total page views were down slightly, and other figures were statistically similar to the results from 2015.

  • 14,014 total page views
  • 10,914 unique page views
  • 91 seconds average time on pages
  • 39.48 percent bounce rate

Where the traffic came from — the top five sources

  • 2,363 sessions from the MissouriState.edu homepage feature
  • 969 from the MissouriState.edu homepage featurettes
  • 641 from MSU Mobile
  • 424 from Missouri State Facebook
  • 332 from Missouri State Twitter

Livestream

Plenary sessions from Peter Gray and Paul Thomlinson are available on Livestream. Viewers have watched Gray’s session 166 times and Thomlinson’s 164 times. About 25 people watched each session live.

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
  • Sample social media posts

Social media analytics

Using the Avanish Kaushik method of measuring social media success, Missouri State posts on the conference generated the following:

Missouri State Facebook (14 posts)

0.270 applause rate (Likes/Favorites)

0.007 conversation rate (Comments/Replies)

0.034 amplification rate (Shared/Retweeted)

0.464 conversion rate (Clicks to websites)

MarooNation Facebook (7)

0.321 applause rate

0.016 conversation rate

0.144 amplification rate

0.785 conversion rate

Missouri State Twitter (31)

0.933 applause rate

0.056 conversation rate

0.262 amplification rate

0.340 conversion rate

MarooNation Twitter (6)

1.636 applause rate

0 conversation rate

0.613 amplification rate

1.125 conversion rate

Missouri State Instagram (2)

39.685 applause rate

0.048 conversation rate

Missouri State LinkedIn Co. (2)

0.408 applause rate

0 conversation rate

0.664 conversion rate

Missouri State LinkedIn Edu (1)

0.323 applause rate

0 conversation rate

0.351 conversion rate

MarooNation LinkedIn (1)

0.217 applause rate

0 conversation rate

1.304 conversion rate

Social media post highlights

A pair of tweets about Jillian Michaels’ keynote address at JQH Arena drew the biggest engagement rates on Twitter (9.7 percent and 8.2 percent). Those tweets actually served as bookends for her speech. The first introduced her and the second chronicled her closing thought.

One of the most visually striking events of the conference was the Field of Memories. The 1,100 flags planted at the North Mall served to represent the 1,100 students who die by suicide each year on college campuses.

Recap: Public Affairs Conference 2015

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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 Kit18382_9416

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.

 

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

2015 Missouri Public Affairs Hall of Fame in review

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2015 Missouri Public Affairs Hall of Fame honoreesThe 2015 Missouri Public Affairs Hall of Fame dinner and induction ceremony took place on April 17 at the White River Conference Center in Springfield, Missouri. The event recognized the second inductees into the Hall of Fame: George Washington Carver, Simone Bernstein and Eric Greitens.

Social engagement:

The Missouri Public Affairs Hall of Fame was promoted by the Missouri State University, MarooNation and other social media accounts. Attendees were encouraged to engage in the social conversation during the event by using #ShowMeCitizens.

#ShowMeCitizens:

Overall hashtag use:

  • Impressions: 409, 575
  • Accounts reached: 54,414
  • Contributors: 24

Tweet: Great night honoring a great man. MO Public Affairs Hall of FameTwitter:

@MissouriState tweets during the week of the event:

  • Total tweets: 1
  • Impressions: 3,343
  • Engagement: 109
  • ReTweets: 1
  • Favorites: 4

@MarooNation tweets during the week of the event:

  • Total tweets: 3
  • Impressions: 5,295
  • Engagement: 85
  • ReTweets: 8
  • Favorites: 10

Live tweeting from @MissouriState during the event:

  • Total tweets: 15
  • Impressions: 55,381
  • Engagement: 502
  • ReTweets: 17
  • Favorites: 42

Facebook:

Missouri State posts during the week of the event:

  • Total posts: 1
  • Reach: 8,880
  • Likes: 33
  • Shares: 2

MarooNation posts during the week of the event:

  • Total posts: 2
  • Reach: 10,350
  • Likes: 51
  • Shares: 11

YouTube videos:

Website traffic:

Traffic to the Missouri Public Affairs Hall of Fame website was tracked through Google Analytics.

Analytics from the Missouri Public Affairs Hall of Fame website April 13-19, 2015:

  • Total pageviews: 1,758, 63% from external traffic
  • Unique pageviews: 1,345, 65% from external traffic
  • The homepage was the fourth most visited page on the public affairs website, and it accounted for 10% of all pageviews
  • The website ranked #5 and #9 in the top 10 social referrals to the Missouri State University website
  • 29 pageviews were generated by links shared in the social media kit
  • The post-event recap generated 110 pageviews by 100 unique users the weekend of the event

Twitter Analytics: An easy-to-use platform

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If you’re looking for a way to see how your Twitter followers are responding to your Tweets, check out Tweet Activity analytics. This free service provides Twitter users with a resource to track impressions, engagements, engagement rate and link clicks, among other metrics.

This is a tremendous asset to people who are looking to maximize their social media effectiveness for either professional or personal accounts. Let’s take a look at a few definitions behind what analytics allows users to explore.

  • Impressions are the number of times users saw a Tweet
  • Engagements are the number of times users interacted with a Tweet. These interactions include all clicks on a particular post
  • Engagement rate is the number of engagements divided by the number of impressions, expressed as a percentage

The platform is multifaceted and fully customizable, as users can set beginning and ending dates to analyze, see detailed performance of individual Tweets and export data to offline spreadsheets.

Using the platform is easy. You just need to log in to the account you want to track at analytics.twitter.com and begin exploring which Tweets are effective, which are not, and how you can use the information to your advantage.