Web Strategy and Development News

Public Affairs Convocation in review

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Eric Greitens book, The Heart and the FistMissouri State’s signature public affairs events, such as the Public Affairs Convocation, provide meaningful insight and perspective for the Missouri State and Springfield communities.

The Oct. 28 convocation featured veteran and humanitarian Eric Greitens, author of The Heart and the Fist, who spoke on his experiences in Iraq, Rwanda and other geopolitical hotspots.

Digital promotion of the Public Affairs Convocation

To help raise awareness of this event, Web and new media engaged with various University and community partners – primarily through the creation of a social media press kit and submission to various community calendars.

Social media press kit

In order to assist with event promotion, a social media press kit was created. It contained the following resources:

  • Event details
  • Sample text for blog posts
  • Photos
  • Sample tweets
  • Sample Facebook posts

A number of University units distributed resources from the social media kit or created their own promotional materials for social media. In addition to the public affairs and marketing and communications divisions, those units include:

  • College of Business
  • Alumni Association
  • Graduate College
  • Juanita K. Hammons Hall
  • Plaster Student Union
  • Center for Community Engagement
  • Political Science Department

Community calendars

This event was also submitted to the following digital community calendars:

  • Springfield News-Leader
  • KSMU
  • 417 Magazine
  • It’s All Downtown

Online traffic to the Public Affairs Convocation website

During the month of October, there were 1,538 pageviews of the Public Affairs Convocation webpage, with traffic peaking on the day before the event.

Social media event coverage

The official Public Affairs hashtag, #CitizenBear, was used to organize the social media conversation about Eric Greitens’ lecture.

On the day of the event, the hashtag #CitizenBear achieved the following reach:

  • 113,343 impressions
  • 30,476 individual accounts reached
  • 37 individual contributors used #CitizenBear

Samples from social media conversation

Post by Juanita K. Hammons Hall for the Performing Arts.

 

  Author, humanitarian, former Navy SEAL Eric Greitens speaks on courage and caring at the Public Affairs Convocation. #CitizenBear   A photo posted by Missouri State University (@missouristate) on

 

 

 

If you haven’t read “The Heart and The Fist”, I highly recommend it. #citizenbear A photo posted by Lexi Jones (@lexibrynjones) on

How to become Missouri State homepage famous

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In this post I would like to do a quick review of how the media hub and activity stream on the Missouri State homepage function, as well as some general rules and suggestions for getting your content to appear on the homepage.

Overall homepage rules

  • Content must be relevant to at least two audiences
  • Audiences include prospective students, current students, faculty and staff, alumni, parents and family, community members

Media hub

The media hub consists of four content tabs: photos, videos, athletics, and Go Maroon! Typically, content in the media hub only appears during the week it is relevant.

Media hub

Photos

  • Consists of photos highlighting that week’s events
  • Is the default tab on Sunday, Monday, Thursday and Saturday
  • Changes weekly

Videos

  • Consists of 3 videos; 1 main video and 2 smaller videos
  • Is the default tab on Tuesday
  • Changes weekly

Athletics

  • Consists of the most recent scores, an athletics calendar, and athletics news
  • Is never the default tab
  • Content is automatically generated from MissouriStateBears.com

Go Maroon!

  • Highlights something ‘social’
  • This tab changes to BearWear Friday photos on Friday
  • Ts the default tab on Wednesday and Friday
  • Changes weekly

Activity streamStream

Activity streams are present on high level pages such as the homepage, Current Students, Public Affairs, and President’s site. All of these activity streams pull sources and content from a single database, though the content and sources pulled onto each stream varies.

  • Streams pull content from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, blogs and RSS feeds
  • A group consists of a department or University unit
    • A group can have multiple sources feeding the stream (ex: COB Facebook and COB Twitter accounts)
  • Only one item per group is pulled every 30 minutes
    • If two items are posted within 30 minutes, the second item will never display
  • The stream removes duplicate links
    • If two different items point to the same link, only the first item will display in the stream
  • Only status updates and photos pull from Facebook

Other options

Promo buttons and posting to the master calendar are additional methods to get your content on the homepage.

Promo buttons

Promo buttons are used to advertise short-term items on the University homepage or applicable audience pages. The purpose of promo buttons is to promote any initiative/event to your intended audiences. The promo buttons appear on the left of the activity stream on the homepage.

Master calendar

The calendar of events is intended to provide complete information regarding Missouri State events to the campus community and the general public, and serves as the single source for all University web calendars. The calendar appears on the right of the activity stream on the homepage.

Facebook updates policies regarding promotions

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Missouri State University Facebook page screenshotFacebook recently updated their Pages Terms and is now making it easier for page administrators to hold contests and promotions directly on the timeline of their Facebook page.

Through the change of Facebook’s Page Terms, page administrators may now run promotions right on their page timelines as well as in apps on Facebook. However, running promotions on personal timelines is still prohibited.

Things that page administrators can now do include:

  • Collect entries by having users post on the page or comment/like a page post
  • Collect entries by having users message the page
  • Utilize likes as a voting mechanism

Changes to photo tagging

The changes to the Pages Terms also prohibit page administrators from tagging or encouraging people to tag themselves in content that they are not actually depicted in. For example:
  • It’s OK to ask people to submit names of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize
  • It’s not OK to ask people tag themselves in pictures of a new product in exchange for a chance to win a prize

These updates to Facebook’s terms should make it more convenient for University units to run contests and promotions on their Facebook pages without the need for paying for a third-party app to run the promotion.

Marketing for Public Affairs Conference

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The Public Affairs Conference is a major event each year on campus, and our office has always put considerable effort into creating the conference website and promotion before and after the conference takes place.

This year we went one step further and also added a new mobile app to the mix. I would like to share all aspects of how we market the conference, with the hope that others can use this information as best practices when it comes to marketing their own events on campus.

Website2012 Public Affairs Conference webstie

The Public Affairs homepage design is  updated at the beginning of each fall semester to incorporate the logo and theme for the year. The Public Affairs Conference website is also updated at this time, though only as a basic shell. Once the speakers for the conference are confirmed, the conference site takes shape with the full schedule and speaker bios posted at the beginning of each spring semester.

The key features of the conference website include:

  • A photo slideshow at the top of the page featuring the plenary speakers
  • Three text content areas highlighting the year’s theme, schedule and logistical information such as parking and directions
  • A RSS feed of Public Affairs blog posts concerning the conference
  • Social media buttons linking to Public Affairs social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube
  • Various links to past conferences, plenary speakers and past testimonials

Mobile appPublic Affairs Conference mobile app

A new mobile app was created for the conference this year, and was made available on both Android and iOS devices. This app is specific to this conference, and we will be using it as a springboard for future mobile app development, as well as creating new versions of the app for future Public Affairs Conferences.

The app allowed the conference attendees to:

  • View the event schedule
  • Learn more about the presenters
  • Manage session schedules
  • View the map of the venue where the sessions were being held
  • Interact with others via Twitter and Facebook
To learn more about the mobile app from a technical standpoint, please read Chad Killingsworth’s recent blog post on HTML5 Mobile Applications.

Promotion

Each year, our office draws up a promotion schedule that details what aspects of the conference will be promoted when and where. Promotion for the conference begins in early March, which is a little more than a month before the conference typically takes place.

The main areas of promotion are social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter, but we also utilize media from past conferences available on YouTube and iTunes U, which we will discuss in further detail next. The Missouri State homepage is also a key promotional area, with photos, videos and Go Maroon! features highlighting the conference in the weeks building up to the conference, as well as during the conference itself.

Some examples of how we schedule the promotion for the conference include:

  • On each Monday, a feature on a plenary speaker is posted to Facebook, with a link to their bio and plenary session.
  • Promotion of the #msuconnect hashtag used during the conference on Twitter.
  • Highlight media from last year’s conference to help get people excited about the upcoming sessions.
  • Post logistical information about parking, shuttles and location on Facebook and Twitter the day before the conference begins.
  • Share the mobile app on Facebook and Twitter before and during the conference.
  • During the week of the conference, the media hub on the homepage focuses on the conference on the Photos, Videos, Tune in and learn, and Go Maroon! tabs.
  • During the conference, we post updates every few hours updating everyone on that morning or afternoon’s sessions and plenary speakers.
  • We also post photos of the conference sessions as they are happening periodically to Facebook and Twitter.
Missouri State homepage feature for the Public Affairs Conference

Media

Our office also records audio of all of the panel sessions at the conference each year, as well as video of select plenary speakers. Once the conference has concluded, we start posting all of the available media online: both audio and video to iTunes U, and video to our YouTube channel as well.

Collecting and posting this media after the conference serves many functions:

  • Featuring the media on the Missouri State homepage and through social media outlets allows us to continue to promote the conference even after it is over.
  • As stated previously, we often use media from the previous year’s conference to build excitement about that year’s upcoming conference.
  • The media also acts as an archive of each year’s conference, and this is shared by the committee each year to recruit speakers for future conferences.

Public Affairs Conference media in iTunes U

How to measure success with Google Analytics campaigns

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Google Analytics provides a vast array of statistics to help you understand visitor characteristics, behavior and more. It can also assist in measuring, evaluating and planning online promotions or public relations plans.

Measuring, evaluating and planning

Measuring the outcomes of a promotion can be fairly straightforward. Typically, it focuses on the numbers, such as the number of visitors over a time period or the number of pages visited.

Evaluating goes a step deeper by using predetermined goals to determine the promotion’s success. Evaluation uses specific statistics to decide if the promotion reached its desired scope, generated the target amount of traffic or resulted in a specific action by visitors.

Planning involves understanding the dimensions, metrics and tracking tools in analytics and incorporating them into your communication tactics from the beginning.

Campaign tracking

Campaign tracking or tagging URLs is a basic way to begin evaluating the success of your promotions. By defining a source, medium and campaign for your destination URL, you can track visitors’ usage of links that you provide through social media, emails, newsletters, releases and more:

  • utm_source=origin of referral (i.e. release, bulletin, homepage)
  • utm_medium=qualifies the source (i.e. email, online, feature)
  • utm_campaign=topic of link or promotion (i.e. diversity, summervisit)
  • utm_content=further describes the campaign (optional—use if a campaign will cover multiple sites/topics

Example of campaign tracking

The Missouri State Magazine offers an online version of its print publication, including special online features. Links to the online site are provided via email, homepage features, social media and ads.

Campaign tracking is used to differentiate the traffic these sources create. When a new issue of the Missouri State Magazine is released, a new campaign is defined, such as fall2011mag. Then, source and medium are defined for each sharing of the link as shown below for the Bear Bulletin email:

  • utm_source=bearbulletin
  • utm_medium=email
  • utm_campaign=fall2011mag

The above tracking information is added to the back end of the magazine’s URL:

http://magazine.missouristate.edu/?utm_source=bearbulletin&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fall2011mag

Don’t forget to use the ? at the beginning and the & in between tracking elements. Because these links are long and rather ugly looking, it is best to embed them through hyperlinked text or shorten using a URL shortener like bit.ly.

The Google Analytics view of campaign tracking

So how does campaign tracking help? By defining a source for a direct link, you can cut down the number of direct referrals that show up in your analytics. Also, it helps you better determine how people are accessing your site and if they are using the links you provide.

One of the standard reports in Google Analytics is the Campaigns report under Traffic Sources. This report shows all campaigns—URLs with a defined utm_campaign—that drove traffic to your site.

The photo below shows the source/medium combination that directed the most traffic to the online Missouri State Magazine during its fall issue, which was defined as the fall2011mag campaign: