Digital & Social Strategy Ideas

Digital & Social
Strategy Ideas
The University of Sheffield

Where We Are &
Where We’re Going
Digital & Social

DIGITAL & SOCIAL | THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD | 2014
Where We Are
Strengths
The University of Sheffield is well-established on a broad range of social
platforms in both the UK and internationally.
We successfully publish a solid flow of content from our central accounts
for a range of purposes (news stories, recruitment, events promotion etc).
We have a strong presence on YouTube and have produced good quality
video content on the platform with things like the Laurbubble
series and the We Are International VISA video.
We have recently updated our website with a new design which allows for
further integration of social and digital media content.
The broader University is capitalising on the opportunities provided by
social media – we currently have over 500 different social profiles
attached to the University across faculties, departments, groups etc.
Weaknesses
Not enough of the content we publish through social media is tailored to
be relevant, shareable and interesting to audiences on the platform.
We are not operating in a fluid, flexible structure that allows for the
quick regular production of interesting and engaging content that is truly
in the spirit of social media.
We are being heavy handed in our use of digital content on occasions and
focusing too much on producing content that fits our key messages
compared to content that is actually interesting, shareable and engaging.
See UG video vs Gillian Finnerty Mars video statistics.
We aren’t approaching opportunities with a digital first or digital by
default approach meaning that a number of opportunities to do
interesting and engaging digital activity have been missed.
Not enough of what we are doing on social media is focused on telling
stories.

Where We Are
Opportunities
With the expanded digital and social media team, we now have greater
resource to begin producing more consistent content that works better
on social and digital media platforms.
The new social and digital reporting framework (along with Google
Analytics) gives us the opportunity to use data better to inform our
approach going forward as part of an iterative and flexible strategy that
evolves in line with what works.
We also have opportunities to expand our social and digital media
offering by using new platforms and producing experimental content.
We have a great opportunity to provide tiered levels of guidance to social
media managers across the University to enable them to improve the
work they are doing already.
We have the opportunity to develop a digital and social newsroom
approach to help us become the top university in the country when it
comes to telling our stories in interesting and engaging ways and
reaching the right people with quality content.
Threats
One of the primary threats to any digital and social strategy is that we
mistake the opportunity to inform, engage and entertain for a platform to
boast, self-aggrandize and sell.
A lack of pace and dynamism is also a threat to the digital and social
success of our University as they are vital attributes for success.
A lack of adventure and experimentation is also a potential threat to our
success as we should aim to be an early adopter of new digital and social
media opportunities and be known for having a developmental approach
to what we do.
A lack of understanding as to how important digital and social media is, is
also a potential threat to making this work as well as it should.

Where We’re Going
What do we want social and digital media
to do for us?
Digital and social media gives us a simple,
cost-effective opportunity to inform, educate
and entertain people in our key target audience
groups by telling them the great stories of our
University in interesting and engaging ways.
Digital and social media is vital in 2014 because
audience consumption habits are changing how
news and information reaches people.
The myriad digital and social platforms gives us
the chance to highlight different aspects of our
brand identity through well-told stories,
interesting content and engaging
conversations.
This is the most effective means available to
promote the strengths, qualities and key
messages of the University in a palatable,
nuanced and engaging way.
The beauty of this in 2014 is that it’s easy and
low-cost to do because the growth of digital
and social media has removed production and
distribution costs found in traditional channels.
Ultimately, the challenge for us is to find ways
to creatively and natively tell all the stories of
our University on the platforms being used by
our target audiences and to use this wealth of
content to engage with them.
What is the future of digital and social
media at the University?
To tell these stories well we are needing to view
them through the different lenses of the
platforms available to us and then create as
much interesting, relevant and tailored content
as possible.
What’s more, we need to do this quicker than
ever before because social and digital media
thrives on timely, relevant micro content due to
people’s ever reducing attention spans.
In 2014, it’s much better to consistently and
continually produce bite size pieces of
interesting, impactful and shareable content
than it is occasionally provide a feast of
information that people may find too much to
stomach, too rich with corporate key messages
and ultimately not that interesting.
Put simply, it is telling our stories consistently,
quickly and interactively that will be most
effective in illustrating what an amazing place
The University of Sheffield is.
It is also an incredibly useful tool for engaging
with prospective applicants, current students,
academics, researchers and business partners
who we want to be part of the university’s story
in future.
Digital & Social Team 2014
Lindsey Wilson
Head of Media & Digital Engagement
Steve Thompson
Digital Manager
Leon Mallett
Social & Digital Media Officer
Andrew Twist
Social & Digital Media Coordinator
+
Sean Barton
Media Relations Assistant
Graham McElearney
iTunesU Manager

Creating A Social
& Digital Strategy
Digital & Social

Ethos Of Digital & Social
MOVE FAST
AND TRY
THINGS
TELL STORIES • TALK TO PEOPLE • BE INTERESTING
PUT CONTENT FIRST
EXPERIMENT
WITH NEW
PLATFORMS &
WAYS OF
DELIVERING
CONTENT
SUPPORT SOCIAL
ACTIVITY ACROSS
THE UNIversity

SHOW
DON’T TELL

Objectives & Aims
How can digital & social work help with the
objectives of the Reputation & Engagement
team?
Objective: Build Reputation & Trust.
By telling a wide range of stories about the
University using digital and social media we can
help to shape people’s opinions of us.
By creating interesting content that people
want to share we can increase the audience of
people that know about our qualities and
subsequently improve our reputation with more
of these people.
Using social media in an honest and transparent
way will also be beneficial for building trust in
the University.
Objective: Grow Our International Profile.
The global nature of social media is vital for
reaching the widest possible audience with our
content and messages.
Creating interesting content with a global
appeal across a range of international and
region-specific channels gives us the structure
to communicate more effectively and
efficiently.
We Are International is a great example of a
digitally-led project at the University.
Objective: Manage The City Narrative.
Implementing a framework of created,
curated and commissioned content will enable
us to articulate and promote the very best of
Sheffield as a city.
By using a range of microcontent that tells
different stories about Sheffield we can avoid
the pitfalls of giving people overly glossy
promotional material that only scratches the
surface of why we are based in such an
interesting city.
Objective: Work Quicker And Smarter.
Digital and social media works best when it is
created by agile, alert and fast-paced teams.
Implementing a digital newsroom approach
within Reputation & Engagement will instill a
faster, more focused and sharper work ethic
that helps us capitalise on the news agenda and
zeitgeist to reach more people with our stories,
news, research and events.
Objective: Surface More Content & Stories
Similarly, a story-centric digital newsroom
approach will naturally help us place more focus
on content excellence and what is
interesting to our audiences, rather than just
focusing primarily on what we want to be
saying about ourselves.
Digital & Social Team 2014
Lindsey Wilson
Head of Media & Digital Engagement
Steve Thompson
Digital Manager
Leon Mallett
Social & Digital Media Officer
Andrew Twist
Social & Digital Media Coordinator
+
Sean Barton
Media Relations Assistant
Graham McElearney
iTunesU Manager

Digital & Social Top 5:
1. Tell Stories Like A Digital Newsroom
Media newsrooms are story-obsessed, iterative,
alert, chaotic, alive to opportunities, ready to
try things out, prepared to drop them if they
don’t work and willing add more resources
quickly when they do.
This is what we should be like.
We are a media company now thanks to
digital and social media so we should start
acting more like one.
When it comes to planning, producing and
managing digital and social media content at
the University of Sheffield it makes sense to
develop and organise a newsroom-style
approach as it is inherently geared towards the
importance of stories and interesting content.
The newsroom culture facilitates important
attributes needed by a top class digital and
social media team, such as pace, flexibility,
awareness of audience consumption habits and
ambition to try new things to reach as many
people as possible.
These characteristics should be considered as
important to the digital and social media team
at the University of Sheffield as any planning
and strategy documents because it is
impossible to properly succeed in the restless,
chaotic and constantly changing online world
with long term charts and plans alone.
We are lucky to have so many fantastic stories
at the University of Sheffield that reflect the
amazing students, academics and researchers
we work with on a local, national and
international level.
To tell these stories well we need to think of
ourselves as a media company and view them
through the different lenses of the platforms
available to us and create as much interesting,
relevant and tailored content as
possible.
Ideas
1. Develop a dynamic digital & social media
content framework and editorial calendar so
that we begin to plan our content more like a
newsroom.
2. Host regular ‘Editorial Conferences’ with all
teams within Reputation & Engagement with
targets set for stories, pieces of microcontent
and speed of turnaround.
3. Experiment with new ways of telling stories
in terms of snappy social content and
interactive long form work. Lets not assume
that the best way of telling this story is to write
a press release and put it on the home page of
our website - because that won’t always be the
case.
Media newsrooms are
story obsessed, alert,
iterative, alive to
opportunities, ready
to try things out,
prepared to drop them
if they don’t work and
willing add more
resources quickly
when they do.

2. Create Content With Our Audience & The Platforms In Mind
There is an ever expanding pool of platforms
available to us with varying audience-sizes,
demographics and features.
Our success will be defined by understanding
which ones are being used by our main target
audiences and the psychology of how and why
they are choosing particular networks.
The most important thing to remember is that
social and digital platforms are all inherently
different in a range of obvious and subtle ways.
One of the biggest common mistakes made in
digital and social marketing is a failure to
acknowledge this and therefore it is
important that the stories and content we
produce is tailored accordingly for each
platform and designed to be interesting,
engaging and shareable in the eyes of our
audiences.
This includes practical details like working to
develop appropriately-sized, shareable
graphics for Facebook posts and Twitter cards
that capture an aspect of our story in a way that
is engaging and interesting — rather than ‘just’
uploading the photograph that was sent out
with the press release.
It also includes things like thinking about how
we could record short form video footage for
Vine and Instagram at the same time as
filming footage to be edited into a longer video
for YouTube — in fact, we might also debate
subtle differences between Vimeo and YouTube
and decide to produce something more akin to
a short film in tone for the former.
By better considering the nature of the
platforms and the habits of our audience we can
work to deliver bite size pieces of interesting,
impactful and shareable content that makes a
bigger contribution than the occasional feast of
marketing information that people may find too
much to stomach, too rich with corporate key
messages and ultimately not that interesting.
Ideas
1. Create platform guides to ensure that the
Reputation & Engagement team (and social
media managers across the University) know
how to tell their stories in the best way on
different platforms.
2. Implement a 10-point framework for
analysing how to tell our stories in the most
interesting way a la Coca Cola.
3. Develop and test graphic/video content
tailored specifically for different platforms and
test how this impacts on engagement levels.
4. Use engagement analytics to inform the
types of content we invest time and money into
going forward and adjust our content
framework / editorial calendar accordingly.
Will our
audience be
interested in The
Content?
HOW WILL THE
CONTENT WORK
ON DIFFERENT
PLATFORMS?
WHAT IS THE BEST
WAY OF TELLING
THE STORY?

3. Use Analytics & Insights To Improve Output
Digital and social media activity is blessed by
access to a huge amount of feedback and
analytics and if harnessed properly this can help
us to create a dynamic and flexible strategy
that allows us to analyse our performance and
improve it accordingly.
The new Digital & Social media reporting
framework compiles analytics from various
platforms and gives us regular insight into
what’s working and what isn’t.
The analytics provided by Hootsuite Enterprise
on some of our key social profiles already give
us a clear indication into what content is
connecting with people and we need to use this
more to improve our storytelling and content
production going forward.
For instance, if you look at the audience
retention analytics on our YouTube channel it is
clear that, on average, some longer videos can
lose up to 50% of viewers after about two and
half minutes.
This insight could be incredibly useful when it
comes to planning the length of videos and the
positioning of key messages and calls to action
within them.
Similarly, it is possible to use insights from
other digital and social media producers to
improve the quality of our output.
For example, Quartz, a digitally native news
outlet built primarily for tablets and mobile
phones has found that while there is currently
an appetite for short-form shareable micro
content and long form analysis pieces, there is
a grey area of content between 500 and 800
words that struggles to gain any kind of traction
on social media.
This kind of intelligence could be useful to our
media team when thinking about the length
and content of news stories and press releases
and help them develop a framework based on
producing both short and long form content
that can work on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
for the former and Medium or WordPress for the
latter.
Ideas
1. Develop the social media dashboard so that it
becomes a crucial document for informing our
content framework and editorial calendar.
2. Experiment with different approaches based
on the best practices of the major players
within digital media and social journalism.
3. Use this analytics-based approach as a clear
justification for breaking the status quo for
particular projects/content that demand a
more experimental or innovative approach.
If harnessed properly
analytics and insights
can help us to create
a dynamic and flexible
strategy that factors in
our successes and
corrects our failures.

4. Facilitate Great Digital & Social Media Activity Across The University
The University of Sheffield has over 500 social
media accounts across faculties, departments,
courses, services, groups etc.
These 500 profiles are made up of a broad range
of social networks including Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, Google Plus, Weibo, YouTube, Flickr
etc.
Within this network of University focused
social media activity there are a number of
different purposes for the accounts such as
marketing and PR, recruitment, customer
services, pubic engagement, communication
with students.
The central Digital and Social media team has
a crucial role in providing advice, guidance and
support to other University staff responsible
for social media profiles to enable them to do
the best possible job of telling their stories on
social media.
As part of this we need to make sure we are
responsible for providing training sessions,
presentations and interactive support for
social media managers as well as a steer on how
to articulate the right aspects of the University
that their department, service, group etc.
represents.
This would also work best with the
development of strong connections with
social media managers across the University
that enables us to collaborate on certain
content for mutual benefits.
Driving awareness and adoption of social media
across the University should remain a priority so
that we can effectively orchestrate a network
of activity that permeates through the whole
University infrastructure and articulates a wide
range of positive stories from within the
organisation.
Ideas
1. Create a broad, flexible social media strategy
for social media managers across the
University that focusses on the ‘how to’ aspects
of social media rather than on dictating what
they should/shouldn’t be saying.
2. Develop content templates / best practice
guides for all the different social platforms that
helps them to create more engaging content
that will work better on social media.
3. Update the ‘Digital & Social’ team’s page on
the website with these documents and more
support guidance for how people can maximise
the use of social media as part of their role with
the University.
4. Continue to collaborate with departments
on social activity as a means of quality control,
editorial influence and content sourcing for the
central University channels.
THE UNIVERSITY
OF SHEFFIELD HAS
OVER 500 SOCIAL
MEDIA PROFILES
HOW do we make
sure that these
profiles are
telling their
stories as best
they can?

5. Work Faster & Experiment More
Working quickly and efficiently is one of the
most important characteristics needed for
effective digital and social media work.
At present the digital and social media output
at the University isn’t as agile and nimble as
perhaps it should be, in part due to the focus on
traditionally planned marketing campaigns.
On the other hand, the recent short video about
Gillian Finnerty and her bid to travel to Mars
is an example of digital content that can be
turned around extremely quickly and reach a
large number of people.
Going forward it would ideal for the Digital &
Social media team to be able to accommodate
reactive content production into their workflow
so that there is more fast-paced and relevant
microcontent being published in addition to the
campaign work being done.
The fast-paced, short-attention-spanned
nature of our audience suggests that we need
to focus our efforts on producing as much
engaging content as possible and doing as
much as we can to get our stories into their
newsfeeds, timelines, read-it-later apps and
aggregators.
In addition to this, it is important for digital
media producers to experiment with new ways
of telling stories and delivering content in order
to remain ahead of the curve.
For the University there are currently a number
of new platforms that we aren’t experimenting
with i.e. Instagram, Snapchat, Vine.
The culture within the Digital & Social team at
the University should be to experiment with
new platforms, assess how they are working as
part of the analytics process and either drop
them or advance them accordingly.
Similarly there are certain projects within the
University that may benefit from Wordpress
microsites or a more experimental, interactive
approach that is removed from the University’s
main CMS and website templates.
Ideas
1. Produce more reactive, quick turnaround
videos and assess their impact compared to
more structured and planned videos.
2. Develop an experimental ethos within the
Digital & Social team that encourages test-runs
and trial periods of new ideas.
3. Use analytics and insight to inform the pace
at which we need to work and the outcome of
the experimental work we do.
Working quickly and
efficiently is one of the
most important
characteristics needed
for effective digital and
social media work.

The Digital & Social Cycle
The
Digital
& SOCIAL
CYCLE
EVALUATION
MEASUREMENT
ENGAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT
STRATEGY
PLANNING
PRODUCTION
LISTENING
Work Out Which Metrics Matter
Understand Which Content Is Working
Reflect On Why Certain Content Didn’t
Work
Get Involved In Relevant
Conversations
Use Additional Content To
Add Value & Context
Monitor Ongoing-Analytics
Create Monthly Dashboard
Factor In Qualitative Anecdotal
Feedback
Create Content
Create More Content
Create Even More Content
Share All Content
Research Our Audiences
Watch Competitors
Monitor Google, Twitter &
Facebook Trends
Assess Multimedia Potential Of Stories
Plan Platform-Specific Content
Secure As Much Forward Planned
Content As Possible
Populate Editorial Calendar
Assess Current News Agenda
Factor In Upcoming Diary Events
Agree Editorial Focus
Agree Key Messages
Set Targets & Objectives
Create A Point Of View

Social Media Policy Ideas
1. We encourage University staff to embrace social media, use it as a
platform for telling stories and having conversations about the work you
do and the difference it makes.
2. Social media is free and open and we must be in our use of it. Therefore
we will not encourage staff on one hand and then overly restrict them
with rules and regulations on the other.
3. We have the central Digital & Social Media Team available on board to
guide and talk to staff and help them as they get to grips with social
media from a strategic and operational perspective.
4. We advise staff using social media to be thoughtful and use common
sense as social media is public and not private.
5. As a staff member your reputation is on the line as well as that of your
organisation. Respect both.
6. Don’t just ignore criticism. Being active on social media means you
must engage and take part in the conversation. Radio silence will be
talked about and work against you.
7. Be friendly, respectful and open. Listen to what your followers and fans
are saying and then then work out how best to respond and add value to
the conversation.
8. Remain level headed and do not get annoyed and post an immediate
response. Disaster this way lurks. It might only take a second or two to
type a comment but it will be permanent.
9. Be prepared to admit when you are wrong and quick to correct
mistakes. People like this and respond well to it.
10. Make sure you have the facts and know the issues before you respond
to questions. Do not shoot from the hip and hope you can bluff it.
Guiding Principles
BE CREATIVE AND ENJOY TELLLING THE STORIES
OF HOW YOUR WORK AT THE UNIVERSITY
MAKES A DIFFERENCE
Ethos

Different Platforms,
Different Approaches
Digital & Social

University Home Page
A Magazine Format With Content Optimized For Sharing
The new style www.sheffield.ac.uk home page
provides the perfect layout for a dynamic
magazine style approach for our content.
To maximise this opportunity it would make
sense to include home page possibilities in the
editorial calendar and content framework.
This approach should hopefully help the team to
think about the potential for all digital
content produced being used within the
‘magazine’ format rather than simply thinking of
news releases or stories that can be picked out
and highlighted.
As part of this we should aim to reflect the news
agenda and broader online trends within the
content to improve search discoverability and
ensure the content is as timely, relevant and
interesting as possible.
Measuring The Success Of Content With Google
Analytics
Google Analytics should be used to improve
content relevance and interest in the same way
that the digital and social media dashboard will
be used to inform what we are doing on our
social and digital channels.
The home page could in fact be curated in such
a way that we look to boost the position of and
emphasis on content that is demonstrably
proving interesting and engaging to visitors
based on key metrics such as time spent on a
story, number of views, bounce rate etc.
Optimizing The Content For Sharing
The nature of media consumption in 2014 has
seen a shift from people seeking out news and
information to them discovering it from their
friends and other influencers on social channels.
Therefore the stories we publish on our website
should be optimized to capitalise on the
potential for summaries, images and
multimedia content being ‘pulled through’ by
social channels when links are posted.
Facebook, for example, aims to pull through a
thumbnail image and paragraph summary of
every link posted. However, we can customise
this content to make it as engaging, pithy and
shareable as possible with tailored summaries
and graphics.
Twitter has taken this process one step
further with its Twitter Cards. Twitter Cards
allow for significantly more multimedia
content to be incorporated directly into
people’s timelines when links are posted.
At present a link from the www.sheffield.ac.uk
domain does not render a Twitter Card so we
are missing out an opportunity to automatically
create large summary images, native videos and
photo galleries directly into people’s streams
whenever links are posted by any Twitter user.
We should change this for home page stories
going forward to maximise the potential impact
and interest of our content on social media.

Twitter
A Non-Stop Stream Of Conversations & Content
Twitter has evolved into one of this generation’s
primary sources for news and information but
using the platform to its fullest potential relies
on understanding the importance of
conversations and context and how they work
in combination with content.
Content Distribution & Twitter Cards
Twitter used to be an extremely simple platform
based on 140 characters worth of text, links
and photographs. However, the introduction of
Twitter Cards has opened up more options for
content distribution as people increasingly stay
‘within the stream’ on their tablets and
smartphones.
The first step to take with Twitter Cards is to
optimize our own web pages with the
appropriate HTML code to enable the creation
of interesting summary cards when the links are
posted.
There are a number of different Twitter cards
that can be engineered including photos,
galleries, article summaries and videos that
natively appear in the stream.
Getting The Content Right For Twitter By
Adding Context
The problem with Twitter as a news and
information distribution channel is that
everybody is constantly scrambling to be first
to tell the story.
Therefore an effective way to use Twitter is to
think about what we can add in terms of
additional multimedia content.
Extra content should serve to add further
context and give people a reason to be
interested enough to choose our story over
another version.
For example, we often post links to our press
releases on Twitter - however there is little to
differentiate the content within our links to
that within the media coverage secured on The
Guardian or The Huffington Post for example.
Therefore, it would be more useful to us to
produce supplementary social-specific content
such as images, graphics and short form videos
that add value to our story and help us stand
out from the crowd and retain the interest of
our audience.
Tapping Into Conversations
Twitter is a two-way street and one of its
greatest strengths is that it facilitates direct
conversations between us and members of our
target audiences.
To maximise the efficiency of this we need to
monitor the subjects of conversation and have a
structure in place that allows the right
person within the University to respond and add
as much value as possible.

Facebook
A Socially Curated Newspaper & Storybook
Facebook is one of the most mature
platforms in the social marketplace and it is
important to consider its evolution in order to
best utilise it on behalf of the University.
Facebook is now increasingly looking to act as
a personalised newspaper for its users and this
refined proposition is a clear effort to keep
itself relevant at a time when single use apps
and platforms are usurping one-stop-shop
social networks.
What is becoming apparent as Facebook
evolves its news feed and develops apps like
‘Paper’ is that more emphasis is being placed
on Facebook curating top quality content and
delivering it to the people that are likely to find
it interesting, engaging and emotionally
stimulating.
Produce Tailored Content
To produce quality content for Facebook there
are two important questions to be asked.
Firstly, have we tailored the subject matter of
our post to be as interesting and captivating as
possible? Secondly, are we using the right post
type and multimedia assets to tell the story as
best we can?
The different post types on Facebook allow us
to distribute words, images, videos and audio
and the different combinations of multimedia
assets should be considered in the planning of
every story we want to tell.
Use Sponsored Stories To Reach More People
As part of the content strategy and editorial
calendar it is important to include a process for
evaluating which key stories we should
‘promote’ on Facebook to maximise their reach.
Using small amounts of promotion frequently is
a great way to grow the audience for our
content and deliver it into the news feeds of
more people.
Understand Why EdgeRank Is Vital To Us
Facebook’s engagement metrics (likes,
comments and shares) are incredibly important
for creating a successful presence on the
platform.
Unlike on Twitter where every follower will see
every piece of your content in the chronological
waterfall of posts, Facebook tries to curate the
content that appears in people’s news feeds
based on the likelihood that it will be of interest
to them. This means that not all of a page’s fans
will see every post made.
Therefore, it is hugely important to craft each
piece of content to inspire engagement so that
Facebook will consistently be provided with
data that implies our stories, photos, videos and
links are interesting.
This will serve to secure a place for future
content in more people’s news feeds.

YouTube
A Hub For Entertaining & Educational Videos
YouTube is the most popular video sharing
platform on the planet and with video
becoming an ever important asset in digital
marketing it is important that our YouTube
channel is firing on all cylinders.
Produce The Right Types Of Videos
YouTube is not a platform for distributing
overly slick corporate videos because that type
of content simply isn’t what the audience is
looking for.
The success of a YouTube channel is defined by
how interesting your videos are. Now,
‘interesting’ in a YouTube sense can be defined
by asking:
- Is this video entertaining/will it make people
laugh?
- Is this video inspiring/is there a strong
emotional angle?
- Is this video educational and informative?
- Does this video tell a really interesting story?
The content strategy for YouTube should be
centred around these questions. Making the
videos ‘interesting’ first and promotional
second is the only way to find an audience and
hold their attention long enough to change their
perceptions and opinions of the University.
Learn From Audience Consumption Habits
Within YouTube’s admin section there is a fairly
comprehensive analytics function that provides
in-depth information on which videos are
working and which ones aren’t.
These analytics should be used as a starting
point to construct and improve the video
strategy.
Using data on which videos are most
popular, which videos retain people’s
attention for the longest amount of time and
which videos people are most likely to engage
with will help us to more consistently produce
video content that finds an audience rather
than simply sitting unwatched on our channel.
Produce More Series Based Content
Series-based content can work well on YouTube
as it allows you to build an audience that will
return to your videos and content on multiple
occasions.
As part of the content strategy and
editorial calendar we should look for patterns
and themes in the stories of our University that
would work well as part of a video series and
factor them into our planning.
Equally we should look to create series based
content around the news agenda and zeitgeist
that is likely to give us valuable content for
engaging people on other social channels in
conversations taking place at the time.

Ideas For Next Steps
1. Agree Digital & Social Team Objectives,
Priorities & Targets
The first step in the process should be to
clarify the objectives, priorities and targets of
the team so that we can develop a
comprehensive action plan on how to do what
needs to be done and hit our targets.
With the workload planned out more it will
allow us to understand our capacity for more
experimental, reactive and fast paced ad hoc
content production that is an essential
component of digital and social activity.
2. Outline Social & Digital Strategy Within A
Content Framework & Editorial Calendar
It would be beneficial to create a framework
that outlines the composition of created,
curated and commissioned content as well as
an editorial calendar that can be used to plan
content and develop a more focused
collaborative approach on projects with the
wider team.
This calendar should be dynamic and iterative
while providing a broad indication of where we
are heading.
3. Develop A Content Workflow To Share
With Media & Marketing Team
A content workflow would be useful for helping
the media and marketing teams approach
stories and projects from a digital first mindset.
This document would provide an overview of
the different types of digital content we can
produce, their uses, timescales and how they
can maximise the reach/impact of their stories.
4. Implement Dynamic Dashboard/Content
Strategy Review Process
With the new Digital & Social Analytics
Dashboard in place from January 2014 onwards,
we should implement a clear structure for using
the document to inform our content strategy
and editorial calendar going forward.
This should be used to help us determine things
like frequency, type and content of social media
posts and length and subject matter for
audiovisual content.
5. Implement Newsroom Processes To
Improve Pace, Quality & Newsworthiness
Of Content
Adopting newsroom practices such as editorial
conferences, daily/weekly content deadlines
and a reactive approach to the news agenda will
help us create more engaging digital and social
content.
Thinking more about what is interesting to our
audiences first will also help us to tailor our
content to be more engaging and shareable.
6. Create Platform Guides & Content Advice
Documents To Drive Quality Content
Production & Engagement
Creating platform guides and editorial guidance
documents for social media managers across
the University will help us to improve the
quality of content being produced across the
many profiles.
These documents will offer tiered levels of
guidance to make sure that all social profiles
carrying the university name are working to an
appropriate standard.

Andrew Twist
a.twist@sheffield.ac.uk

Digital & Social Strategy Ideas

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