Presentation delivered April 2013 to faculty and staff at SAU in regards to social media best practices and institutional goals.

1. Social Media
@SAU

2. Covering Today
● State of social media at SAU
● Policies, guidelines, and procedures
● Putting the "social" in social media
● Communications and you

3. @SAU
● 121% increase in traffic coming from social
media sites (to 52k pageviews) compared to
2010.
● On Facebook, we’ve seen a 1441% increase
in post views and a 166% increase in user
feedback and interaction compared to 2010.
We’re up 1,767 new “likes” in 2011.
● In 2012 so far: 22% increase in social media
traffic

4. Demographics
Our largest demographic on Facebook is females between the ages of 18-24. They're
not only our biggest visiting demographic, they're the ones who respond and share
the most. Males in the same age group are a close second on both metrics. For
overall users, females far outreach males.

5. Website Traffic Generated
This shows traffic generated from all social media sources in the period of
September-December 2011 vs January-April 2012. We see a significant increase in
visits, pageviews, and unique visitors. This chart represents 1745 more visits, 12,035
more pageviews, and 418 more UNIQUE visitors in 2012 so far than a corresponding
period in 2011. This is an ongoing trend, social media use is showing no sign of
slowing down.

6. Current Initiatives
1. Claiming ownership of all wayward
Facebook places, pages, and groups for
merge and removal
2. Building on Timeline features
a. major milestones using archives photos
b. continuously refreshing cover image
c. evaluating new recruiting/retention opportunities
d. using the new campus stories materials
3. Social media audit
The new FB Timeline roll-out launched more than just the cover photo feature. We're
still figuring out all the tools and how to best utilize them.

7. Why Audit?
Of the 39 "official" University FB pages, 51% haven't been updated in more than a
month, and 25% haven't been updated in more than 6 months. This is just PAGES on
Facebook. This doesn't include groups, inappropriate "people", Twitter, or LinkedIn.

8. yep.

9. Audit Goals
1. Clean up outdated, unused presences
2. Evaluate effectiveness of each presence
a. Growth (Likes)
b. Post quality and interactions (posts and comments)
c. Traffic generated to main site (click-throughs)
d. Goal conversions (applications, contact forms, etc.)
e. Other appropriate metrics
3. Focus resources on goal-oriented activities
a. What are you trying to accomplish with Fb?
4. Establish a consistent naming convention
5. Educate on proper uses of tools to achieve
goals
In short, we need to provide more signal than noise and eliminate pain points in our
social media strategy. Do less, better.

10. Audit Phases
Phase 1 - Document the situation & clean up
"low hanging fruit"
Phase 2 - Review & consolidate, establish
goals and metrics for evaluation. Formalize a
quick approval/review process for new and
existing social initiatives.
Phase 3 - Establish a social media working
group for long term evaluation and support of
social media initiatives.
We're at the tail end of phase 1. The social media brief I sent out last month went
largely unanswered. Of the more than 125 Facebook (only) presences only 3 briefs
were returned.

11. Low-hanging fruit?
That purple and green sections are on the chopping block. So are "people" profiles
that violate Facebook's TOS. Groups will go under the microscope at some point
during the fall.

12. Policy
University Handbook (2010) Section 312f
requires two employee administrators on any
social media presence and specifies "checking"
social media presences at least twice per day
during the week.

13. social media is about
quality, not quantity
...but, in some context quality comes from quantity of attention paid to the resource.
Specifically, think of it as tending a garden.

14. Guidelines
● Post twice per week
● Respond to every comment within 2 hours
during the day, within 12 hours after hours
● Be social. Develop a personality for your
social media initiatives. Who is your
audience? Talk to them.
Social media is a conversation.
Don't use it as a megaphone
because nobody will be listening.
Define your audience. Write a mission statement. Establish goals. Put forth effort
toward achieving goals.

15. That's a lot of work!
It absolutely is. I have a 6 hour a week student worker dedicated to social media and I
spend roughly 10 hours a week building out or planning our social media activities. I
also keep Facebook up in a tab at all times and revisit it every hour or so during the
week. I usually email 6-12 questions from Fb/Twitter around campus every week.

16. How!?!
● Announce upcoming events
● Promote faculty/student stories
○ Link to existing content on your website
● Curated content
○ Audience appropriate news, journal articles, blog
posts, etc.
● Photo albums
○ Post photos of conferences and events with captions
and tags
● Respond!!! to comments and questions
● Encourage users to post content
Don't often duplicate content across multiple Fb pages/groups. It's a huge turn-off and
one of the biggest complaints we see.

17. now that's funny.

18. hello?
Notice that there hasn't been a single post on this page since January 27. What you
can't see is that the admin of this page hasn't posted anything since December 4.
How do prospective students who visit this page perceive this department, and, by
extension, the university? There are over 125 individual Facebook presences for the
University. If your untended FB page/place/group is cluttering search results, you're
actually hurting recruiting and retention efforts.
Also notice the lack of a cover photo. The switch was made by Facebook on March
30. There were notices and a "soft launch" for over a month and a half. If you still
haven't updated your page, we need to have a serious discussion about whether you
have the time and resources to effectively manage a social media presence.

19. Timeline
There were notices for over a month and a half. If you still haven't updated your page,
we need to have a serious discussion about whether you have the time and resources
to effectively manage a social media presence.

20. Timeline
Facebook launched the new Timeline feature for pages on March 30.

21. Facebook All-Stars
● Alumni Association ● Archeological Survey
● Dept. of Nursing ● Athletics
● PBL ● Theatre
● The Bray ● Foundation
● Graduate Studies ● Volleyball
These departments all have their cover images updated and have some activity in the
last month. The Gold stars have significant activity in the last month.

22. What this means
We've got 10 departments who are keeping up with their Facebook pages. Out of 39.

23. Likes Overview
Notice the higher likes tend toward the curated pages. The University, Alumni,
Foundation, Athletics, Graduate Studies...all of these show constant activity and
improvement over time. Be aware, people can unlike just as easily as they like
something.

24. Ask yourself
1. Do I have the time, staff, and understanding of social media
to manage a presence for my group/organization/dept?
2. Do I have enough content to sustain continuous activity?
3. Would my presence be better served by posting information
on the main page - attracting more viewers - than on a
separate page? Do my stakeholders require a separate
page - like alumni?
4. Can my goals be achieved by distributing information on the
primary University presence?
5. How is my program/dept different?
Advertising, marketing, promotions...these things only work if you've got a way to
differentiate yourself from the competition.

25. Mission, goals, objectives
Mission: Support the greater SAU community.
Goal: Increase traffic to University web
properties.
Goal: Promote academic accomplishment.
Goal: Support campus events and activities.
Goal: Keep alumni connected.
How do we accomplish these goals? We use the content on the University website to
build out activity on the University Facebook page. We post upcoming events and
photo albums of past events. We repost useful information from satellite presences.
We also work pretty hard to track and measure results by using special links and a
goal completion tool in our analytics package.

26. Truths
1. It takes a lot of work to build a successful
social media presence in the post-MySpace
age.
2. Not every department, group, or organization
needs a dedicated Facebook page.
3. No page is better than a disused or poorly
managed page.
4. All social media initiatives need to be
focused on "real world" goals.

27. none of us can be effective when we're overloaded
If the idea of managing your social media presence makes you feel like this, perhaps
we should discuss scaling back a bit. We are more than happy to support your
initiatives by utilizing our almost 6,000 Facebook users and 1,200 Twitter followers.

28. So what's next?
1. Evaluate your Facebook page with a critical
eye to audience, goals, results, value, &
time/resources available to manage it
properly.
2. Complete the Social Media Brief & send to
Communications
3. Multiple presences? Consider consolidating.
4. The audit will continue through the fall, with
continuous evaluation and improvement
going forward.

29. Support?
We can help you establish goals and measure
results for your social media efforts. We're also
available to provide basic "how-to" support for
Facebook features.
smkeith@saumag.edu