Social Media Marketing Client Project – Phi Theta Kappa By Rhiannon Minster

Phi Theta Kappa is the official honors society for 2 year institutions, and members join after earning a 3.5 GPA and completing 12 credit hours. Phi Theta Kappa was founded in 1918, and currently has several hundred chapters all over the world Phi Theta Kappa focuses on promoting their 4 hallmarks: scholarship, leadership, fellowship, and community service My client was the Johnson County Community College chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, which has about 600 members, though only about 30 active members What is PTK?

I am the current Vice President of Phi Theta Kappa, and one of my duties is to run the social media. I wanted to use what I learn in this class to enhance the reach of my chapter, and to increase the quality of the content we put on our social media Why did I choose PTK?

What were my objectives? Increase visibility of social media Increase following on all social media Make better content for the social media Only share relevant content Share photos of events What were my objectives?

What were the challenges? Because Phi Theta Kappa is only a club, and a selective club at that, we cannot use many of the typical social media marketing practices, so I had to be more imaginative in my strategies. The visibility I aimed for was different than if I had a business. My content is only relevant to current members, and possibly alumni, so I really only wanted those people to follow us. This limits the possibility for growth of followers tremendously We can only post content when something important comes up, or immediately afterwards with photos from events, so it is not possible to have a consistent posting schedule What were the challenges?

What my client already had My client already had a Facebook group, a Twitter, and an Instagram, and all of the profiles were optimized as far as they could be What my client already had

What was my plan overall? The main objectives of my work with the Phi Theta Kappa social media was to have more followers on all of our active social media, and to be more visible. I hoped to accomplish this in three ways The first thing I did to try and achieve more followers is in our welcome email that we send to new members, I included information about all of our social media The second thing I did is post frequently. Even if we became more visible, if people do not see that we post relevant information regularly, then they would not want to follow us, because they would gain nothing from it The last thing I did is try to tell people in person about our social media. I have met several members of Phi Theta Kappa this semester, and I have made sure to tell them that we have a social media. Many of them were unaware of this, despite my best efforts to give us visibility online What was my plan overall?

What was my plan overall? My other objectives, make better content for the social media, only share relevant content, and share photos of events, were very easy to achieve I put out information every time we had an event, there was an interesting article that I found, and information about scholarships, so I think that I put out good content for the social media. I also used existing Phi Theta Kappa hashtags, and made one up just for our chapter I did not inundate the page with articles or information that was unimportant Photos were posted almost every time we had an event What was my plan overall?

What was my plan overall? I created a social media calendar so that I wouldn’t lose track of all of our social media and forget to post on them What was my plan overall?

What was my plan overall? I also used Canva to make some ads to try and get members to apply to the Phi Theta Kappa Fall Scholarship Application What was my plan overall?

Before – Facebook Group Closed group 27 members 5 posts Before – Facebook Group

Facebook Group – Implementing the plan For Facebook my specific plan was to post often with relevant information to give members a real reason to join the group, and I also shared plenty of photos from events. I also requested that our adviser change the group from closed to open, which meant that people could still view what was posted even before joining. Facebook Group – Implementing the plan

Open group 40 members 66 posts After – Facebook Group

3 followers 5 posts Before – Instagram

Instagram – Implementing the plan For Instagram specifically, I really wanted to post only high quality content for our members. Since Instagram is almost solely visual, I think that on this platform specifically there is an especially strong need for good resolution and lighting when posting photos. I also tried to round out our content by adding some videos. Instagram – Implementing the plan

12 followers 23 posts After – Instagram

91 followers 204 following 137 tweets 77 likes Before – Twitter

Twitter – Implementing the plan For Twitter specifically, the plan was to post very frequently with lots of different types of content such as photos, links to articles, and different things going on at JCCC. Because of how fast paced Twitter is, I was not worried about inundating the feeds of our members, because when every single post is only 140 characters or less, that makes scrolling through them must quicker. Twitter – Implementing the plan

108 followers 270 following 196 tweets 97 likes After – Twitter

All of my client’s social media showed considerable growth of followers Facebook – 48% Instagram – 300% Twitter – 19% Did it work?

All of my client’s social media showed a great increase in posts Facebook – 1220% Instagram – 360% Twitter – 43% Did it work?

Pictures of events are very popular, across all social media Pictures of events are very popular, across all social media. Just based on my own personal experience, seeing all of the people I know at events, even when I cannot go, is always nice. It is the same as if they had posted the photos themselves in that it’s just fun seeing that your friends are having a good time Based on the increased attendance after I started posting when our meetings and events were, social media is a very good way of reminding our members when we have activities Using social media to remind people to apply to scholarships increases the number of applications. Sometimes members forget about the application, even when they did most of the work, so it’s important to share that with them. We also have some members studying abroad this semester, and our adviser told me that one of them first heard about the application, and later applied, because of our Facebook group Sharing stories of people in our chapter receiving scholarships and/or being successful is very popular. I’ve seen stories of members from other chapters doing well because of Phi Theta Kappa, but it doesn’t mean as much as our own members doing well What I learned

For the future of the Phi Theta Kappa social media, we will continue using our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, and post on them regularly For Facebook, posting whenever there is something worth sharing, and not anything more, is best. People use Facebook more for personal reasons overall, and oversharing is very possible. Posting photos from events is very important because then you are having members interact with the social media more while adding a personal touch to a non-personal account For Twitter, being active on a daily, or almost daily, basis works best. Because Twitter is so fast paced, content can slip through the cracks easily if someone doesn’t post that often. We should also post the same type of thing multiple times, with slight differences, because of how easy it is for members to miss important content For Instagram, posting high quality content is more important than the number of posts, especially because we have so few followers. Having a gallery of photos that is all high quality will make our members want to follow us more, even if we only post every couple weeks. Hopefully with the use of Canva we will be able to make such high quality content more frequently than we have up until now Going forward