Developing a Social Media Strategy Ashley Schaffer Ebe Randeree For Your Organization

What is Social Media? Social media is the means of interactions among people in which they create, share and exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks.

Why Use Social Media for Marketing? Social media can help you:  Promote your organization  Recruit students  Advertise events  Reach key stakeholders  Realize your goals

Some Interesting Facts about Social Media  27% of U.S. internet time is spent on social networking sites (Source: Experian)  15% of totally U.S. mobile internet time is spent on social networking sites (Source: Experian)  Social media lead conversion rates are 13% higher than the average lead conversion rate (Source: HubSpot)  21% of marketers say that social media has become more important to their company over the past six months (Source: HubSpot)  Companies that generate more than 1,000 Facebook Likes also receive nearly 1,400 website visits a day (Source: HubSpot)

Where do we start?

Ask Your SLC…  Do we have a social media strategy?  How can SLC students stay connected through social media?  At your school  Nationally  How can SLC students use social media to get the word out about:  Activities  Events  Successes

Ask Your SLC…  What are the best tools that can be used to get effective broadcast, reach, getting to the public or press  How do we get the word out beyond university walls?  How do you measure ROI?  What do you measure other than LIKES?  How do you stay ahead of the news and ahead of the tools?

Determine Your Goals and Objectives Setting goals and determining your strategy are essential to a successful social media marketing plan.

Determine Your Goals and Objectives

According to the 2012 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report, nonprofits said their top three social media goals were:  Growing their base  Engaging members  Growing fundraising

Research Determine:  Social influencers  Relevant contacts  Engaging content  Existing channels

Social Influencers  What are social influencers?  Social Influencer: People who create and share interesting or valuable content with the niche audiences that follow them

Social Influencers Advantages of Social Influencers:  Trusted more than brands  Produce earned media  Reach more targeted audiences  Students*  Share more content across the web

Relevant Contacts Who are we trying to reach? As an SLC, we want to reach:  Current students  Prospective students

Engaging Content What makes content engaging? Adding more photos of activists to the organization’s online communications with its supporters “has resulted in more activists forwarding them to their friends, which increases the likelihood that those friends will become interested and join our network.” Leslie Samuelrich, Chief of Staff at Corporate Accountability International

Choosing a Channel The social media platform you choose to use will depend on who your target audience is. As an SLC, we want to reach students who may be interested in joining our organization. What channel do we choose?

Primary Platforms

Facebook  Promote events  Estimate attendance  Reach a college audience

Facebook by the Numbers  665 million daily active users  1.1 billion monthly active users  751 billion mobile users  189 million mobile-only active users

Twitter  Broadcast news stories from industry and research  Engage with similar organizations  Promote events

Twitter by the Numbers  Fastest growing social network in the world by active users  44% growth from June 2012 to March 2013  21% of the world’s internet population uses Twitter every month  More than 500 million registered accounts

YouTube  Document events  Recruit new students (reaching K-12)

YouTube by the Numbers  1 billion unique monthly users  6 billion hours of videos are watched every month  Compared to:  4 billion hours in August 2012  3 billion hours in May 2012  Reaches more adults ages than any cable network

LinkedIn  Brand individual STARS members  Reach alumni and industry leaders  Enhance search engine results

LinkedIn by the Numbers  200 million users  2 new users join every second

Link Your SM Platforms

Measure Your Results ROI – How do we measure? For SLC:  New members  Event attendance

Test New Platforms

Instagram  An Instagram photo is worth a thousand words  Show people what your organization is about  Promote events  Build awareness of your organization/cause by using hashtags  Most popular: #nonprofit, #activism, #socialgood  Easy to link with other social media accounts

Vine  Tell a story  Show a process  Call to action  Make people think  Show results

Be Transparent Social media is about building relationships. Transparency is important in building relationships with your prospective organizations. Transparency builds trust and a strong relationship.

Be Transparent Outcomes:  Loyalty  Good word-of-mouth  Possibility of future purchases*  For an SLC, future members

Case Studies  One Million Bones  Spreading Advocacy Through Social Media  Yale University  Higher Education Using Social Media to Recruit New Students  STARS and Social Media  What Are They Doing Now?  How Can They Improve?

One Million Bones Spreading Advocacy through Social Media

One Million Bones Spreading Advocacy Through Social Media

What is Thunderclap?  The first-ever crowd speaking platform that helps people be heard by saying something together.  It allows a single message to be mass-shared, flash-mob style so it rises above the noise of your social networks.  Tangible way to measure awareness.

One Million Bones Spreading Advocacy Through Social Media

Our organization started the #OneMillionBones hashtag

Yale and Social Media  Yale was rated one of the top colleges using social media for higher education  Instead of posting about basic school information and updates, Yale posts about a variety of topics on their social media pages  Lesson: Adding variety and interesting content helps you stand out in a student’s (or consumer’s) mind

Yale and Social Media

STARS and Social Media

How could we improve STARS’ social media presence?

STARS and Social Media Facebook  Create a page  Share photos, related articles and upcoming events Instagram  Use similar to Flickr  Use hashtags to expand reach/impressions Twitter  Be more active  Share news about technology-related topics to keep audience engaged

Questions?