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

2. 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?

3. 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?

4. 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?

5. 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?

6. 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

7. 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 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?

8. 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?

9. 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?

10. 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?

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

12. 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

13. Open group
40 members
66 posts
After – Facebook Group

14. 3 followers
5 posts
Before – Instagram

15. 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

16. 12 followers
23 posts
After – Instagram

17. 91 followers
204 following
137 tweets
77 likes
Before – Twitter

18. 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

19. 108 followers
270 following
196 tweets
97 likes
After – Twitter

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

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

22. 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

23. 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