Week 14: Six Month Plan

Social Media Plan

Industry: Higher Education

• Community Colleges, 4-Year Institutions, Education Technology, Educational Research

Administrative staff: 3 Full-time, 1 Part-time

Counselors: Full-time 10, Part-time 10+

Objective: To gather and disseminate information, policies, and deadlines for MiraCosta College and the Counseling Department as needed. However, the majority of frequent posts will provide tips, motivation, and inspiration in order to better engage followers.

Priorities:

1st Month

• Switch all social media accounts to the department communal email.
• Set goals (e.g. set desired # of followers, expand total reach) 

1-3 Months

• Develop list of phrases and vocabulary consistent with college departments and services. Include phrases and procedure for responding to negative feedback and complaints.
• At least once per month, review Facebook Insights and meet to determine social media effectiveness and where improvements can be made.
• Determine target audience
• Determine effective post days/times

3-6 Months

• Develop and pilot a detailed editorial calendar either through Outlook or Google.

Editorial Calendar:

Facebook: No less than two posts per week (exact days and times to be determined, but always during business hours). Schedule posts whenever possible.

• Friday - Drop-in counseling hours posted from Instagram.
• At least one post to engage. Ideas include calls to action, relevant external content, counselor tips and advice (i.e. top three tips to prepare for finals)
• Promotion of college events and services from other departments.
• As Needed: Deadlines, important dates, need-to-know policies, drop-in changes.

Instagram: 2-4 posts per week

• Friday - Drop-in hours for OC and SEC.
• Fun pics
• Matching outfits, MCC Pride Fridays, Throwback Thursday, College Hour, College events, etc.
• As Needed: Deadlines, important dates, need-to-know policies, drop-in changes.

Twitter: 2-4 tweets per week

• Friday - Drop-in counseling hours from Instagram.
• Check-in posts similar to Instagram and Facebook engagement.
• Utilize college events, department workshops and classes, added courses during enrollment, external content.
• As Needed: Deadlines, important dates, need-to-know policies, drop-in changes.

Week 14: Blog Comments

I reviewed the pages for, and commented on the following blogs. A common theme that I noticed for all of us is the recent spike in "likes" this past week as a result of the assignment. I think this was very valuable since we may see random spikes like this in the future, and it is important to look at these changes critically so that we can discover what we may do correctly or incorrectly.

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Week 14: Social Media Reviewed

Looking back at all of the social media that we have worked with, there are some definite standouts which I feel gave me the best ROI. Others were fun at times, and yielded some useful information that I may not otherwise have come across. Still, given the investment in time for many of the platforms, I know that I would primarily just use Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for the immediate future. I've also realized that I will need to delegate the duties of updating our social media, since I have come to find out it can be a commitment to deliver content on a daily basis.

Facebook has been great, especially since I have learned how to better integrate with other platforms such as Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Learning to utilize the woobox features was key for this integration, and I feel that it has given us a more robust page. This is one area that I would like to facilitate greater collaboration with my colleagues, especially having somebody add posts a few days per week. Instagram has by far been the platform with which we have had the greatest collaboration and creativity with. While I feel confident with the written communication involved, there are others who far surpass me in presenting important information in a very creative manner. Thus far, I have left that up to them. Similar to Instagram, I feel that our department needs to have a daily presence on Twitter. Without that, we become a second thought to our followers and our presence will stagnate.

Another reason to use Twitter and Instagram on a daily basis is that they are extremely entertaining to use and communicate with followers. In fact, one of the highlights of my Twitter use came halfway through the semester when I was able to directly apply what we have learned from class and especially from the text "Likeable Social Media". I had just gotten back to my office from a meeting and noticed a series of Twitter notification that somebody had tagged our account in their comments. From what I gathered, the individual had a negative experience over the phone with one of our staff members, in addition to some concerning behavior on the person's personal account. As quickly as possible I added the person, apologized for the experience that they had, and asked them to follow us so that we could private message eachother. I was able to get the individual to speak with one of our counselors which made the person feel better about the initial interaction. They later returned to Twitter praising us for how quickly we addressed the matter and expressing gratitude for having somebody to hear their concerns.

For the time being, I'll use Facebook on a less frequent basis, but increase Instagram and Twitter to daily interactions or posts. On a side note, I have found a lot of enjoyment out of the blog, however, I don't see using it for our department. If I continue to blog it will be for personal enjoyment, not necessarily with any common topic, or for any particular reason.

Week 13: Insights

Up to this point I feel as though I have been a little apprehensive about exploring Facebook Insights. Part of my apprehension is related to the fact that I know I haven't yet mastered many of the basic tools of social networking, especially when it comes to creating informative engaging posts on a consistent basis. I admit that another part of me hasn't gotten into it because any type of analytics appear, at first glance, as though it would take a major time investment to learn the intricacies enough to make it a useful tool. Here is yet another reason why this class has helped so much, since it would most likely have taken me a lot longer, if at all, to delve into the Insights feature on Facebook. Having said that, I found that a tutorial isn't at all necessary to begin, since just a little clicking around has already provided me quite a bit of "insight".

The first thing that I noticed in the last week is the spike in page likes. I had a total of 10 likes since last Sunday, bringing my total to 77, and the majority came in the middle of the week. I wish I could say this was the result of the reach of one of my posts, but I think credit is owed to this assignment and the requirement to "like" any pages that we haven't previously done. With an extremely busy week, I unfortunately didn't post anything, so I was unable to take away much from the "reach" feature. However, I did revisit some old posts side by side to see which had the best reach and engagement. Looking at which posts which had the most impressions and engagement, I saw a few patterns which would be worthwhile to explore. The first thing that I noticed is that our the post highest on the list had been a simple repost from our Instagram account showing our weekly drop-in schedule. This was also true of our second most popular post. The two of these were posted on different days, but the post times were within 30 minutes of each other. At first, I thought that this may have played a role in the popularity, until I saw a few posts lower on the list which had been posted at similar times. I'm sure I could research deeper into this with the feature that allows me to see the behavior of when my are online. This seems like it would be very worthwhile for those selling products that don't depend on any seasonal changes in popularity or need. With that said, I believe that the major factor is a result of the hills and valleys in regard to demand for our department and services throughout the semester. We may have the same post content on the same day and time of the week, but if we are near an enrollment period or a drop deadline we will certainly see a rise in office and phone traffic. This, I'm sure, will play out in social media as well.

Aside from these areas, I'd like to explore more of the "people" feature in Insights. This would be information that I can really begin to hone in on the demographics that we have historically reached most. Since our goal is to provide information to students with a more convenient alternative to coming in or calling, we can begin to tailor our posts and content in a way that better targets our followers. No matter your use and need of Facebook, it's obvious that Insights is a valuable and necessary resource for a business if you are serious about growing and increasing your web presence. 

Week 13: Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers a wide array of features to help optimize promotion of a blog or website provided you know which to focus on and how to use them. Given that a lot of this information can be overwhelming and a bit confusing, I would start off by taking some of the tutorials in the Analytics Education section. After watching two of the videos provided, I quickly realized that some of the features provided, while interesting, wouldn't be as useful for our websites or the needs of my business/department. For example, knowing what type of devices are accessing our site may not be necessary since our institution already has a mobile version of the site. However, if we were creating and app, this could be useful in knowing which if we should create it for iPhone or Android. Additionally, we are not selling a product or service and we have a stationary location, so knowing the geographic location information from analytics would not be useful. This information may be useful for our International Education Office, as it may reveal trends to offer more insight to which populations may require support in the future.

One of the features that would be very useful for our online media would be the demographics information offered in Google Analytics. Knowing trends related to age and gender populations could help us to better target our key markets. If we are trying to build followers in order to spread more information about the college, our department, and our services, knowing the demographic information could help us to better market to specific target groups. For example, if 18-24 year-olds are the main population, we may want to look at which classes are most popular for the age group and promote information related to that.

A few other features worth exploring would be in the benchmarking section, especially the channels grouping, as well as the behavior section. Knowing new vs. returning visitors related to the duration with which they are browsing my page may tell me if I'm succeeding in making the site interesting for returning visitors, or if I need to focus on what type and frequency of new information posted on the site. Fortunately, we have an office at our college that works with analyzing analytics for the college and department pages, however, knowing this information would be extremely helpful if working with them on revamping our webpage. I truly feel that exploring and learning about this information would help to better understand why certain practices are in place, and in what ways can we optimize our web presence not only through social networks, but our websites as well.

Week 12: Project Activity

In my previous post I wrote about the limitations of what online marketing tools can be used for my business. Since we don't sell a product or service, coupon networks wouldn't be useful. I do, however, see the usefulness in experimenting with the different types of social media and online marketing tools to see which produce the biggest benefits, especially if the time/money/energy investment can be kept to a minimum. In doing this assignment, I found that it is still possible to find information and resources that are highly relevant and useful to my job and department. I had been under the false assumption that I had exhausted all possibilities of groups, organizations, and people who could provide a wide array of information pertinent to my work.

The first tool that I decided to explore is Yelp. I found that our main college campus has a Yelp entry, as well as two other departments within the college. My department did not, so I decided to add the listing. As I have noticed with many of these networks, things never work out quite the way they are supposed to. Despite having added my department a few days back, I still cannot view our listing. I attempted to add it again today and still no luck. There is a note that it can take up to 48 hours to be able to view the business, a period which has now lapsed, so I'm hoping it will show up soon. Once it does, I am hopeful that this will be another great way to interact with students and possibly see areas in which we have shortcomings.

I have also set up a Pulse account to be able to pull all the blogs and news related to our field in one area. I'm finding that adding friends and following users on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have been excellent ways to explore all of the information out there, but there is far too much to keep track of especially when they are scattered over various platforms and networks.

Lastly, I created a Google Business and Google+ account. This seems like it will take a little more time to explore, as I have only just created the page and began to add hours, locations, department information, and photos. I was curious to see how much more involved it is, as they are sending a postcard to verify our business. It seems like a great place to explore and add groups and people in circles, as well as reach out to our students and other organizations. Of the three of these, I'm most excited to explore this, and I will be working to combine information that we have across our resources to make sure that we have robust accounts in each area.

As I mentioned before, if exploring these new tools and resources can provide even one new piece of information or insight, it can be well worth it. When exploring groups on Google+, I came across Columbia University's Community College Research Center account, and from there began exploring their website and publications. I now have two books to look into, one which I have placed on hold at a local library, and the other I may buy for my department. Here is an organization who, despite having searched on my various other social media accounts, I am only now discovering. The resources, tools, and information on their site is incredible, and I have had to pull myself away several times to finish this assignment and my other work.

Week 12: Four More...Online Marketing Tools

I'm starting to feel as though a common theme with many of my blog posts are related to not being able to take advantage of the full spectrum of social media. I have come to terms with that and in doing so, realized that it gives me more time to spend perfecting a smaller scope of social media. Having said this, I can imagine four additional online marketing tools being useful for my department to expand and improve. These would be Yelp, Google +, LinkedIn, and having an RSS feed.

Yelp is a site that I have used for years especially when looking up restaurants, breweries, bars, and stores. It has been incredibly helpful and I have even used it to review a few businesses, although usually only after a negative experience. Since I typically use Yelp to determine between a variety of choices, I don't think it would help us in that regard since it is not as if the college has multiple general counseling departments. However, simply having reviews would help us to determine any areas that could use improvement or give us an opportunity to respond to any negative comments. Additionally, Yelp reviews may give students a better idea of the services that we offer as well as insight into our staff. I think that it would be minimal investment and could provide us with valuable information if students were willing to review us. We could also run promotion that if they review us, they can set up an earlier appointment if we are booked two weeks out, which is often the case.

Google+ is something that I am far less familiar with, but it seems like a good way to get information about other similar departments. We may not choose to do much posting on + unless it is just reposts from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. However, after browsing around the site, I can see how it is a great place to collect information that may be pertinent to what our department does. 

LinkedIn is great since our job is to help students reach their goals. This seems like a place that we can advertise and share a blog if we decide to take one on. Since counselors advise, inform, and inspire I see this as a great way to get more information out there. Unlike Facebook, Twitter ,and Instagram, I think that LinkedIn may not provide so much in the way of deadlines and important school information, but be more of a place for students to learn and explore the content that would be put up.

Having an RSS feed makes a lot of sense to me, simply because we are continually trying to expand, grow, and provide an information service. While it isn't necessarily a social tool, it can be extemely useful in keeping me and my staff informed on current trends, best practices, information, and news. This is highly important in any field if one is looking to improve a product or service. I'm going to explore these a little more for personal use before diving in for professional purposes.

I think it goes without saying that any sort of coupon site would not be even remotely feasible for us. For one thing, we don't charge for any services or meetings, so what would we be giving a coupon for? I do personally like the idea of Groupons, and I have used many in the past, but I have gotten mixed reviews from business owners. Many feel like they were being shafted or forced into offering a Groupon. Some friends who own a Strength and Conditioning gym have discussed that Groupon was a great way to get many people into the gym in a relatively short time. However, they also mentioned that you get people who are hopping from one gym just to save money with Groupons. If your product or service is good, oneline coupons may buy you some loyal customers for the long run. With that in mind, one has to determine whether it is worth it for a short burst of revenue.