Week 7: The Search

After an exhausting search of countless possibilities trying to find any community college or university academic counseling department with a visual social media presence, I finally gave up and decided to broaden my search. I ended up going with Boston University's School of Social Work(BUSSW) as well as the main UCLA visual social media. Given that my department is fairly niche compared to any social media representing an entire university, I understood that UCLA would not be the greatest comparison of a similar business. However, I hoped that I would find ideas that I could borrow from or that would possibly provide inspiration. BUSSW on the other hand, while not a counseling department, is more targeted and I assumed that they would have less of a need for visual social media. I hoped that I could get some takeaways from them that would help me to build more robust Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube pages.

UCLA has, not surprisingly, a very impressive up-to-date Instagram account showcasing the school and its students very well. Of course, it doesn't hurt that the campus is beautiful making it easier to promote the campus as well as campus life and events. Currently we are using Instagram as another method of getting important information out to students, but seeing the UCLA account makes me think that we can use Instagram for documenting daily events. This could include information from our counselors, staff, or even something like student transfer admission notifications.

With BUSSW's Instagram and Pinterest account, there were far more ideas that I could draw from in my department's visual social media. Their Instagram account has been used to post information about school events, campus life, graduation, pictures from the School of Social Work magazine, and much more. Their Pinterest account was equally as interesting with boards ranging covering the university, Boston, Social Issues, Self help. DIY, and more. I feel that these sites would be effective to current students, as well as prospective students that may be hoping to get a better idea of what life would be like in this program. I would definitely say that these are far more related than the UCLA visual social media for what we are looking to provide to our followers.

I think that we have chosen the correct visual social media of Instagram and Pinterest. The next step will be to add YouTube, but there are some logistical issues with deleting the older YouTube accounts that we previously used.

Week 7: Effectiveness of Visuals

While I'm certain that my department would benefit from most visual platforms, I feel the need to consider the effectiveness of each when compared to the required amount of time and energy to see a significant return. To be clear, our department is not selling a product or service. Our mission is to support student success by providing a variety of methods to disseminate information. One of the main methods, and currently most effective, is by meeting one-on-one with a counselor either by appointment or drop-in. However, given limitations in space, manpower, and time this is not always possible and very often a full 45 minute appointment is taken up for a matter that could have been answered in five minutes on our website.

With that in mind, visual platforms can play an important role in offering key deadlines and information in an easily accessible manner. A few weeks before this semester began, I started an Instagram account with that goal in mind. No less than once per week we post the daily drop-in schedule, an alternative to calling or coming in to the office. We have also been finding creative ways to provide information such as irregular closures and important deadlines. The front office staff plans to include social media strategy in our future meetings to explore the possible uses for our current platforms.

In addition to Instagram, we are in the process of integrating our slightly unused YouTube account. On of our counselors has created two videos in the past year to offer information about our services and how to prepare for a counseling appointment. In recent talks, we see this as a great way of creating informal videos every month or so in an effort to keep students up to date on school policies and motivated in their studies. 

It is difficult enough finding creative options for Instagram, that I don't feel there is any benefit in implementing a Tumblr account. Many of our staff members have expressed several times an aversion to being in any pictures or videos used for media or marketing.

Pinterest is the last piece to this puzzle, and one that I was initially on the fence about leaning more in the direction of Tumblr. However, after reading the lecture and giving more consideration, I have since changed my view and have decided to create and account and carefully implement. I say carefully because the information we offer using this platform needs to be supervised and checked with caution. I have had experiences in the past of pinning infographics to my personal account without looking at it thoroughly, only to find that it offered incorrect information, bad grammar/spelling, or inappropriate language. Being that this represents our department in a way, we want to hold our pins to the same standards that we hold ourselves to, or at least as closely as possible.

Our department is lucky in the sense that we have a few staff members interested in collaborating in our social media. However, this can also serve as a detriment in an age when information can become outdated very quickly. It is important for us to begin and build slowly with these platforms to not become too overwhelmed. To restate an earlier point, one of our main goals is to provide information in the most effective manner. Given our limited resources in such a busy department this may mean offering only one or two high performing platforms at first, rather than many platforms with out of date information.

Week 6: Scheduling Posts

In scheduling my posts, I wanted to accomplish a few objectives. While the aim is to promote post engagement, I considered some of our most frequent questions in order to post relevant information. For this I scheduled a reminder post a few days before the "W" drop deadline. While this simple content may not elicit comments, I hope to determine if deadline reminders are worthwhile posts by measuring clicks and post likes. Additionally, I will most likely add to the post with a link or picture of the academic calendar.

The second objective was giving a call to action by asking students to schedule an education plan appointment. Having an education plan has shown to dramatically increase student success and retention, and new state legislation requires new students to have an edplan on file to maintain priority enrollment. Notifying and reminding students early may help to better serve students by scheduling appointments during our very available non-peak periods. I scheduled this post immediately following Spring Break, since our office starts to see an increase in appointments when the schedule is released in April.

My third objective further promotes engagement by asking students to reply with one of their favorite study spots. I scheduled this post a few days before finals in an effort to help students alleviate stress by not having to seek out a place to study.

I wanted to leave room for spontaneous posts, so I scattered these posts out over the next few months. This also allows for adding or modifying posts as the scheduled time comes closer.

Week 6: To Like, or Not to Like...Is that a Question?

With my business being a single department in a much larger organization, I was very lucky, in that I had 15 Facebook pages within my organization that I was able to like. However, considering this to be an easy out, without doing much for my page, I began to consider the possibilities and recommendations from the lecture and book readings. I specifically used, and built on the 3 keys found in the "Liking Other Pages" guidelines found in the lecture.

First, I imagined locations that our customers(students) would hang out. Using the Lululemon example, I thought of study spots and came up with a few local places. These included Vinaka Cafe, The Yellow Deli(open 24 hours), and the Carlsbad City Library. I had some trepidation in adding the Yellow Deli given that they are run by what some consider to be a cult, while we are a public institution. Since liking does not mean that we are endorsing any particular group or belief system, but rather liking a convenient and popular place to study, I decided to go for it. 

These likes also gave me a post idea to that I plan to employ once we increase our fan base, which would be to ask our fans to post their favorite place to study. This would give us opportunity to engage our fans, as well as find more pages to like and possibly grow our business.

The second guideline was to follow pages that share content that our followers would like or find useful. The first batch that I could think of were our local universities, since a large population of students at the college plan to transfer. I added CSUSM, UCSD, SDSU, USD, CSULB, and UCLA. So far, I have have seen a number of posts that I can link to or share when I am experiencing a "blank moment". One school even posted classic pictures with the hashtag "throwbackthursdays", something that we could easily do as well. As students are considering which colleges to apply to, this would familiarize them with the different local options and serve as a reminder to utilize the services offered by our department. 

Following this, I thought of pages that would offer content appealing not only to our students, but anybody with a thirst for learning, expanding knowledge, and maximizing one's potential. While I found a number of pages which fit this category, I wasn't confident that many were appropriate for our page and I settled on the TED(Technology, Entertainment, and Design) page, as well as Radiolab page, a popular documentary podcast which dissects and presents various topics through research, interviews, and anecdotes. In the span of one day, I have already found numerous posts which I find interesting and relevant to individuals within our higher learning institution.

Lastly, as previously mentioned, I wanted to show support to our colleagues. I remembered that our school had a social media directory and I simply went down the list liking each page. Taking this a bit further, I did a quick scroll down each page to see which pages were most current and if any offered information that our page could share as well. I found a few that met this criteria, and plan to check these frequently in an attempt to offer our fans better content, establish a good social media relationship, and recruit new fans. For example, the library might post about upcoming workshops aimed at supporting student success. Being that supporting student success is my department's mission, our page should engage and further promote such workshops. Adding to this idea, I plan to further engage our fans by asking what types of workshops or resources would best assist their academic studies.

The benefit to actively liking an engaging other pages is a no-brainer. This is a critical tool in building a fan base and fostering relationships as long as the page manager is willing and able to go beyond a simply clicking like.

Week 5: Facebook Insights: Interpreting Post Reach and Engagement

The ability to differentiate between post reach and post engagement is, without a doubt, extremely instrumental in the promotion of our business through Facebook. Post reach reports on the amount of post views that have occurred, while post engagement will report the number of viewers who go beyond views and actively click. One blogger expressed the benefits clearly, stating that knowing post reach could be used to quickly build your fan base or getting more visibility for a post. On the other hand, businesses wishing to build relationships with their customers would be better served by focusing on post engagement. 

Of course, having this data alone would hardly serve a purpose without being able to interpret the numbers and employ a combination of strategies to maximize your efforts. It would be as if a physical store, before internet, wanted to be sure the most people saw their products whether it was by television, radio, mail, or even just choosing a store location with the most foot and car traffic. However, they may not know if a certain method had been the most effective, while another may have been a poor use of money or resources. With that in mind, it would be highly beneficial to know not only how many people had seen your product or service, but how many acted on that. In the past this may have been done through tracking which marketing method resulted in a call, visit to the physical store, mail order, or even if it was recommended to another party. At that time, this may have been done by surveying customers individually, which would have taken a lot of time and still not produce very accurate results. Facebook Insights does both of these by measuring reach and engagement, allowing businesses to access this information without having to rely on a survey or other customer intake.

Week 4 - My Business Target Market, Non-Profit Notwithstanding

Given that I work in a college counseling department whose mission is to promote student development and success, our target market would be college students interested in earning certificates, associate degrees, or transferring to a 4 year university or trade school. Without a doubt, there are other populations that come to the college for various reasons, but they are a small percentage, and typically already have an understanding of why they are there, such as retirees interested in personal development. Additionally, there are the students who are only in college to satisfy somebody else, such as their parents. Oftentimes these students don't have a goal, and aren't interested in the services offered. Therefore, we want to reach the students who have the desire and drive, but may lack knowledge of the resources, tools, or path to achieve their goal.

As I proceed through this week's assignment, I already see that using a non-traditional business for the purposes in our class will prove to be more of a challenge than I had hoped for. As our assignment prompt states, in thinking about how knowing more about our perfect customer might help in the coming weeks, I encounter conflicting ideas. Not being entirely profit driven, but more focused on student success, a perfect customer would not actually be a customer, because they would already possess the tools and knowledge to achieve success. This would be a student who knows perfectly well their educational goal, which path to follow to achieve it, and has no need for support in achieving their goal. However, this is not a reality when describing the majority of our student body, much less anybody in our society. In a way, our perfect customer will be an imperfect customer. We target current and prospective students who may need assistance choosing a career path, or has test taking anxiety, or who is looking for inspiration or motivation and can't find it elsewhere. Our mission is student success, and therefore our target audience will be students who aspire to be successful, but lack the tools, resources, knowledge, or motivation to achieve it.