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Better Social Media Executions: Three Best Practices for Colleges

Answer me this:

• How many websites and networks are you registered for?
• How many different passwords do you have out there?
• How many email addresses have you used and discarded along the way?
• Do you get a sense of panic when you have to answer a new generation of security question, wondering truly if your favorite color/food/pet will really be the same as it is today when you eventually forget your password?

Managing all these different identities and accounts is a hassle. Uploading your best photo (and re-uploading it when you find a better one). Filling out all the information. It’s creating a barrier to participating. Who has time for another account setup?

So why are so many colleges asking their potential students and alumni to do just that?

I recently wrote about four of the top colleges in social media. Ones that “got” their audience and came up with a clever strategy that made just the right connection.

But, they’re not the only ones out there with good ideas. Think of all the social media campaigns you’ve looked at and thought: well, that had a lot of potential. The idea was clever, but the execution? Just not there.

Often what’s missed is one of three simple best practices:

1. Make it easy.
   Don’t ask you audience to adopt a new behavior or even create a new account if you don’t have to. Leverage the tools they already use. Sync with their behavior. Be as creative with technology as you are with strategy.
   
   Who does it well: Barnard invites its alumni to connect via a private network. But it doesn’t take a new account to join, alums can just leverage their existing Facebook credentials to enter. 
   
   Stanford University uses the technology in its students’ pockets. Last school year, Stanford released a free iPhone application called iStanford that allows students to register for classes, look up campus maps and be able view the location of their friends on a map – instant messaging them if need be.
   


2. Use a personal voice
   I would argue that voice is the single most important element of a successful social media execution. The medium rewards casual interactions. People feel more intrigued by – and connected to – brands that they sense are authentic and more genuine than their competition.
   
   Who does it well: University Nebraska-Lincoln is hands down the execution expert here. David Burge is the Associate Director of Admissions there and he’s also the host of the popular online video program Real Nebraska.
   
   Real Nebraska was developed as a recruitment tool and is available to prospective students through the admissions website, vodcast, and on YouTube. The program, in its third season, averages several hundred hits per day and was featured on the TODAY show in early March.
   
   Shot, edited, and staffed with entirely in-house talent, the three seasons of Real Nebraska have produced more than thirty 3-4 minute episodes highlighting student life. Importantly, they’re told in a friendly, relevant voice. Full of ready-to-pass on soundbites, subtle answers to those pesky questions you’re afraid to ask, and a real peer-to-peer authenticity


3. Seed the audience
   You’ve probably heard that the idea if you build it they will come is about as outdated as that Friendster login you’ve got written down on your old Trapper Keeper. It takes some work to get a new social media destination to critical mass. That’s where seeding comes in. It’s an intentional strategy for how you’ll get your first users.
   
   Often social media campaigns don’t have the kind of marketing dollars behind them that traditional programs might. So, it’s important to think about what you can do with what you have.
   
   For example, in 2006, CareerBuilder launched a fun little ecard destination called Monk-e-mail. Using a phone and their computer, visitors could customize a talking monkey and send it off to a friend’s inbox. With few resources to publicize the site, they looked for what assets they did have: the people who worked there. All the employees at CareerBuilder (~1500) and at their agency partner (~300) were asked to send n monk-e-mail card to 10 friends. There were no marketing dollars spent to promote this campaign.
   
   Since then? Over 100 million monk-e-mails cards have been shared.
   
   Who does it well: Capital University. You’ve probably seen me write about their Will You campaign before.
   
   (Short story: This was a great collaboration between the agency I work for and Kevin Sayers and his team at Capital. It was a show and tell of the school’s evolved brand that mapped in comments from Facebook; pulled in Tweets with a certain hashtag; grabbed photos from Flickr, etc., to get a whole campus of feedback.)
   
   But the part I didn’t talk about was the seeding. They didn’t assume that the site would naturally take off (even though there was quite a bit of curiosity on campus). They made sure to make some noise.
   
   They chalked the website address on campus sidewalks; Sharpied it onto white boards; saved it on screensavers; hung it on fliers. They gave sneak peeks to talk leaders and sent post cards to parents. In short, they bootstrapped a clever seeding campaign and got real results. 120,000 people visited the destination in the first three months. And 6% of the student population engaged by leaving a comment or a photo.

Top Four Colleges in Social Media

Colleges have been early adopters of social media. They've built Facebook pages and launched Twitter feeds much sooner than lots of their business-minded peers. Using blogs as an example:

• In 2007, 32% of colleges blogged vs. 8% of the Fortune 500 or even 19% of the much savvier Inc 500
• In 2008, they remained well ahead of that curve: 41% of colleges blogged vs.13% of the Fortune 500 and 39% of the Inc 500

But most still face the same challenge: they have a lot of content, but not a lot of engagement.

A number of colleges can count their Facebook fans in the tens of thousands. But the one with The Single Highest level of engagement only has about 300 fan posts. How do colleges translate this interest and affiliation to action? The answer seems to be a more targeted strategy. Not just testing these hot new tactics, but understanding the needs of their audience, setting clear objectives and then picking the tactic that makes the most sense to deliver results.

Four colleges have cracked the code:

1. SUNY. Their New Paltz campus wanted to increase the academic quality of the incoming class. Through their current outreach efforts, they were able to get on these high-quality student's short lists (and accept them); the challenge was convincing them that SUNY was the right final choice. They decided to find a way to make these students feel more connected to SUNY. The tactic was a private community called Cafe New Paltz.
   
   Students were invited to join through a tiered invitation system: First build relationships with the students we want most; then open it up to the entire class. Two people were dedicated to act as hosts and update content. That was essential to the strategy: consistently delivering valuable content. It gave students a compelling reason to spend time on the site (the average visit was a whopping 14 minutes) and delivered the desired results by increasing the percent of their “highest selectivity” group that made deposits from 30% to 37%. Read more at .eduGuru.


2. Wittenberg University. The project is called Witt Nation. It's a summer roadtrip that started with a defined goal: Build stronger relationships and reach out to like minds. 13 talk leaders traveled 8,000 miles to host events in 27 cities. On the road, they met more than 1,000 passionate fans - creating something that looks very much like the core of the Wittenberg brand: a unique place for unique people.
   
   Importantly, Wittenberg integrated the “on the road” experience with an online community - building out a storytelling space to connect with potential students and engage alums. The stories collected each summer will live on beyond the road trip. (I can't help it, I still think Plaid's is cooler!)


3. Mayo Medical School.Here's one that was actually inspired by all that testing of various social media tactics. Mayo admits a small, diverse freshman class. They come from around the country and around the world to embark on the toughest education challenge of their lives. Naturally, they're nervous and tend to know no one on Day 1 of the fall semester. So, orientation has always been an important focus for the school - get people acclimated to start them off right.
   
   By testing different tactics, they found that Facebook groups were more effective than their traditional orientation efforts. So, they tried refocusing all of their orientation efforts there. They earned 100% participation by pairing the with right (exclusive) content with the right experience. And, it worked. Not only did they notice better teamwork and integration in incoming classes, they were also able to refocus staff time and cost savings on curriculum.
   
   Barbara Porter, Assistant Dean for Academic and Student Affairs said “We used to worry about learning their names because we didn’t want them to feel isolated. Well, now they know everybody by the time they get here.” Hear her talk more about the program on YouTube.


4. University of Minnesota.The school's Carlson MBA program was struggling to meet its admission goals. The marketing team knew what they needed was to make direct connections with more potential students. Unfortunately, this kind of student - professional, adult, heads of household - is a little trickier to reach than your average incoming freshman. Even when events and programs were offered, many of their most-desired students didn't attend - they were too busy or couldn't make it at that particular time.
   
   Carlson used social media to overcome the barriers of communicating with non-traditional students. They created an account on Twitter to answer questions and engage potential students in real time (while, creating a searchable archive). The strategy worked. They increased the number of applications for the incoming class. See the feed.

For more on this topic, see the full Making Digital Connections in Higher Education presentation from the recent conference I was part of at Ologie.

Social site experience: The coolest thing.

Ologie does some pretty great work every day, but there are a few stand-out projects that I just can't seem to stop talking about. This is one of them. And, it's total Ologie: simple, compelling and smart as hell.

Here's the setup: Capital Univerisity is a private college here in Columbus. It's got a strong liberal arts core, surrounded by a number of practical, professional programs. Super engaged faculty; lots of hands on learning.

And, a brand that wasn't really keeping up with the offer.

At their best, brands set an expectation for an experience. They connect what a company does to what it says about itself. Capital was a project just like that - find the cool, geniune stuff and tell a tight little story about it.

Part of the launch of that brand was sharing the work with the students. We did that in part through a website called WillYou. It's got a great storytelling video, but then relies on the community for content.

So, the site maps in comments from the Facebook page; pulls in Tweets with a certain hashtag; grabs photos from Flickr, etc. Super simple show and tell with a whole campus of feedback.

Proving again that one of the best assets an agency can have is a bootstrappy programmer who's willing to take home a weighty print out of Facebook developer guidelines and mine for answers.

Couple of other social experience sites I've been talking about lately:

I love Pledge to End Hunger for its choose-your-own adventure levels of interaction and its conversational voice. It connects collaborators (and competitors) across the country and powers big initiatives, all with a call to action that seems more friendly than pitchy.

Stand Up & Eat is an entirely different kind of social. It powers WOM with its clever phrasings and unfortgetable facts. You'll tell someone about this site. (agencies unknown)

Commercials that entertain

These days, it's all about content, right? Not just pitching people on good old attributes and benefits, but engaging them. Getting them to spend some time with you. Getting them to talk about you.

Yeah, you've heard it before, all about the death of the :30 second spot, the rise of relationships, the era in which peers - and, as it turns out, dogs - rule.

But, how the heck do you make that all happen when your deliverable is, in fact, a :30 second spot? A couple of my favorite examples below. Ones that not only entertain, but also take on the core challenge of branding: showing who you're for and what you're about.

Pedigree "dogs rule": Connecting with dog owners over the simple joy of fetch. (TV version/Internet version):

Esurance "lucky today": Making connections over music. Does it get more "friendly" than that? (TV version/Internet version):

Commercials that are opening minds

Remember when this blog used to be about advertising? Like all the time?

Today, a break from all the social media preaching for a quick look at two of the best commercial campaigns of the new year: Kaplan and Carnival.

First, let's acknowledge: These are tough products to introduce to new audiences. We all have pretty firm (and final) opinions on online degrees and cruises. They're either for people like us - or a weird choice "other people" make.

In these two decidedly-emotional campaigns, Kaplan and Carnival get us to reconsider what we think we know. They connect with us in ways that inspire camaraderie and delight.

"The basic difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions." ::Donald Calne

Carnival did it with JOY. A sense of absolute playful fun - shown in moments you wish you were a part of:

Kaplan did it with that uniquely-collegiate sensation of DISCOVERY. A sense of reaching new conclusions, staking new ground, discovering new ways to think about old problems - shown in moments of heady philosophy: 

Rethinking Web strategy for nonprofits: The New Best Practices (3/3)

Build for the behavior your want. The way a website works has a powerful effect on how people interact with it. Beyond usability, it’s creating a place so compelling that it elicits curiosity and seemingly-inevitable action.

Consider two best practice examples:

Fundaising / External Behavior

WeCanBuildAnOrphanage.com is an old-fashioned barnraising. Three people rallying thousands to build a home for AIDS orphans. The site is aimed at grassroots fundraising – at raising money a brick, diaper, a bottle at a time:

But this is the compelling part of the build:

Don’t just write a check, drag and drop the contribution you want to make. Literally buy the bricks that will build the walls that protect the kids.

Community Building / Internal Behavior

My home agency actually worked on this one. The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio – a foundation investing in social change for women and girls - not only built a new Website, they built new expectations for how they’d interact with their community.

The entire site is built on the blog-engine Wordpress, giving them access to lots of free plugins and widgets (search, photo hosting, email updates) and a built-in content management and reporting system.

Smart use of resources to be sure. But, more than that, it’s creating a new behavior among the staff – knighting them all as bloggers who update the site consistently, sharing their work and time with their community. And, making it easy – or even obvious – to integrate with social tools, promoting events through email, sure, but also on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Laughing at ourselves: Tourism humor that works

Since writing a few posts on the “Not in Columbus” convention and tourism campaign, I’ve found myself in an ongoing offline debate about what works and what doesn’t in tourism advertising. Since I have little or no experience in the category, I’ve been educating myself the blogger way: search, click and play.

No question, it’s a tough business. Glamming up the decapitated mountains of West Virginia, differentiating one artsy desert community from another, making even a big-ass mall seem like a destination.

It’s no wonder we want to laugh at ourselves.

But doing humor well…. That’s tough. The campaigns that do it well deliver three key things consistently:

1. Communicate a vibe, a personality of the place
2. Quickly transition from a self-effacing laugh to the good stuff
3. Make it easy for you to see yourself in them (either in the story or in the place)

My two favorite examples of campaigns doing it well couldn’t be more different:

Minneapolis' Unconvention Campaign.
Sponsored by the city's groundswell - a group of independent organizations, businesses and people - and centered on the playing host to the Republican convention, this integrated print and Web campaign is laugh-out-loud funny and still delivers on all the criteria above.

 

See the full campaign

Maine's "It's Got to Be Maine" Campaign

Sure, it's one thing to do independent well. But, what about official advertising? The kind that has to go through channels and committees and compromises?

I like Maine's campaign because it survived the gauntlet relatively intact. It pokes a little fun at the state, but in a personal, inside-joke kind of way. And, once its campy humor stops you, the fast-paced montage communicates a wholly unexpected vibe. WKB Spier produced this campaign. You can see more examples in "the work" section of their Web site.

Social Media in Action: Learnings from a successful flop

You’ve probably all been in that dead-end social media pitch. The one where you have a perfect audience and an authentic story, but your client heads down one of three painful directions:

• The Social Kids Table: (Or the Intern Factor.) Assuming social is just for (irrelevant) kids, they offload the brand voice to the nearest 20-something and hope for the best


• The Slow Lane: The mere mention of social starts the weaving of a bureaucratic Web. Mediation, distrust, individual approvals. How can we protect ourselves from the people who want to engage with us?


• The Soapbox: Prepping for command and control. Spewing content into the vast social underbrush. Comments locked down. Brand Invincible.

It’s enough to convince you that social can’t succeed with an average business. That – as the blogging boys say – your brand can never be my friend.

But just when you’re about to give up: A completely unlikely brand throws itself entirely into social and comes out smarter and more authentic for it.

Breaking through: Online tools that convert browsers to fans

We've probably all found ourselves building Web applications we weren't quite sure about. Like, say, a Merman-a-gram or a hip-hop video featuring a personalized BBQ bottle getting down with its saucy self. (Yes, that is me on the bottle - courtesy of friend Joy.)

For every couple thousand of these little interactive wonders we chef up, there are a special few that manage to captivate an audience. That hold us from the first click until ... hey, where'd that last 10 minutes go?

Two recent examples to get lost in:

Edu-commerce

Closing a high-engagement sale (think selecting an insurance plan, buying a car, etc.) is always a challenge online. Lost is the sense of urgency, the gentle prodding by the "expert" in the room. Instead there's the ability to browse, to get frustrated, to wander off...

Imagine how much harder that sale is when you add in ignorance. An entirely new group of novice buyers entering a specialists category. Ouch.

Indie ad agency Woods Witt Dealy & Sons paired education with e-commerce to solve just such a problem for IRO Cycle.

Short story: Fixed gear bikes are to messengers as hush puppies are to hipsters. They're that one have-to-have item that broke through the barrier from enthusiast to fan. And, suddenly a whole bunch of folks who'd never wielded as much as a pedal wrench before wanted their own stripped down urban two-wheeled ride.

The IRO Cycle build-your-bike site takes shoppers into the grit of building a fixed gear. You pick your drivetrain, your rider, etc., but each choice shares both the lingo-ed "what" and the plain English "why."

Just about anyone could feel confident building a bike on this site. AND they'll walk away talking the talk.

(Congratulations to Kristen Milligan on this one. This is the very first press release find I've posted.)

Creativity Fix

How many online quizzes have you taken? A slew, I imagine. From What kind of care bear are you (?) to who's your mate? Half of them I click off long before they've diagnosed me.

Enter this gorgeous quiz from My Deco, a publisher tagged as a furniture fix for the decorati.

Every question is answered by selecting a conceptual image from a delightful mood board of ideas. Your ideal bedroom, favorite chair, color palette for your living room.

At the end, you get the verdict. Just what kind of design style you have. But, the experience of the quiz is enough to communicate the expertise of the publisher. Yeah, they get it. And, I can't wait to see more.

Spotted by creative co-worker Carrie on Creative Envy.

Breaking through: High-engagement agency marketing

Writing about Plaid's quest the other day made me think about the changing ways agencies are engaging potential clients, partners and employees. Increasingly, they're not settling for create-and-wait tactics, rather they're engaging best-fit audiences with can't-resist content and experiences.

Today's agency marketing is LESS like:

• Spray-and-pray mailers
• Dialing for dollars against generic lists of "creative decision makers"
• Pulpit positions at preaching-to-the-choir conferences
• If-you-build-it-they-will-come agency Web sites

It's MORE like:

• Creating opportunities to share ideas
• Spending time with like minds
• Building value around content
• Making the Web a personal experience

In our fast-moving, client-driven world, agency leaders are investing time and resources in changing the playing field. The results are ... pretty desirable. Check out these two examples.

Space150: Rip up your white paper, host an event

Thought leadership used to come in a 15-page white paper, complete with charming 12-point type and the occasional bar graph. Today, it comes in shared time and ideas. Agencies leveraging their partners  and networks to create immersive events on topics clients are actually interested in.

Check out Space150's DeepSpace Mobile workshop for a great example. 

Cole & Weber: Create deep dive industry experiences

Industry relevance was once a column of client logos. Today, it's a sense of the experience. Of speaking the language, having apropos theories, demonstrating a targeted approach.

Cole & Weber brings a great example to life on this micro site showcasing their experience in the wine category. It's peppered with thought leadership. Has a taste of quality, a note of investment and a nose of confidence.  (Metaphor - and post - officially exhausted).