FINAL PROJECT from CroyK
The Recovering Journalist
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Clark's LEEP of faith
Clark University is a complicated, some might even say contradictory, place.
We
are small (about 2,000 undergrads and 1,000 graduate students), but we seek to
compete with bigger, more prominent colleges and universities.
We
are urban, located in the heart of Worcester’s poorest neighborhood; a
marketing challenge to be sure.
We
place great weight on the liberal arts at a time when the study of liberal arts
is increasingly under fire as a waste of money in an economy where science and
technology skills are highly prized.
But to
President David Angel’s credit, even at a time when the financial seas are
choppy, he is positioning Clark to be a player on the higher-education
landscape. Under his direction, and following years of discussion and planning,
on February 29, 2012 — Leap Year Day — Clark launched a new education
initiative called LEEP (Liberal Education and Effective Practice). The event
included round-table “conversations” among students, faculty and administrators
to introduce the tenets of LEEP, and there was fun, too, including an
opportunity for participants to leap from a platform into a high-jump mat
(captured on camera). Even President Angel made the jump.
So
where do we stand eight months removed from the LEEP launch? How is LEEP
resonating in the groundswell, and, more importantly, are there things we can
be doing better moving forward?
In
the way Clark University imparts information, we must engage a diverse audience
constituting students, their parents, alumni, donors and the media. As such, we
routinely hit on a number of thematic cylinders: academic accomplishment,
return on investment, contributing to Clark, nostalgia, Clark in the news, etc.
The
same goes for LEEP. The vast audience demographic needs to be fed. Last month I
was chatting with an alumnus from the class of 1975, and he said, “I don’t get
this LEEP thing. You guys need to do a better job of explaining it to people
like me.”
Clark’s
website has several pages devoted to LEEP that are a wealth of information, but
engagement isn’t strong.
The
analytics reveal that in the last month, our LEEP page has received 2,418
unique page views, a fairly robust number at a time of year when high school
seniors are exploring college options. More encouraging is the average time
spent on the page — two minutes and nine seconds, a relatively healthy span
that suggests the page is a destination and is at least being scanned rather than
clicked away from.
The
second most page views, 399, are for the LEEP Scholarships page, where students
and parents can learn about full scholarships being offered under the aegis of
LEEP. The popularity of this page suggests that monetary considerations are of
high importance to families, and using SEO strategies (pairing “LEEP” “Clark”
and “scholarships” in stories, for instance) will increase traffic.
Other
sub-pages are less visited: 40 page views for the LEEP Center, for instance
(the center is housed in an existing building, but plans are in the works for a
new structure to be built), and 132 views for the LEEP Pioneers, who are the 46
students who completed an array of summer internships and projects that put the
LEEP theories to the test. These students have also begun VIDEO blogging (120
page views, and an impressive 3:57 spent on the page), but the comments are
sparse and generally along the lines of “Good job!” (perhaps written by
parents?).
LEEP
does have a Facebook page, but activity on it has slowed to a crawl— it's rarely posted to and sports only 139 total Likes.
It
gets worse.
Since
the page’s launch in mid-February — 33 posts in all — it has generated a grand
total of zero comments by anyone other than Clark Communications and Marketing employees
The number of engaged users rarely breaks double digits. The instances when that number exceeded 100 coincide with significant events such as coverage of the LEEP Day launch (170) and a post about the LEEP “conversations” between administrators and students (158). But since early March, without an event-driven LEEP calendar, engagement has essentially flatlined.
On Social Mention, LEEP registers 0% strength and 1:1 in Sentiment, hardly a public mandate. There is no dedicated Twitter account. Ugh.
The
LEEP videos on the Clark YouTube page have earned respectable viewership. A
survey of 10 videos reveals the number of views as high 690 for a video in
which students discuss their First-Year Intensives (an attractive topic for
incoming students) to as low as 12 for a video about a student who interned as
a script reader in the Comedy Department at CBS in Los Angeles. But here’s the
rub: both videos received zero likes and dislikes, and no comments. As I
mentioned in the first portion of my monitoring project, we have created an
impressive stable of videos that are being viewed passively. Engagement has
become a mountain we have yet to scale.
Clark
knows the story it should be telling about LEEP, and the university has done a
terrific job of marketing the initiative in a variety of ways, including
through traditional media an on its web sites. But as I review years of files
about how best to promote LEEP, I realize we have to develop a clearer social-media strategy, which leads me to these recommendations:
* Increasingly, we have to fashion our social media presence for
mobile users. This has been a struggle for the web team, which sees the need
but has been unable to convince the decision makers to make it a priority. But
as I noted in the first portion of this project, 60 percent of viewership on
the Clark YouTube page comes from mobile apps. That will only increase. The
mobile tsunami reached land a long time ago.
* We must cultivate more alumni buy-in to LEEP. The comment from the
Class of ’75 alum is disconcerting. A major piece of LEEP involves alumni both
as mentors and as providers of internships and, hopefully, jobs to Clark
students. A LEEP-themed issue of the alumni magazine to introduce and explain
the concept is under consideration. Even if it seems counterintuitive to use
traditional media, we would direct readers of the printed page to social media
channels to further the LEEP conversation.
* Think viral. Yes, our videos, blogs and tweets are in service to the institution — but they don’t always have to be so institutional. We could be a little less safe. Our LEEP videos are well-made and informative, but according to the analytics they aren’t fostering much engagement. Recruiting more student filmmakers could help.
* While LEEP is geared for students, the other truly crucial audience is parents. There is no one on earth who wants to see a college student succeed more than his or her parents, so we must not neglect to market the promise of LEEP to these key stakeholders. Once LEEP is established over time, getting some grateful parents of gainfully employed graduates in front of the camera would be a wise move.
* Tweet more. Make our Twitter feed a “destination.” Of course, let’s start by creating a LEEP-dedicated Twitter account.
* Recruit Clark psychology Prof. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett to provide insight into the patterns and thought processes of “emerging adults,” that group of 18- to 29-year-olds who take longer to “launch” their lives. Arnett’s research and expertise in this area are renowned, and his Clark University Emerging Adulthood Poll has drawn national attention from The Wall Street Journal, USA Today and other media outlets. Arnett should be a regular contributor to LEEP discussions.
·
* Each weekly editorial meeting, which I lead, will now have a social-media component, and regular updates about LEEP marketing strategies, including social-media presence.
* Each weekly editorial meeting, which I lead, will now have a social-media component, and regular updates about LEEP marketing strategies, including social-media presence.
It’s important to remember that LEEP is still a very young
initiative — the Class of 2015 is the first to have any real exposure to it —
so the relative lack of social-media presence is understandable. As the LEEP
model gains traction, we can plan and execute the appropriate courses of action
so that it will break through in the groundswell.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Talk the talk, and walk the walk
One of the toughest
things for a manager to do is give up control.
It’s easy to want to do
it all yourself, to assume that you know better. Imagine the dire consequences
of promoting open communications among employees: ceding even a bit of authority
can feel a little like handing the asylum keys to the inmates. Allow them the freedom to
talk without you in the room, and the next thing you know they’ll be staging a company-wide revolt!
But authors Charlene Li
and Josh Bernoff insist that trusting your employees to engage in conversation
is exactly what a good manager does.
The measures they outline in “Groundswell” to enhance a company’s bottom line
by engaging and energizing customers will prove useless unless the employees believe in those same initiatives. That’s why Chapter 11, “The groundswell inside your
company,” is so crucial to understanding all the precepts that come before it:
remove employee buy-in and you’ve disturbed the critical Jenga piece that keeps
the structure standing.
I loved the authors’
example of Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation, the army of frontline sales associates
who employ their own network to exchange ideas, support one another, and
suggest efficiencies — all which ultimately benefit the customer. This was a brilliant
move for a large, far-flung company whose stores weren’t talking with one
another. Best of all, it was a bottom-up idea that began with lower-level
employees, rather than a top-down dictate from the CEO (Groundswell, 217).
Let’s face it, having the big boss orchestrating employee conversation is a
little like having your parents plan your dates
Some experts note that
engaging employees at work improves their lives outside the office, which is a
reasonable assumption. Being valued at the place where you spend (at least)
eight hours a day can only have positive ramifications on your home life.
Bell Canada’s ID-ah! (great name) initiative of having employees select the best ideas generated from within their ranks smartly employs the let’s-vote-on-everything culture exemplified by “American Idol” (Groundswell, 225), but it only works because the company makes clear that each vote matters. That’s no small thing: consider in this, or any, election season the vast number of people who stay away from the polls because they believe they have no voice. Local elections often struggle to generate single-digit participation from the electorate, despite the fact that local politicians have more direct influence on our lives than their counterparts in Washington.
ID-ah! only works
because employees’ suggestions are actually being used. In the first year and a
half of ID-ah!, 6,000 Bell Canada employees voted on ideas, 27 ideas were
“harvested” and 12 were implemented (Groundswell, 225). Not only did management
listen, but they acted — they energized their internal groundswell so that the
company can better energize the groundswell occupied by its customers. That’s
truly transformative.
In Chapter 12, Bernoff
and Li describe a prototypical shoe company marketing executive accessing the
groundswell in nearly every aspect of her day. Some of their scenario is
speculative, given that the book was published in 2008. Today in 2012, we know
they nailed it — from the woman’s reliance on the newest technologies, to the
way she gauges public input before launching a new shoe color.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
What's the buzz about Clark?
Warning: Many of these screenshots are difficult to read. I have been wrestling with Blogger for much of the night and morning, and Blogger is winning. No idea why I can't size these images -- none of my techie coworkers can figure it out either. For some reason my computer will not talk to the program. My apologies for the poor visuals.
Choice of subject
Choice of subject
Clark University is ripe for an examination of its social media strategy. I’ve chosen Clark as the subject of my study for a number of
reasons. First, Clark’s success in attracting and retaining students is in part
linked to how well those students — all of them raised in the digital age — are
communicated with via social media, and how they communicate back to the
university. Second, our outreach to alumni and the cultivation of Clark’s
reputation in the media also contribute to raising the university’s profile and
inspiring folks to give to their alma mater. The challenge here is that alumni
are not universally inclined to seek out social media platforms to remain
connected, especially older alumni who continue to express a preference for
print vehicles such as the alumni magazine.
And third, as a member
of Clark’s Marketing and Communications team, part of my job is to help ensure
a robust presence for the university in social media circles — so this project
is, in a sort of curious way, an act of self-preservation. No, my job doesn’t
hinge on it, but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to stand back a bit, objectively assess
what we’re doing well, what we can do better, and put those lessons to
practical use by recommending effective change to the vice president of MarComm.
Where
we stand
Clark University makes
use of the typical social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and student blogs known collectively as Clark Diaries. Examining the activity surrounding Clark on social media, I’m seeing
some patterns emerge.
Clark has a reputation
as being a serious place, which may explain why when we Facebooked the appearance
of Ali Fedotowski ’06, best known as “The Bachelorette,” when she
spoke on campus a couple of years ago, the post received about 70 responses,
most of them from alumni complaining that her notoriety for such a frivolous
pursuit diminishes Clark’s reputation. That being said, in the last month, this
item about Clark’s new Quidditch team received 46 comments, by far the most of any
other post within the last few months.
Clark is making some inroads on sites like Pinterest, including for our pioneering education model known as Liberal Education and Effective Practice (LEEP). The inroads are tentative right now, but I see potential on this site.
If you look at this graph from Google Trends charting the online traffic for Clark over the last few years you’ll notice two spikes—in 2005 and in 2009. I’m investigating the reason for the earlier spike, but I think it’s safe to assume that the 2009 peak relates to the worldwide attention the university received that year for the 100th anniversary celebration of Sigmund Freud’s lectures at Clark, his only United States speaking engagement.
Can we make more hay of our
historic association with Freud?
We use a number of
social-media platforms at Clark, including our own YouTube channel. Here are
the stats over the course of the last month. I’m inclined to believe that 7,214
views and 10,300 minutes watched are impressive, but I’m disturbed by the
engagement stats which are, to be generous, paltry. Two total comments in a
month! Our videos are being passively viewed, but not inspiring reaction. We
need to be more dynamic.
Drilling down even
further reveals a gender disparity in our viewership: 67.3% female, 32.7% male
(enrollment is 59% female to 41% male). Which leads me to this question: Are we
neglecting men when we choose our video topics, or are we just being true to
our student ratio?
One critical take-away is under the category “view referrals,” which finds that 60% of Clark YouTube viewership came from mobile apps and direct traffic.
Clark’s following on Twitter (@ClarkMatters) is about 2,000 people, a nice solid number. But with only 1,741 tweets sent out by the university in the 3 years since it’s been on Twitter, there clearly needs to be more engagement.
The Clark student demographic
— young, educated, social-media savvy — makes it an ideal source for feedback.
One of the most invaluable resources is the twice yearly Online Buzz Report
compiled by our web team, which monitors 15 different sites like collegeconfidential, yelp, cappex, and unigo for chatter about Clark. Rather
than get into too much heavy detail about what students perceive as the
university’s strengths and weaknesses, I’ll simply say that we rate highly on
academic quality and for having a friendly and accepting student body, but we
do poorly in the areas of location and personal safety. To be blunt, the Main
South neighborhood is a marketing challenge (no, I did not say nightmare).
Check out Clark’s grades on CollegeProwler.com.
|
Predictions/recommendations
We are in the
groundswell, where transparency rules. So a comment like this:
“Clark has the most
incredible and dedicated professors EVER!” (collegeprowler.com)
Can easily be followed
by a comment like this:
“Clark’s campus is small
and in the middle of a nasty dirty city.” (studentsreview.com)
No amount of social media expertise will finesse
opinion in your favor. But that’s okay. Nobody can control social media; we can
only enhance our presence on it and increase our engagement with users.
While this isn’t the final report for this
project, I have come away with some early recommendations:
·
Increasingly, we have to fashion our social
media presence for mobile users.
·
Think viral. Yes, our videos, blogs and tweets
are in service to the institution — but they don’t always have to be so institutional. We could be a little less
safe.
·
We need to market Worcester better. Yes, we must
be honest about the strengths and weaknesses of the city, but we can’t let the
conversation get away from us.
·
Tweet more. Make our Twitter feed a
“destination.” Also, bloggers shouldn't just be students, but faculty as well, including the president.
Look, our social profile is not nearly as strong as it could be, judging by our stats on Social Mention.
I am encouraged by Clark’s efforts to get the
conversation started among incoming students, and with the university, before
they arrive on campus, such as with Facebook groups targeted to each new class.
Now that we’ve got them for four years, we have to figure out how we can best
continue the conversation once they leave.
Labels:
Ali Fedotowski,
Clark Diaries,
Clark University,
college prowler,
Facebook,
Flickr,
Freud,
Google Trends,
LEEP,
marketing,
Pinterest,
Quidditch,
Social Media Monitoring project,
Social Mention,
Twitter,
YouTube
Sunday, October 21, 2012
It’s beginning to look a lot like … No, not yet!
Please don’t hate me
for the topic of this post: Christmas.
Old-timers like me have to reconcile our distaste for “early Christmas” with the reality that it’s a necessary evil for retailers. Social media actually makes the process a little more palatable. It’s so much easier to click away from an online site than it is to avoid a shopping mall with “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” playing on an endless loop for a month or more.
Like it or not (and I suspect you don't), Christmastime is here.
I know, I know … TOO
SOON! We haven’t even made it through Halloween. (I’m a purist. Don’t even
mention Christmas until after the Thanksgiving turkey’s bones have been picked
clean.)
But here’s the truly
scary thing. Yuletide decorations are already being spotted in some stores, and
the marketing fever to attract holiday shoppers, well, that’s practically
become a year-round pursuit.
Take, for instance,
Christmas.com. Not only is the site teeming with gift ideas for every human
being based on personality type and interest (and wallet size), but it also
includes options for charitable giving. When I visit this site — trust me, for
research purposes only — I can’t help but wonder if some enterprising person
snatched up this url when it first became available and held it for ransom to
the highest bidder. Merry Christmas, suckers!
Are we in the spirit
yet?
Marketing Christmas
used to be simple in a brick-and-mortar world. Drape some tinsel on the display
cases, pass out the Santa hats to staff, turn on the Nat King Cole, and fling
open the doors on Black Friday. Today, the process is much more complicated,
and a little delicate. Smart business owners must pay attention to their SEO presence and decide on a social media strategy to make sure that folks are led to their wares. Macy’s department
store, the granddaddy of holiday shopping, shows remarkable restraint on its
home page, but plug “Christmas” into their search engine and you’re instantly
traveling their “Holiday Lane” site.
Those who, like me,
don’t want to think about Christmas until December probably don’t own a retail
business. It’s easy to be a Grinch when your livelihood doesn’t rely on making
the majority of your sales in one relatively compressed span of time between
the fourth Thursday in November and December 25th.
If I was a retailer who
wasn’t social media savvy, I’d start with the basics by sending my preferred customers season’s greetings through a social media platform like
Twitter and advertise my best deals. Yes, there’s still nothing like receiving
a paper greeting card through the mail, but the practice is declining (the
trees thank you) and much to the U.S. Postal Service’s chagrin people
eventually will veer to online-only correspondence.
Today, even Santa Claus is receiving advice from social media experts. And, apparently, he's getting pretty adept at it.
Old-timers like me have to reconcile our distaste for “early Christmas” with the reality that it’s a necessary evil for retailers. Social media actually makes the process a little more palatable. It’s so much easier to click away from an online site than it is to avoid a shopping mall with “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” playing on an endless loop for a month or more.
Like it or not (and I suspect you don't), Christmastime is here.
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