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.

 

   In a nutshell, LEEP is a pioneering model of higher education that fuses liberal education with intense world, workplace, and personal experiences. The key is that all students — rather than just the cream — will be LEEP-ified, through internships, alumni mentorships and research opportunities.

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.

 

   * Recharge the LEEP Facebook page. Link to stories that will provoke response (perhaps about students or alumni who can boast LEEP-ish success in their professional lives).

    * 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.

 

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.

 

 

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

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.

The bottom line is “frivolity” sells. As I look over our Facebook postings it’s clear we’re churning the site to remain fresh and relevant, but the posts about professors’ research or students’ academic accomplishments, as valuable and as necessary as they are, seem to earn little interest. Too many posts receive few or no comments, and maybe a handful of Likes or Dislikes at best. The hard truth is that the “softer” items revolving around pop culture or life on campus inspire engagement. To continue protecting our brand as a serious academic institution while cultivating active participation for the fun stuff going on at Clark will require us to be committed to posting a variety of items that are as diverse as our audience.

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.

B+  Academics C-  Athletics B  Campus Dining A-  Campus Housing A  Campus Strictness B-  Computers B+  Diversity C+ Drug Safety C  Facilities B-  Girls

N/A  Greek Life B  Guys C-  Health & Safety C+ Local Atmosphere B  Nightlife A   Off-Campus Dining B+ Off-Campus Housing A  Parking B- Transportation D+  Weather

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.