Toby Beresford

Founder Rise.global@tobyberesford

Marketing via the crowd

How personal dashboards can be used to transform university staff & students into effective social media ambassadors

Social media is being used across all university life

• Social Life• Staff recruitment• University Brand• Academic Dissemination• Student recruitment

In the US, 2/3rds of prospective students use social media to research college choice

A pattern mirrored around the world

On more than one social media platform

Inevitably there are winners and losers

Using current staff & students as influencers is key to social media success

"It's useful to talk to people who are already at university and you can use social media to get in touch. I'd say you should take on board family and friends' opinions, but the people who are already there are the people who know the most.”

Emily Dring, 23, is going into her fourth year studying French at Oxford University

How do we position a social media ambassador program?

Strategy Question

How NOT to do a social media ambassador program (1)

Dangle a reward for whoever tweets / posts the most with a hashtag

inauthentic content and spamming

not sustainable post campaign end

channels themselves limited in reach

How NOT to do a social media ambassador program (2)Measure everyone and tell slackers to ‘buck up their ideas’

top down measurement approaches are disliked by staff (employees) and are ineffective among students (non-employees)

a basic leaderboard will only encourage the top 10% whilst disincentivising everyone else

How NOT to do a social media ambassador program (3)Focus on promoting brand content not building channels

If the channels are weak then even if they do post branded messages, they won’t be heard.

A good social media channel isn’t simply an amplifier of another channel – it is unique in itself

Key insight

Channels matter more than messages

Why? Multiple channels compete for attention across the algorithms

Facebook Instagram Youtube Twitter

Bath Bristol Southampton Edinburgh Keele Brunel Durham

To win, your staff & student channels should loom largest

Facebook Instagram Youtube Twitter

Bath Bristol Your University Keele Brunel Durham

Good social media ambassador program

Grows channel capacity first

Tactical Question

How do we deliver a successful social media ambassador program?

Social Ambassador Program

Registration

Capacity

Content

Registration

Encourage staff & students to opt-in to your program using their personal social media accounts.

Avoid “empty bar” problem by pre-populating program with top 20 or so known ambassadors

Capacity

Provide / recommend the right tools for staff & students to create effective social media channels

Offer access to training and resources as necessary

Content

Offer a content feed for optional re-posting of university material

Create conversation points such as hashtags

Notify ambassadors via the capacity building channel

What tools would you use to implement this today?

Implementation Question

Social Ambassador Program Tools Stack

Personal Social Dashboard

Personal Social

Analytics

TeamSocial

Analytics

Awards & Recognition

ContentCuration & Scheduling

CommunityCoaching & Training

Personal Social Dashboard

Staff & Students Opt-In to program

Weekly alerts

Integrated with analytics & recognition program

Content curation & scheduling

Discover new content relevant to their channel

Schedule curated postings

Access content feed of university news

Personal Social Analytics

Track social impact

Get a relevant social score card

Compare my progress over time

Team Social Analytics

Benchmark against others in the team

Track progress as a team / university

Compare progress over time

Iterate design of teams / divisions / scores

Awards & Recognition

Celebrate progress and achievements

Permanent markets of success

Coaching & Training

Automate training suggestions

Maintain a library of learning materials, best practice & usage policies

Community

Discuss experiences and best practices

Connect with other ambassadors

UN Social 500

“The UN Social 500 really helps bring us together, fosters better understanding across our organizations and as a result, strengthens our individual and collective work to have a positive impact on the world.”

Kent Page, UNICEF

www.unsocial500.com

Does the main university social media channel need to be mature? Up and running so prospects have somewhere to go deeper but not necessarily all singing and all dancing.

What’s your Klout score Toby? What is average on UN Social 500? 60, around 40

How can this relate specifically to internal communications within an organisation? Same process but use an internal private board, add in your own metrics

Workshop Q&A [notes]

Seems a little bit like Edurank, but for individuals within an institution rather than the institutions themselves? Yes similar approach. We benchmark against it monthly, we look at what successful institutions are doing and see where we can improve. Exactly the same behaviour we see on Rise boards. We can seed content by doing “how did you do it?” interviews on top climbers.

Primarily this is about engaging staff as they have a vested interest in promoting the uni, does this progress also work with students? Yes because it is positioned as being a benefit for them – learn how to create an effective social media presence for yourself.

Benefit for the students is that we are improving their Klout and teaching them effective social media skills? Yes though be sure to position it so that score and rank is an indicator of progress in the main goal – content & engagement on social media – not an end in itself.

It’s not an approach where you can give them content, difficult to provide content that’s relevant to all? We suggest you include a content curation tool like www.cronycle.com and serve your content via a cronycle feed to encourage them to repost.

We find students aren't really fussed about Cred.ly badges. They rarely collect them. A few love them though and stick them on Linkedin etc. Badges are part of a program, they provide a permanent record of achievement. Not everyone may want them but some value them highly.

We're putting a lot of effort into educating departments and schools to create engaging content. We're not at a stage of ranking them just yet, and think that it would turn people away who already fairly timid about having a Social Media presence.Is there a way to push past the ranking stigma? Using it a as a tool for motivation?Yes, you can use Rise simply for personal analytics – use the privacy option “Private – Score Only” and it will show depts / indivs their score and history but not their relative rank on the leaderboard

Links to services mentioned

• Personal Social Dashboard – try as a follower/player – www.rise.global – create your social ambassador program - www.risefuse.com

• Content curation & feeds– Paper.li, flipboard.com, www.cronycle.com , anderspink.com, scoop.it, hootsuite.com,

buffer.com, rebelmouse.com• Personal Social Analytics

– Rise.global, Sumall.com, klout.com, analytics.twitter.com, linkedin.com/sales/ssi• Team Social Analytics

– Rise.global• Awards & recognition

– www.credly.com• Coaching & Training

– Moodle.com, edmondo.com, wordpress.com, blackboard.com• Community

– Slack.com, hipchat.com, yammer.com, www.muut.com , disqus.com

Try Rise

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Next Steps

• If you’re interested in setting up a pilot program then contact Nick and Toby at Rise. We’ll help you get your trial up and running:– hello@rise.global

• If you want to have a go at setting up your program yourself, please feel free to try:– www.risefuse.com