I recently undertook the task of coming up with the simplest possible strategy. Here it is: 1) Find Conversations, 2) Host Conversations, and 3) Participate.
Of course, for most that wasn't really a manual they could sink their teeth into, so after having a lot of conversations I came up with a more robust set of five guiding principles:
1) Think relevant and dynamic. Come up with a few major segments of your audience, and make a few streams of content production that speak to that segment. Keep it going always.
2) Think chunky and sticky. Today's internet users are being bombarded; you have to catch their eye with images and video. At any point if you expose them to more information than they are asking for, you lose them.
3) Think real-time dialog. You should know when people are posting and asking questions, and you should respond in a relevant time period, which is as soon as possible.
4) Think showcase. Remember, people are primarily interested in themselves and their immediate social group, so you can capture your audience a person at a time by featuring them. Have them guest blog, post their pictures, have them tell their stories. They'll pay attention and share it with their friends.
5) Think call-to-action and conversion. Always be pushing them down the funnel. Social media participation is just another conversion point in a blended marketing environment. If you don't ask them to take the next step or view more information, they definitely won't.
In my opinion, probably the best example of thoughtful use of social media is the McCombs Top Major video competition. Rounding up employers as sponsors of a contest for each major to generate their own promotional video, each clip is produced, directed, and acted entirely by students. According to McCombs, "High school and college students are eight times more likely to watch peer-generated than corporate content on sites such as YouTube."
Elota Patton, professor of business communication and the energy behind the project, says, "As someone who teaches around this subject, I was well aware of how important social media is to young people, and I spent time thinking about how to capitalize on it." Brandon Kaupert, a junior BBA and special assistant to the project, followed that "students are a lot more receptive to generated content when it's from their peers. Your peers are a trusted source of information for big decisions like where to go to college. If it's genuine students marketing their programs in their own creative way, that's good marketing."
The strength of Next Top Major is not just that it's an intelligent way to generate relevant content on a shoestring budget, but that throughout the entire project they seem to understand that web users flock to familiarity. Part of being sticky is being familiar, proximal, and relevant. The project hit them all. Next Top Major is a spin off of "America's Next Top Model." My favorite video, the one produced for Accounting, was directed as a playful spin of a trailer for the popular movie 21. The music and direction in nearly all the videos are deep references to youth culture, and something only sharp college students or Tina Fey could dream up. Huong Le, a writer and co-director for the Accounting video, exclaims, "If people are familiar with what they see, they are more likely to keep it in mind moving forward." Kaupert expounds, "It's easier for someone to relate to something if it is already something they already know. If it's just an out there original idea, it might be great but people might not relate."
Alright, so set up your Facebook Page, Twitter, and YouTube accounts, and then success, right?
There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that social media can have considerable impact on important things like yield, retention, and giving. Elota Patton, the founder of Next Top Major, was inspired by the fact that a daughter of a friend chose to go to the University of Missouri largely because of a student made video on YouTube she found compelling. Rachel Reuben, at SUNY New Paltz, says a friend that heads up recruitment can trace a matriculating international student worth around 40K a year from a reply on Twitter. Stories like this are abound, but there's very little hard data at this point.
