Social Media &Advancement:

Results 2013

mStoner.com

HuronConsultingGroup.com

CASE.org

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) is a professional association serving educational institutions and the advancement professionals who work on their behalf in alumni relations, communications, development, marketing, and allied areas.

mStoner is a marketing communications agency that works with education institutions on strategy and development of websites, social media, brand, and print.

Overview• Fourth annual survey• Sponsors: CASE, Huron Consulting, mStoner• Method: survey mailed to 18,144 CASE members;

tweeted by Michael Stoner and other mStoner team members

• 1,080 response (a 6% response rate)

Our initial survey, conducted in 2010, was the first large-scale attempt to research how education institutions used social media in external relations, marketing, and advancement

DemographicsNational originNational originUS/Canada 89%International 11%Institutional typeInstitutional typePrivate 54%Public 45%(U.S. only) What type of institution do you work at?(U.S. only) What type of institution do you work at?Doctoral/research university 32%Baccalaureate (four-year) college 23%Master’s college or university 17%Independent elementary/secondary school 16%Associate’s (two-year) college 4%Other 8%Which best describes your unit (immediate department or division?Which best describes your unit (immediate department or division?Communications 45%Alumni Relations 38%Development (including Annual Fund) 36%Marketing 26%Advancement Services 22%Enrollment/Admissions 4%Other 10%

Primarily U.S., but some international; split between public and private.

The responses represent a demographic cross-section of CASE membership.

Because most CASE members are fundraisers, institutional communicators (PR, media relations, marketing, publications, and periodicals), and alumni relations professionals, that is the focus here (the views of enrollment and admissions professionals are underrepresented).

We collect this data so we can track differences from year to year to see if any of the differences we see in the substantive data might be influenced by changes here – and so far these demographics of respondents have been constant.

Social media “traditions”• Top goals: engage alumni, strengthen brand image.• Most commonly used channels: Facebook, Twitter,

LinkedIn, and YouTube. But: year-over-year growth has flattened, except for LinkedIn.

• Management diversity: social media is centralized at some institutions & highly dispersed at others. This diversity of management shows no sign of diminishing.

• Most (83%) departments handle their own social media activities, usually with input from others.

• Comms/PR depts. most likely responsible for creating, monitoring compliance with, & enforcing, institutional SM policies (73%).

What’s new in 2013• SM is increasingly woven into campaigns,

particularly for alumni engagement and brand/marketing campaigns.

• The majority of respondents say their institution uses SM for fundraising & development, often to update donors on institutional news, solicit annual fund donations, and thank donors. Facebook predominates.

• We use SM more commonly to connect with current students & their parents, prospective students & their parents, and faculty & staff.

• Facebook still predominates, but the SM landscape is diversifying, with channels such as Instagram and Pinterest gaining share of voice.

• Use of Flickr and blogs declined, as did the use of an institutional website that aggregates social content.

• More institutions are investing in SM as a communication tool for higher education, as evidenced by increasing average FTE in this area.

What’s new in 2013

The ChangingLandscape

Audiences

2013Growth or shrinkage

Alumni 97% 2%Current Students 89% 20%Faculty and Staff 86% 20%Friends and Supporters 82% 1%Prospective Students 74% 18%Donors 72% 2%Parents of Current Students 67% 16%Parents of Prospective Students 58% 13%Media 51% -2%Employers 42% 2%High School Guidance Counselors 31% 8%Government Organizations 25% 2%

Use of social media is growing quickly for outreach to certain audiences but it’s flat for others

Audiences:

We saw much higher rates of use of at least one form of social media to reach certain audiences:

• current students and their parents• prospective students and their parents• and faculty and staff

but it’s flat for others: Media, Government Organizations, Employers, High School Guidance Counselors

Signs of recognizing where it is most welcome and rewarding?

Note also: donors is flat. More on that to come.

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

YouTube

Blogs

Flickr

Web.edu

Vendor community

Home-built community

Geosocial

Pinterest

Instagram

Google+

Tumblr

-25 0 25 50 75 100

0

0

0

0

-2

7

-1

-9

-13

-13

-2

7

2

0

9

22

27

28

15

20

32

34

38

42

71

75

82

96

% Use % Growth

Channel use/growth

This chart shows the percentage who say they use each social media channel (at all), and the lighter green shows how this has changed since last year.

The lower section shows the social media channels we asked about this year for the first time.

While Flickr shrinks, Instagram grows; Pinterest and Tumblr may be taking some of the share that Blogs held in the past

Responding to options• Many recommend a thoughtful approach about whether to adopt

new social media channels:“Attempting to be everywhere by jumping on the latest platform without a clear sense of purpose is wasted effort. This is a case where more is not better.”

• A sense of how the platform connects with your audiences is key:“Research where your audience is, and survey where they want to see you! If no one is on Google+, then it is a waste of time to add this to your efforts.”

“Targeting platform to audience—i.e. current students via Facebook, alumni via LinkedIn and Twitter, integrating strategy and selecting what platforms make sense and what platforms not to utilize, don't be on all platforms in small ways, strategically select key platforms and focus resources on those few.”

Responding to options• Respondents also caution that new tools mean a need for more

dedicated human resources:“Don't bite off more than you can chew. If you can't dedicate personnel to manage the tool properly (e.g. answering @-replies on Twitter) then don't use the tool.”

• However, one quick action may be necessary when a new channel appears:

“Across four of our platforms—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest—someone else owned our name. Our lesson learned is squat on your name on all platforms. Even if you don't plan to do anything with it, you should own your name.”

But: “If you reserve it, you'd better be ready for followers. We signed up for [our name] on Twitter to hold it and suddenly found ourselves with 1200 followers without marketing our presence at all. We had to get a communication strategy together, quickly.”

For instance: Instagram• Early institutional adopters of Instagram report good results:

“Students love our use of Instagram and love when we ‘regram’ their photos.”

“We had a very successful Instagram scavenger hunt as part of homecoming. Our goal was 10 teams, but we had 22 teams of students and staff upload over 1500 photos to Instagram and generate a huge buzz on campus. This was the first time we leaned heavily on Instagram, and found that it was welcomed by the campus community as a new social platform on which to engage.”

• Careful planning helps to capitalize on a new channel’s inherent buzz:

“When deploying a new platform/tool, think before you act. And pick your launch time wisely. For example: we launched Instagram with the beginning of the school year. This was a great time to garner followers as the first years began and people were in the ‘fresh start’ mindset.”

• Respondents also note advantages in the way Instagram fits in with existing tools:

“Just try it! Last year, we launched our Instagram channel. To date, we have not promoted it anywhere on our institutional website. It has only been promoted organically via Twitter integration. However, our follower count has spiked and, more importantly, it has become one of our most engaging channels with an average engagement rate of more than 7% per post.”

Current students enjoy it.

The wisdom in general is that you should be prepared to tailor yourself to each platform and not recycle all the same material, but Instagram seems to be a bit of an exception:

Low-hanging fruit in that it integrates relatively well with other platforms.

Website 90%Email 88%Social media 79%Blogging 27%SEO or search engine marketing 24%Internal publications 68%Direct print mail 54%

External publications (not your institution’s pubs) 22%

Outreach and marketing at events 59%Radio 7%

TV 5%Other 3%

Promotion & marketingWe use mostly online tools to promote your social media initiatives, but also many offline ones.

Up 7% from 2012

Up 4% from 2012

Social woven into campaigns

2013

2012 41

52

Roughly what percentage of your campaigns* included social channels?

*campaign defined as “a focused effort to achieve goals using a variety of channels appropriate to the results sought”

In the past two years we probed if (and how) institutions were using social media in campaigns, which wedefine as “a focused effort to achieve goals using a variety of channels appropriate to the results sought.”

Note that this definition can (and sometimes does) include efforts to raise money, but is intended to acknowledge that social media is often incorporated into initiatives that have objectives other than just fundraising.

Social media in fundraising

Social use in fundraisingDoes your institution use SM to raise money?

20%

39%

41%

yes no unsure

Does your institution use SM for stewardship or donor communication?

18%

47%

35%

yes no unsure

Social use in fundraisingFor which types of development and fundraising activities does your institution use social media?

Keeping donors up to date on institution news 77%Annual fund solicitations 58%Thanking donors for their contributions 52%Keeping donors up to date on campaign or fundraising news

49%

Inviting donors to donor events 48%Annual fund follow-up reminders 30%Referring to or reminding about solicitations received through non-social channels

25%

Capital campaign solicitations 14%Other 6%

This year for the first time we asked a focused set of questions on fundraising.

So we see about half (of those who can speak confidently on the subject) are using it to raise money or as part of donor stewardship.

This provides our baseline, and we will be interested to see if it increases over time, as we saw for campaigns generally.

Most successful channelsMost successful for fundraising efforts

Most successful for yourunit's goals overall

Facebook 80% 90%Twitter 34% 49%YouTube 18% 22%

LinkedIn 15% 31%

The top four most successful tools overall and for fundraising efforts are the same, but respondents are less confident of the success of the tools for fundraising at this point, and LinkedIn is notably less useful for fundraising than for overall goals.

Funds raised are small ...Approximately how much money did your institution raise through social media channels in FY12?

Up to $10,000 67%$10,001 – $50,000 21%$50,001 – $100,000 6%$100,001 or more 6%

Relative to the sizes of the institutions represented here and how much they raise overall, however…

But, donations are not a primary outcome for social media, as we’ll see in a minute.

Metrics

Donations are not primary outcomes for socialHow do you measure success for your SM activities?

Outcome MeasuresRated in top two

(quite a bit/extensively)

Number of active “friends,” "likes" 73%Volume of participation 57%Number of “click-throughs” to your website 53%Event participation 40%Anecdotal success (or horror) stories 26%Penetration measure of use among target audience 19%Volume or proportion of complaints and negative comments 12%Donations 15%Number of applications for admission 10%Surveys of target audiences 9%

You see that donations are pretty low on the list of ways that CASE members typically gauge their success in social media. We are looking at mean ratings on a scale from 1 to 5 where 5 means it is used extensively.

Top metrics are • Number of active “friends,” “likes” • Volume of participation• Number of “click-throughs” to your website, but the field

is pretty wide.

Perhaps it needs to be even wider, or more precise, because the sense of difficult in ROI is, if anything, growing over time.

Measuring ROI“It is difficult to measure ‘return on investment’ from the use of social media”

2010

2011

2012

2013 38

33

32

34

The benefit of metrics• Many of those who reported their social media initiatives have

not been successful noted that metrics were lacking.

• By contrast, those who report their social media use has been very successful also say they have robust tracking mechanisms:

“We’ve created a weekly dashboard of target metrics for all of our social platforms and our main websites that shows changes and topics that resonated. This has greatly elevated awareness of our efforts among university leadership.”

“We don’t think, we know. Calculations and reports are submitted monthly on SoMe successes and returns, both subjective and objective. We’ve boosted ticket sales to events, recruited students, and increased awareness about many different things.”

We have a question on the survey that asks respondents to evaluate themselves on how successful they have been in their use of social media, and why. We see a relationship where those who say they were most successful also talk about a dashboard of metrics that they look at weekly or monthly.

Were they able to achieve success because they were tracking what worked and then did more of that, so the metrics enable success? Or is it that they can speak confidently of their success because they have the metrics? We heard the comment “we don’t think, we know,” which is certainly a satisfying thing.

And of multiple metrics• Respondents note that having a wide array of measures, beyond

number of followers or “likes,” is helpful to seeing the bigger picture. In particular, achieving a true conversation can be hard to measure:

“Due to the changing nature of technology and the preferences for its use, goals for social media often feel like moving targets. What's important in terms of metrics one day, may not be the case the following day. Ex. One of our department goals is related to direct engagement with posts. We've seen actual typed feedback fall away in favor of the one click ‘likes.’ Is direct engagement via typed feedback becoming a thing of the past, or are there new methods/suggestions (beyond open ended questions) that truly prompt dialogue?”

“When students start using your page for their own conversations ... you know you've hit success!”

“In the last two years, social media has been overhauled from stagnant and sporadic event promotion to planned content planning with plenty of time for listening. It has really become a conversation—key for alumni relations.”

We heard some say that having as many metrics as you can is helpful, because you don’t know over the long run which ones will be most relevant and revealing.

This long quotation here is pointing out a trend of fewer comments but plenty of “likes” and the question is whether he or she should be worried. We heard some respondents thinking about whether “likes” are too discrete and we should be interested in how long a thread goes and whether it becomes a genuine conversation.

On the side I’ll also note that several people brought up that negative comments are also an opportunity, and that they are most important to respond to.

Staffing

Greater time investmentMore work hours are being devoted to social media than last year. But: the change in number of employees working on social media was flat this year.At the institution level:

• 34% have social media FTE between 0 and 1, up from 24% last year.

• The proportion with 0 FTE is down to 5% from 9% last year.

At the unit level:

• 62% have social media FTE between 0 and 1, up from 45% last year.

• The proportion with 0 FTE is down to 7% from 17% last year.

The number of staff who have some involvement with social media is similar to what we saw last year, but the (FTE) full time equivalency is higher. Institutions are increasing FTE rather than increasing staffing, which is a more conservative way to grow involvement in social media. The biggest area of increase is in number of respondents who r.eport that their unit or institution has at least one person working on social media, but less than 1 FTE

Barriers to success persist% who see this barrier in their unit “quite a bit” or “extensively 2013 2012

Staffing for day-to-day content management 55% 49%

Staffing for site development 44% 42%

Lack of relevant human resources in my unit 40% 37%

Slow pace of change 31% 22%

Expertise in how to implement it 25% 23%

Funding 26% 22%

Lack of IT resources 22% 20%Lack of institutional clarity about who is responsible

for social media initiatives 22% 20%

Concerns about loss of control over content and tone of postings by others 19% 17%

Lack of commitment by decision-makers 19% 17%

Need for experienced staff• Many believe that lack of staff devoted to social media hampers their

success and that they could improve with help from ... “Dedicated staff person(s). Currently this responsibility is an add-on to current staff positions and responsibilities . . . .”

• There are advantages to concentrating social media duties in fewer staff people with greater expertise and sense of the big picture:

“I think we could do more to collaborate with other campus departments. In addition, our small staff . . . does not allow for social media to be an explicit part of someone's job description. If someone was able to focus on it day in day out, we would be pretty amazing at it. As it stands now, we all collectively try to post when we can.”

“We do not have in-house expertise to help establish strategic initiatives or to ensure our messages are consistent and aligned with other University messaging.”

“At our level (a college within a large university) we have been very successful because we hired someone with solid social media experience who is in charge of all of our social media outlets. This person has set clear goals and has integrated social media into the majority of our campaigns.”

In open-end responses, we heard that this add-on method has its detractors. There is an argument to be made for a concentrating social media expertise in staff members who are more expert and more dedicated to social media as opposed to adding it on to the duties of many staff members in many units. So there is some call for collaboration between units to pool human resources on social media.

Harmonizing, if not centralizing

• While the survey responses did not indicate that social media has become more centralized in its institutional use, some think that it should be. They advise:

“Centralize efforts instead of individual development units/officers creating their own Facebook pages and campaigns.”

“Do not allow unlimited numbers of entities on a social media channel (in our case Facebook) to dilute your brand. External audiences need to be able to find the official institutional page quickly.”

• We also see suggestions of other ways to reduce fragmentation without making social media usage highly centralized or top-down:

“We would like for more cross promotion throughout the university, from other areas/units than our own, and also from the central administration. It would also be useful with closer teamwork with other units in terms of promoting and/or creating relevant content.”

“We are a decentralized university and all 12 schools, as well as most of the 24 departments, all are managing a social media strategy. We have done an outstanding job of centralizing an otherwise decentralized voice. Our most effective tool has been using Facebook Groups as a vehicle for driving messaging from all of the disparate groups, upward to the main university profile managers. Every day, anyone within the university can post their top stories to the internal group and have a very strong chance of having their story posted that day, or the next on the universities main profiles.”

Some say social media should be staffed in a more centralized way to help with more consistent and strategic messaging.We have a survey question that asks directly how centralized or dispersed social media is, on a 6-points scale, and we see answers all over the map, but the largest number (30%) say it is completely dispersed.

Champion, expertise key to success

2010

2011

2012

2013

80

72

61

63

52

“A champion is essential to the successful implementation of social media in our institution”

“Expertise to help our social media efforts is readily available”2010

2011

2012

2013 34

31

28

26

I will end with this final look at some keys to social media success. In light of the comments we looked at in the last couple slides on the importance of expertise, it is heartening to see that the sense that expertise is available has increased over time.

I find it somewhat unexpected that the sense that a champion is essential to success of social media has only increased over time. But let it be a challenge to any of you in the audience who might like to take up that mantle: you are needed.

Campaigns

www.bluevblue.com/

#goetownblue

mstnr.me/HGJb3H

Elizabethtown vs. Messiah, Battle of the Bluescase study: Case 19: “Embracing Rivalry to Increase Annual Fund Participation,” Social Works (mstnr.me/TkXwLu)

In the fall of 2011, Elizabethtown College and Messiah College took a long-standing rivalry from the soccer field to the annual fund campaign through a giving challenge between young alumni—or those that have graduated within the last ten years—called Battle of the Blues.

The campaign, which pitted young alumni of the two colleges against one another to tally the highest participation rate, launched in July 2011 and wrapped up on October 31, 2011. The E-town Blue Jays came out on top a participation rate of 7.85%; Messiah checked in at a close 7.72%.

In addition to emails and direct mail, the web and social media was used to heavily promote the giving challenge. First, a dedicated website, www.bluevblue.com was created; this site included details of the challenge, linked to donation forms, and also, each Monday during the competition, updated the current standings. Second, special Twitter hashtags were created to create buzz, provide a mechanism for participants to let their friends and followers know they gave and, of course, to encourage friendly trash-talking between the two colleges. Additionally, the Battle of the Blues website pulled in the Twitter feed from each college’s designated hashtag: #goetownblue or #gomessiahblue.

Staff members from both College’s marketing and development offices also used the hashtag to inform those who may be on Twitter of the campaign’s progress and to “egg-on” or entice their young alums to respond and, most importantly, make a gift. Finally, E-town produced several short videos—mostly humorous in nature—to promote the contest. These videos were shared via email messages, Twitter and Facebook.

But it wasn’t just an online campaign; Battle of the Blues also had some face-to-face time with alumni through a table at the Oktoberfest tent during the Elizabethtown College Homecoming and Family Weekend. The winning team was announced during the famous, annual soccer game between the archrivals. Will there be a rematch?

Thanks to Mike Nagel from Exeter Academy

Goal:

To harness the deep connections lots of Exeter alums and current seniors have with their dorms, and turn that good energy into donations to the Exeter Fund. The dorm with the largest percentage of the giving from that week, wins.

Important fact:

Exeter has the benefit of having 600 class agents across the country - alumni who are tasked with encouraging fundraising from the members of their individual classes each year. Mike Nagel, Exeter’s associate director of advancement communications, worked with his colleagues to mobilize class agents and other alumni around the Big Red Dorm Challenge - resulting in an ‘avalanche of asks’ (and hopefully lots of giving, too) during the week of the Challenge! The Senior Class Gift Committee was also instrumental in spreading the word.

Background:

* Big Red Dorm Challenge started in 2011, making the 2013 Challenge the Third Big Red Dorm Challenge.* This year, the Challenge lasted one week, Feb. 25 through March 3. * From the first hour of the first day, class agents and other alumni got the word out rapid-fire - mainly through Facebook posts. Email and Twitter were used also, though not

nearly as effective in the Challenge as Facebook. * The primary objective that week, was to use posts to drive traffic to the online giving form on Exeter’s website. * Regular score updates on Facebook helped keep people engaged...and competing!* Alumni from 1970 to 2012 and the current senior class participated. * Mike Nagel: “We encourage alumni to go out and post on Facebook, and we post on Facebook as well.”

Results:

* During the week of Feb. 25- March 3, the Challenge drove more than 15 percent of Exeter’s web traffic to the ‘Challenge page’ and more than 70 users to the giving form. * In one week, Exeter received 275 gifts from the classes of 1970-2012. * In one week, Exeter received 192 gifts from the current senior class - and we should note that in one week, the Class of 2013 went from less than 10 percent participation to

over 55 percent of the class participating in giving. * Large increase in traffic to the Exeter Alumni Facebook page, as well.

mstnr.me/X53Tzz

The case study for “the Great Give” from Social Works is available here: mstnr.me/X53Tzz

FSU “Great Gifts” by info source

During this campaign, the FSU annual giving team conducted a survey alongside the online giving process. After the gift was secured, they asked the donor, “How did you hear about the Great Give?” The largest response was word of mouth, with 57 percent of all donors saying that was how they learned about the Great Give. Second was email, with a 31 percent response. Considerably further down the list was Facebook and FSU websites, at just 2 percent each. That’s roughly equal to the response rate of direct mail. But Warren doesn’t see social media as ineffective; his hunch is that those numbers reflect a change in the definition of word of mouth. “You’re communicating and promoting it, but is it through a chat or through a text message or through an email?” Warren thinks a large number of those who reported “word of mouth” were actually thinking about conversations they had via text message or a post they saw on a friend’s or family member’s Facebook wall. Again, online ambassadors were a big factor in the success of the Great Give, and they weren’t sharing their updates by going door-to-door to everyone they knew. They were sharing news of the campaign through social network status updates provided by the FSU annual giving team.

Cheryl Slover-Linett and Michael Stoner

#SOCIALMEDIA AND ADVANCEMENT: INSIGHTS FROM THREE YEARS OF DATA

White Paper, 2012: #SocialMedia & Advancementmstnr.me/TpQPTv

Social Worksmstnr.me/TkXwLu

Sample Chapter[FSU “Great Give”]mstnr.me/X53Tzz

Social Works: How #HigherEd Uses #SocialMedia to Raise Money, Build Awareness, Recruit Students, and Get Results is unique. The 25 case studies in Social Works demonstrate that social media has the maturity and reach to be an integral component of campaigns focused on building awareness, recruiting students, engaging alumni and other key audiences, raising money, and accomplishing important goals that matter to a college or university. The case studies in Social Works will inspire college and university communicators, marketers, web team members, and other staff, offering models and details for highly successful initiatives. And, they will convince presidents and other senior leaders that social media is not just valuable, but essential, to achieving institutional goals. In short, Social Works belongs on the shelves (or on the e-readers) of college and university staff who want to learn how to get results with social media. Published 25 February 2013 by EDUniverse Media.

Michael Stonerpresident, mStonerMichael.Stoner@mStoner.com@mstonerblogmStoner.com/EDUniverse.org

Cheryl Slover-LinettConsultantHigher Education Constituent ResearchHuron Consultingcsloverlinett-c@huronconsultinggroup.com +1 505.820.7256

Contact