Capstone Final-Updated

SOCIAL MEDIA TEAMA YEAR IN REVIEW

Julia Hollings, Kenny Hansell, Danielle Lockemy, & Emily Deal

The Bully Pulpit Series Social Media Team


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Table of ContentsResearch Brief………………………......p.1-8Executive Summary………………..………………p.11Introduction………….…………….……………..p.12

iVote Week Event…………………………………p.23iVote Week Results……………………………….p.24Team Recommendations………………………….p.2

Social Media Team Portfolio

Social Media Platform Highlights………………….p.13

Twitter……………………………………p.14-16

Instagram…………………………………p.17-19


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Executive SummaryEver watched someone walk into a phone pole, doorway, or trip on

the bricks on campus? Was he or she looking down at a mobile device? If you answered yes to both questions, you most likely saw someone risk their safety to check social media platforms. Social media has taken the world by storm over the past few years and shows no sign of slowing down. Social media users are obsessed with checking their feeds constantly because they don’t want to miss any posts.

The Social Media Team of the Bully Pulpit Series took the bull by the horns during the 2015 - 2016 academic school year to strengthen the Series’ online presence on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, and Instagram. Majority of millennia’s get their news and pop culture information from social media outlets, so it was critical to get the Series up and running in the cyber world for the 2016 election season. Our team promoted national and campus events, such as Presidential debates and Student Government Association elections, to increase political participation at all levels of office. Through informative and creative posts, every Bully Pulpit social media platform experienced an increase in followers, engagement, and reach over the course of the academic year - without causing any known injuries.

Consisting of four social media gurus, each team member managed a specific platform to take to the next level. We designated each team member to a platform in order to maintain a consistent posting schedule and tone of voice. However, in the event that a team member was unable to post to his or her designated platform, the next available team member posted on his or her behalf. The Social Media Team worked together cohesively and independently to promote political events and encourage political participation on campus.

It is crucial to stay up to date in terms of the latest technology, so the Series joined the world of Snapchat this year. We pursued this social media platform so followers would have exclusive behind the scenes coverage that they wouldn’t normally see at events. Although the following was small, we believe it will continue to grow during the next academic school year when the Presidential Election is in full swing. The Series already had accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, so we focused on revamping those platforms to increase reach and engagement through posts employing trivia, giveaways, contests, and current events.

As the 2015 - 2016 Bully Pulpit Series comes to a close, the Social Media Team has reflected on this past semester and analyzed our success and provided recommendations for improvement. Each platform


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IntroductionThe social media team was composed of four seniors majoring in Communication. Each team member was in charge of a social media platform: Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat and Instagram. Each team member was responsible for making consecutive posts on their assigned platform while posting on other platforms when necessary.

Throughout the 2015- 2016 Bully Pulpit Series season, each social media platform was used to promote civic engagement on the College of Charleston campus. The social media team played an essential role in the promotion and execution of each event along with other teams. The team used social media to engage students in political conversation, promote candidate events, political campus events and a voter registration week. The social media worked closely with the Campus Promotions team to send out images and flyers on the platforms so that followers would have visual representations of each event. We also worked with the Website Content team to posts promotional videos for each event. The 2015- 2016 season has been a successful learning year. We learned more about engaging audiences on social media and we gained a substantial following

T

A senior at the College of

Charleston, majoring in

Communication with a minor in Business

Administration. After graduation she

plans to pursue a career in the

marketing and communication

industry and hopes to make Charleston,

S.C. her forever

Instagram


Charleston majoring in Communication.

After graduation she plans to pursue a career in sports marketing and

communication. She hopes to land a job in an exciting new

city full of adventure.

SnapChat Twitter Facebook


Charleston majoring in Communication

with a minor in Business

Administration. After graduating she

plans to pursue a career in the

communication industry with hopes

of staying in Charleston, S.C.


Charleston majoring in Communication

with a minor in Business

Administration. Heis actively pursuing a

career in the communications

industry


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SOCIAL MEDIA

HIGHLIGHTS


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TWITTER

Our Twitter Audience Insights:Current Audience: 312 Followers (+34 followers since January 26)Top Interest: Political + Current EventsGender: 47% Male ; 53% FemaleCountry: 98% U.SRegion: 63% South Carolina, 6% North Carolina, 3% Virginia, 3% Washington D.C, 2% Florida

Monthly InsightsJanuary: 3.9k impressions in 31 days; 126 impressions/dayTop Tweet:

Impressions: 404; Engagement: 16, Engagement Rate 4.0%January


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TWITTER

Monthly InsightsFebruary: 9.6k impressions in 29 days; 331 impressions/dayTop Tweet:

Impressions: 531; Engagement: 61; Engagement Rate: 11.5% - Chic-fil-a giveawayImpressions: 1,431; Engagement: 47; Engagement Rate: 3.3% - #iVote

March: 6.0k impressions in 31 days; 193 impressions/dayTop Tweet:

Impressions: 741; Engagement: 23; Engagement Rate: 3.1%


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TWITTER

April: 4.4k impressions in 25 days; 156 impressions/dayTop Tweet:

Impressions: 314; Engagement: 14; Engagement Rate: 4.5%

The chart above shows the keywords that attracted the biggest audience on Twitter. The most popular keywords were “Charleston”, “College” and “SC”. These insights can be used for future use of the Twitter page and these keywords can be used in order to gain a substantial following.


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INSTAGRAM

Overall, this is an at-a-glance report for the Instagram handle. At the beginning of the semester the account had 2 followers, and over the course of the year we gained over 100 followers. Followers consist of CofC organizations and academic departments, students and faculty, political outlets, and users simply interested in politics. We gained followers through creative posts with strategic hashtags. CofC accounts such as @cofccomm and @cofcorientation would share our posts with the “repost” app which got our events and handle further exposure to the CofC community.

This graph above shows that we received the most engagement during March 27th - April 2nd, which was during our iVote week events. Overall, we had 12 top posts that received the most engagement from our audience. Each post averaged around 11 likes. No matter how many “likes” the post received, users following our account were exposed to the content, thus were informed on televised debates, public forums, campus events, and so on.


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INSTAGRAM

These posts received some of the most engagement. These posts were published prior and during our iVote Week efforts, and when we (Ken and Julia) presented to the

Advisory Council.

According to this graph our most popular day to post was Monday between the hours of 8am to noon and later in the afternoon during the hours of 2pm and 6 pm.


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INSTAGRAM

In order to keep our social media content fresh and exciting we implemented the “Bully Pulpit Staff Spotlight” posts so our audience could get to know the students behind The Bully Pulpit Series. It’s important to keep the audience active and engaged, so we published these posts when there were not major events happening during the week. Students from each tactical team were featured.


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SNAPCHAT

SnapChat is social media’s newest member and is growing in popularity. Members use SnapChat to post selfies and pictures/videos of events and activities they participate in on a daily basis. The Social Media team decided to try our luck with SnapChat and see what type of impact it would have on spreading the word about Bully Pulpit events. We used the platform to advertise our other social media pages, encourage followers to attend upcoming events and participate in giveaways. Additionally, we used SnapChat to take followers behind-the-scenes at our presidential campaign events. The platform gave followers access to the things they do not typically see when they are sitting in the audience. However, SnapChat proved to not be as successful as we had hope in the beginning of the 2015- 2016 season. We were unable to gain a substantial following and many of our followers did not engage with our posts. We feel


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FACEBOOK

At the beginning of the 2015- 2016 Bully Pulpit Series season, a Facebook page was non-existent. Ken Hansell took the reins and created a Facebook page for the series to use as a place to promote events and keep the page likers up-to-date on the upcoming election as it unfolds.

The graph above shows a glimpse of the number of people our Facebook page reached during the the end of March and the

beginning of April. The big spikes shown on the graph are actually from the iVote Week events that were heavily promoted on the

page.

The above graph shows the total views we have received since the March 29 until the April 25. The increase in views occurred

during the iVote Week events.


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FACEBOOK

Facebook is one of the largest social media platforms on the internet and it continues to grow. The social media team made it a priority to post

items that would reach our followers and produce engagement among them and their friends. The above chart shows the posts that had a

substantial reach and engaged the followers. Our most popular post was the promotion of the Chelsea Clinton event. Many of the iVote Week event


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iVOTE WEEK

The Bully Pulpit Series create a week long event to promote voter registration on the College of Charleston campus. In order to get people registered for the upcoming election each team created a fun event for students to get registered. Not only was the registration conveniently done on an iPad, students were also able to win prizes and play games. The Social Media team put their heads together and came up with a fun idea that would draw students in and allow us to talk to them about registering to vote. Everyone loves when Student life brings puppies to the library for finals week so we thought why not use puppies to encourage students to vote. We decided to host an event called “Puppies for President”. The event would feature puppies from Pet Helpers in Charleston, S.C. and iPads would be on site for students to register while they filled up on puppy love. The event was going to be relatively small because we only were only going to have a couple of puppies so we teamed up with Campus promotions and assisted with their event as well. The Campus Promotions events team hosted Games on the Green. The games followed a presidential candidate theme. We helped create signage, questions

*HIGHLIGHTS*

People registered to vote during the event. More students that were at Rivers Green during the event

are already registered to vote Many students and guests took an interest in the political

themed games.

PUPPIES FOR PRESIDENT

&

GAMES ON THE GREEN

THURSDAY, MARCH 31

Overall, Facebook was a huge success for the social media team and the Bully Pulpit Series. The page was started from scratch

and by the end of March over 142 people liked the page and post were reaching more than 200 people.


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*HIGHLIGHTS*

People registered to vote during the event. More students that were at Rivers Green during the event

are already registered to vote Many students and guests took an interest in the political

themed games.

iVOTE WEEK

Results

Puppies for President and Games on the Green was a mildly successful event. The teams were able to approach several students about voter registration and successfully registered a few voters. Shockingly, more students on the College of Charleston campus are registered vote than we had originally assumed. We were unable to register a substantial amount of students, but we were able to let them know where they could vote when the time comes and gave them the necessary information they needed to know before heading to the polls. Many students enjoyed the games and thought the political theme was a unique addition to the simple backyard games. The puppies were a

As the social media team, we were responsible for advertising each iVote event on the all social media platforms. During the iVote Week we saw a spike in page views and likes on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The graphs below show the jump in numbers during the events. Most of the increase in numbers happened during the Puppies for President/Games on the Green Event and during the


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Graphs: Facebook Results as of April 26, 2016

Team RecommendationsThe Bully Pulpit Series at the College of Charleston is a huge asset to not just the

College’s community, but to the community of Charleston as a whole. It is important to keep the community engaged in political events, and the Bully Pulpit Series aims to do just that. This past year, the Bully Pulpit Series social media platforms were entirely revitalized. While the Series had an existing Twitter account, there was no Facebook page, Instagram account or SnapChat. At the beginning of the semester last year, we completed extensive research about the students at the College of Charleston’s social media tendencies to get a better understanding of what social media platforms they used and were engaging on, on a regular day-to-day basis. Our research concluded that most millennials use Facebook, Instagram and SnapChat, the three platforms the Series had not been utilizing.

Over the past year each member of the team was in charge of one social media platform that they had to manage. Ken - Facebook, Emily - Instagram, Danielle - SnapChat, and myself on Twitter. While we each posted to these platforms, each member was allowed administrative privileges to all other platforms. We found this system to be the most successful for us, and would recommend in the future that there is one person per platform. This allows for better insight and monitoring, and overall less confusion. We all relied on each other to post appropriately to each platform.

While all of our social media platforms were a success in their own ways, it was definitely a struggle to gain a following for our Facebook and Instagram. Several times we made an effort to the College of Charleston Communication Department’s social media manager to post on their Instagram and Facebook on our behalf. From that we only received one post. We also tried to contact the College’s social media manager to post on our behalf on their Instagram and Facebook and from that we received nothing. This was shocking to us as a team. The Series relies on the College to help us grow and this is something that needs to be pursued in the years to come.

In the future, the College of Charleston Department of Communication and Political Science should make several, if not regular posts on behalf of the Bully Pulpit Series to increase student engagement, and ultimately help us grow our audience. The Communication and Political Science departments are the spearheads of The Series so it would only make sense for them to give us mentions and posts. By doing this we could get more students engaged on both our Facebook and Instagram accounts, increase our following, ultimately increasing students awareness of us as a Series on campus.

We also found that we had little to no support from our Bully Pulpit staff. Several times we mentioned to our peers that we needed additional help from them on their social media accounts, whether that was posting to their Facebook to give us a follow, or simply following us themselves on Instagram. It was saddening how little support we received from our fellow staff. In the future it should be a requirement that all staff follows all of the Bully Pulpit Series social media platforms. By simply doing that we could increase our audience by at least 100 followers on each platform.

The main goal of the Social Media team is to increase our brand’s awareness on all of our platforms. We ultimately need more followers so that we can in turn receive more impressions and engagement. If we get more engagement on social media we have the potential to increase student participation at our events, and that is the sole purpose of the Bully Pulpit Series. If we had the support of other more successful pages (i.e CofC Communication


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LESSONS LEARNED

The Bully Pulpit Series at the College of Charleston is a huge asset to not just the College’s community, but to the community of Charleston as a whole. It is important to keep the community engaged in political events, and the Bully Pulpit Series aims to do just that. This past year, the Bully Pulpit Series social media platforms were entirely revitalized. While the Series had an existing Twitter account, there was no Facebook page, Instagram account or SnapChat. At the beginning of the semester last year, we completed extensive research about the students at the College of Charleston’s social media tendencies to get a better understanding of what social media platforms they used and were engaging on, on a regular day-to-day basis. Our research concluded that most millennials use Facebook, Instagram and SnapChat, the three platforms the Series had not been utilizing.

Over the past year each member of the team was in charge of one social media platform that they had to manage. Ken - Facebook, Emily - Instagram, Danielle - SnapChat, and myself on Twitter. While we each posted to these platforms, each member was allowed administrative privileges to all other platforms. We found this system to be the most successful for us, and would recommend in the future that there is one person per platform. This allows for better insight and monitoring, and overall less confusion. We all relied on each other to post appropriately to each platform.

While all of our social media platforms were a success in their own ways, it was definitely a struggle to gain a following for our Facebook and Instagram. Several times we made an effort to the College of Charleston Communication Department’s social media manager to post on their Instagram and Facebook on our behalf. From that we only received one post. We also tried to contact the College’s social media manager to post on our behalf on their Instagram and Facebook and from that we received nothing. This was shocking to us as a team. The Series relies on the College to help us grow and this is something that needs to be pursued in the years to come.

In the future, the College of Charleston Department of Communication and Political Science should make several, if not regular posts on behalf of the Bully Pulpit Series to increase student engagement, and ultimately help us grow our audience. The Communication and Political Science departments are the spearheads of The Series so it would only make sense for them to give us mentions and posts. By doing this we could get more students engaged on both our Facebook and Instagram accounts, increase our following, ultimately increasing students awareness of us as a Series on campus.

We also found that we had little to no support from our Bully Pulpit staff. Several times we mentioned to our peers that we needed additional help from them on their social media accounts, whether that was posting to their Facebook to give us a follow, or simply following us themselves on Instagram. It was saddening how little support we received from our fellow staff. In the future it should be a requirement that all staff follows all of the Bully Pulpit Series social media platforms. By simply doing that we could increase our audience by at least 100 followers on each platform.

The main goal of the Social Media team is to increase our brand’s awareness on all of our platforms. We ultimately need more followers so that we can in turn receive more impressions and engagement. If we get more engagement on social media we have the potential to increase student participation at our events, and that is the sole purpose of the Bully Pulpit Series. If we had the support of other more successful pages (i.e CofC Communication

As Social Media Team, we learned a lot about branding, promotion, and

maintaining an online image. We learned the difficulty of expanding an online

brand, because a social media accounts influence is limited to how large of an

audience it can reach. Getting the public to interact on social media is crucial

for growth. We also learned how Social Media is the most versatile tool for

notifying the public of events. When our group advertised certain guests at The

College, the event turned out was directly related to the success of the social

media reach. For instance, the Rubio and Chelsea Clinton event posts were

the most successful posts on our Facebook account, and the events also had

the best turnouts. Our final takeaway was that Social Media is a double-edged

sword that is essential for brand growth, but also can be trouble for those who

use it incorrectly.


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APPENDIX

Capstone Final-Updated

Documents

Transcript of Capstone Final-Updated