How to Convince Your Boss Social Media is Important

How to Convince Your Boss Social Media is Important

How to Convince Your Boss Social Media is Important

#COWY15

+

Lets start using this hashtag today!

1

Presented By

Ashley Houston

Outreach Manager, GoAbroad.com

[email protected]

@midwestash

Kayla Patterson

Director, GoMedia

Social Media Strategist, GoAbroad.com

[email protected]

@kaylapatt

#COWY15

+

Ashley

2

Youre in the right place if

Youre looking to improve your organizations use of social media

Your boss is still not convinced of (or doesnt understand) the benefits social media can provide

You havent identified your social media objectives

#COWY15

+

Kayla

Poll audience to tailor presentation. Determine backgrounds (public, private, U.S. based, international, provider) and positions (study abroad office, financial aid office, administrator, provider).

Show of hands:

Who works for a provider? University?

Are you working with students directly? Etc.?

How many are currently using some forms of social media?

Will cover Youre in the right place if

-Youre looking to improve your organizations use of social media

-Your boss is still not convinced of (or doesnt understand) the benefits social media can provide

- You havent identified your social media objectives

3

Overview

Benefits of Using Social Media

Identifying Your Objectives

How to Communicate with Decision Makers

Q & A

#COWY15

+

4

Benefits of Using Social Media

Your audience is on social media

Increased brand recognition and loyalty

Inbound leads

Richer interaction and engagement

Your competition is already involved; you need to be there too

The sooner you start, the sooner you reap the benefits

#COWY15

+

Kayla

Your audience is on social media: they are likely looking for you too! If youre not there not good. If youre not active & engaging not good.

Active users: (statista.com)

Facebook 1.4 billion

LinkedIn 347 million

Google+ 300 million

Instagram 300 million

Twitter 288 million

Increased brand recognition and loyalty: Your social media networks are new channels for your brands voice and content they are an extension of your website and online presence. This is important because it simultaneously makes you more accessible for new customers, and makes you more familiar and recognizable for existing customers.

Increased Inbound leads: Without social media, your inbound traffic is limited to people already familiar with your brand and individuals searching for keywords you currently rank for. Every social media profile you add is another path leading back to your site, and every piece of content you syndicate on those profiles is another opportunity for a new visitor. The more quality content you syndicate on social media, the more inbound traffic youll generate, and more traffic means more leads (or inquiries) and more conversions (applicants or enrollments).

Richer interaction and engagement: Every customer interaction you have on social media is an opportunity to publicly demonstrate your customer service level and enrich your relationship with your customers. They expect you to respond!

Your competition is already involved: Dont let your competitors reap all the benefits while you stand idly by. If, somehow, your competition is not involved on social media, theres even more of a reason to get startedthe field is open.

The sooner you start, the sooner you reap the benefits: social media is just that social. Once you get going, word will spread. As you work on your strategy, the benefits will become apparent.

5

Examples in International Education

#COWY15

+

Kayla

Lets look at some examples of how you can effectively use social media within international education.

Here we see CSU Education Abroad sharing the details of an information session on Facebook. This is a great example of how social media can be used to draw attention and attendance to a variety of events, including information sessions, fairs, online events like webinars, or even live chats on social media.

On the right we have a couple tweets from Athena and BridgeTEFL. Athena has retweeted and commented on a tweet from the American Councils to share their enthusiasm for study abroad and how it affects foreign language acquisition. This is a great example of how social media can be used to comment on news, currents events, opinions, stats, etc. Here BridgeTEFL is tweeting about an application deadline yet another good example of how social media can be used to share your messages.

6


#COWY15

+

Kayla

On this slide we have a few more examples. ISA has featured an alumni interview on their Facebook page good example of content that is engaging for both alumni and prospective students. We can also see a regrammed instagram photo of in this instance Ashley at Stonehenge great way to interact with current students is to repost their content while they are abroad. We also have a tweet from CU Denver Global Education that is an open question about travel this is a great way to invite engagement on nearly any social channel which should in turn help you increase followers, engagement, and inbound leads.

Audience question: What are some other examples you can think of?

-alumni engagement

-student-generated content collection

-contest entries

-location / program highlights

Now Ashley will talk a bit about what channels to focus on.

7


Examples of Strategic Objectives

Large Provider: Double our following, contests/campaigns to promote content collection (photos)

Small Provider: Increase brand awareness, connect with alumni

Institution: Communicate up-to-date information with prospects, share resources

All: Website referrals, lead conversions, inquiries


Are You Meeting your Goals?

How are you measuring success?

#COWY15

+

Ashley

Before we look at challenges and suggestions for communicating with decision makers, the most important first step is to identify your objectives. What are they? As an institution are you looking to increase enrollment across the board? As a provider are you looking to diversify? What are your marketing objectives? You can break it down into different areas if youd like. Weve listed a few very generalized goals above. Take a few minutes to jot down 3-5 main strategic objectives in the most specific terms as you can (3 min)

Raise your hand if your current social media practice is meeting your goals? (no one likely). Ok, well then its good youre here!

If youre not meeting your goals, do you know why? Lets chat as a larger group--How are you measuring success? What is the disconnect between your objectives and your current strategy? (3 min)

8


Objective: Connect with alumni to start building ambassador program or encourage experience sharing & processing

Channels: LinkedIn & Facebook Groups

#COWY15

+

Ashley

Here is an example of an objectives and the matching channel benefits

A great way to maintain or build connections with your past participants is to interact with them across your social media platforms. LinkedIn & Facebook groups are most effective for this strategic objective because they allow you to separate your alumni into a special groupyou can create very specific groups based on year or location, or more generalized groups for all alumni. This enables you to provide them with resources to process their experience, career info, and in tern garner their interest in further sharing information about the programs you offer with other prospects. It keeps them engaged as alumni and reconnects them to your organizations, making it something at the top of their mind

9


Objective: Collect participant photos for new marketing materials or website, have participants vote on which are best

Channel: Facebook (not Instagram)

#COWY15

+

Ashley

In another example, if one of your institutional goals is to revamp your print marketing materials, catalog, or even your website, what better way to get recent, active, and student-centered photos, than from your current or past participants? Some of you may be well ahead of the game in providing a stipend for this while students are abroad. For others without a budget, having a Photo Contest can be a great way to get high quality images to use.

Coming up with concrete regulations and sharing policies is important, but many times even just posting, Have an incredible photo from abroad? Want to be featured in our new catalog? Submit a photo and you could be ISV famous might work just fine. Having a more structured contest with voting works great for larger organizations. Facebook is the ideal platform for this in terms of image quality. While Instagram is growing leaps and bounds, when users post photos and get Favorites they will not be high enough quality to reuse.

10

From the Field

What convinced you social media is important for your organization or institution?

Seeing the results in concrete business terms. The number of new users coming to our website through social media, anecdotal results like postings about website or things weve shared. The other way I was convinced was by using the channels myself and seeing the posts and interactions first hand.

CEO, large international education organization

After being introduced to sites like Facebook and Twitter rather late (2008), I immediately saw the potential impact of social media as a way to not only reach a large audience with marketing messages, but to actually engage with them in a meaningful way. Social media can provide a wonderful (and cost effective) melding of customer service, marketing, advocacy, and content generation

Social Media Manager, large 3rd party provider

Social media marketing has everything to do with reaching students where they are. Watching trends and running analytics on how our students interact with various platforms helps us advertise in the right places and get the word out where we know our audience will see it.

Academic Advisor, mid-sized institution

#COWY15

+

Ashley

Looking back down at the objectives you just described and the examples, it can seem overwhelming to meet them without the buy in of key decision makers. We get it, and weve been there! We reached out to a few folks within the field of international education, at different levels and in varied organizations based on their presence on social media. We found out what convinced these stakeholders that social media was important.

11

From the Field

How is social media helping you achieve your objectives?

Our primary demographic is university students and graduates, and they are among the most active social media users. When we look at our traffic, we do better than any similar site in our category of social media and referred traffic. The engagement also helps branding and reputation. My feeling is that if you do not have the correct and consistent voice on social media you lose credibility. Traveling abroad is a big decision and the prospective travelers need to trust yousocial media provides that!

Troy Peden, Founder of GoAbroad.com

I didnt really need to convince others at API of the outreach value of social media, but I did have to work on some people to get them to see the value in using social media themselves (and promoting API social media engagement across the company). Now, nearly all of our staff use Facebook for work-related purposes, all are on Google+, and many are active in using sites like Twitter, Instagram, Meerkat, and Snapchat to promote API and engage with students.

-Jeramy Johnson, Vice President of Marketing and Development, API

#COWY15

+

We then found out how social media was helping certain organizations and institutions achieve their objectives.

12

From the Field

How is social media helping you achieve your objectives?

In the past academic year weve had tremendous success with Instagram, Twitter, and our office blog. Much of what were doing on social media echoes what we are doing on campus: raising awareness and building knowledge. Keeping the messages consistent and constant are helping us reach more students and increase our participation.

-Kelly Holland, Associate Director, Towson University

We have been able to connect with students we wouldn't have been able to reach through traditional means such as email. Social media has helped us reach out to students immediately, as well as help us spread the word about events, office happenings, what other students are doing, etc.

-Mandy Reinig, Director of International Education, St. Marys College of Maryland

#COWY15

+

Ashley

We know it can be a lot about metrics, and well cover communicating and sharing the right information with decision makers in just a bit!

Take a look at how social media is helping these organizations meet their goals.

13

How to Communicate with Decision Makers

Identify Challenges

Addressing Challenges

Make a Plan

#COWY15

+

Ashley

In this last section well identify challenges to communicating with decision makers, talk about how to address some of those challenges, and then how we can make a plan to talk to decision makers.

14

Identify Challenges

What makes talking to your boss about social media a challenge?

#COWY15

+

Ashley

Before we look at some common challenges

What makes talking to your boss about social media a challenge?

Take a minute to write down your answer

What are some of the challenges you wrote down?

15

Common Challenges

Decision maker doesnt understand how social media works

Decision maker is not convinced its beneficial to invest in social media; no budget

Decision maker doesnt think the international office needs its own social media; not sure what channels to use

Decision maker is concerned about how to measure ROI

Decision maker is not sure where to get content to share on social media

#COWY15

+

Ashley

Here are some big ones that we hear often. Raise your hand as I read through these if this applies to you!

Kayla will walk through how to address a couple of these challenges

16


Challenge: Decision maker is not sure where to get content to share on social media

Remind them that youll start with your website you have a lot of content already

Present the different types of content: articles, links, reviews, testimonials, photos, videos, travel quotes, open questions

Explain how youll be able to share, cross-promote, and source content from partners, participants, and other related organizations on social media

#COWY15

+

Kayla

17


Challenge: Decision maker doesnt understand how social media works

Volunteer to provide your team an overview of the benefits of social media

Invite your boss to join you for a webinar or to read an article about the benefits of social media

Share examples from this presentation with your boss

Set up a consulting hour with a social media service provider

#COWY15

+

Kayla

Now lets look at a couple of those challenges and think about ways we can address them. In my experience, this challenge, where the decision maker doesnt understand how social media works, is one that is fairly common. Some of the ways this challenge can be addressed are volunteering to share with your team the benefits of social media, invite your boss to learn more via a webinar or article, sharing examples from this presentation, or even setting up a professional consulting session. However, the main thing I would caution here is to try and determine whether this matters to the decision maker or not. They may not understand social media and its uses for business, but do they want to learn about the benefits or do they just want to see facts and figures?

18


Challenge: Decision maker is concerned about how to measure ROI

Share social media objectives and ways to reach those objectives (create your own ROI formula)

Explain that without actively engaging in social media its impossible to work towards measuring ROI

Draw attention to the benefits of social media (competitors are already there)

Consult with a professional social media manager

#COWY15

+

Kayla

That brings me to the next challenge to address, which is how to measure ROI for social media. The official definition of ROI is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

Essentially its a formula and its a formula that doesnt always work with social media. So how do we measure ROI? My best suggestion is that you need to create your own formula. Identify your main objectives and how you can measure your success in achieving them. For some decision makers, it might be enough to draw attention to the benefits particularly when your competitors are already active on social media. You can also consult with a professional social media manager to talk to them about ways they measure ROI for their clients. Examples might include referral traffic, lead conversions, engagement, inquiries, or user-generated content.

Is there anyone here who would like to share how they might already be measuring ROI for social media?

19

Make a Plan

What is the next step for you to address social media with your boss?

#COWY15

+

Kayla

The final step we want to address is making a plan. So take a moment to write down the answer to this question: what is the next step for you to address social media with your boss?

Think about all of the notes youve taken so far and how you can bring concrete, actionable items to your boss.

20

Questions?

Ashley Houston

Outreach Manager, GoAbroad.com

[email protected]

@midwestash

Kayla Patterson

Director, GoMedia

Social Media Strategist, GoAbroad.com

[email protected]

@kaylapatt

#COWY15

+

Ashley

Wed love to share the slides with you and answer any other questions you may have please drop your business card before you leave.

21

How to Convince Your Boss Social Media is Important

Social Media

Transcript of How to Convince Your Boss Social Media is Important