Right, we're just going to get started in just a minute. We have a question. Yes, it will be recorded and we'll send out the recording to everyone who registered. I think it lives on the website to after it's after the recording is done, I'm pretty sure, but it will definitely be emailed out. Yes, the same link that you used to register for the event, then becomes the link to access the recording within our learning management system. Thank you, Jacob for clarifying. I was pretty sure that was how it worked, but I didn't want to say it for definition. All right. Are you guys, Carrie and Rachel, are you ready to get started. All right, let's, let's go let's do this thing. Hi everybody I'm Claudia Taylor I am director of events and stewardship for the Ryan College of Business at the University of Texas, and I also serve on the cabinet for a case district for, and I'm thrilled to have you here for our latest district for best of to gather an opportunity for our members to see the top rated sessions from our 2023 conference. Today we're delving into the best practices in marketing and communications with Carrie Phillips of the University and Rachel Putnam of the University of Arkansas Fort Smith. All of us in higher education fundraising our storytellers sharing our institutions voices in a way that will connect with everyone from prospective students to million dollar donors. I know this session will give us some great tools for telling those stories. Before we get started, I have a few housekeeping items. First off, I hope you'll ask a lot of questions please drop them in the comments section at the bottom of your screen, and I will filter them up to the presenters at the end of their session. We'll try to get to all of your questions while keeping an eye on the time. Also keep an eye on the comment section I'll be dropping links and additional information in there throughout the presentation. And if you experience any technical difficulties, please feel free to reach out to me directly via the chat feature and I'll try to troubleshoot. Now I'm thrilled to introduce our presenters today Dr. Carrie Phillips and Rachel Putnam. Carrie is chief communications and marketing officer at UA Little Rock, where she leads a team of professionals focused on digital strategy media relations online content and more. She is also chair elect of case district for cabinet, and has presented nationally at many organizations conferences including high ed web, the American American Marketing Association and of course case. She has a bachelor's and master's degrees from Arkansas Tech and her doctor of education degree from Texas. Rachel is director of communications at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith, a former journalist Rachel now oversees digital and social media strategy, external and executive communications public relations and more. She works closely with students, including acting as an advisor for a student organization that combats bias against women of color in the professional world. She has a bachelor's degree from UT UNC Chapel Hill sorry Carrie and Rachel, thank you for being here today and I will hand it off to you. Awesome. Thank you so much, everyone. We are so excited to be with you for keeping it real authentic ways to share your voice vision and values online, we're going to use the chat, a little bit today so while we are doing some introductions go ahead energy you're bringing into the session are you, you know, really excited are you worn out it is Thursday afternoon, are you thrilled that it is Friday Eve, what is that energy that you're bringing into the chat and drop that in just so we can get connected and get to know you and what you're bringing into the session today. And with that, we'll start with some introductions. Yeah, Claudia gave us a great introduction but a little more about me. I am a classically trained artist I have a BFA from Carolina. I am terminally online rambling about strategy and authenticity and caring for my students. My husband is a professional musician, we are parents to Sarah and Kyler, and a giant now elderly German shepherd named Atticus, and I have a heart for justice, the Tar Heels and Taylor Swift and you can see me at the heiress tour on the bottom and with my family and my students. So a little bit about me I tell people I'm part creative part analyst fully curious so I am the person that buys things because they feel right, but I am also the soul that jumps into a spreadsheet and gets lost in the data. So that's kind of that weird a little bit of both. After graduation, with my doctorate, I was trying to figure out who Carrie was and so that is where I started my website and carry on.com which is where I get it carry on about higher education marketing and leadership topics that are really important to me. And then I'm a puppy mama to Eleanor Bell. Eleanor hates college football because on game day she has to wear a rig attire from all of our teams. And so she has several costume changes and so not her favorite moment in the world, but she survives it nonetheless. And so, first question, what does it mean to be authentic in your messages, drop your thoughts into the chat we would love to hear how you're thinking about authenticity. When we did this live, we offered gift cards. I might can make a gift card or two work. Oh, Mary Cooper getting the first one in there. Okay, I owe you a gift card. Yeah, I like honesty. Honesty and transparency. Very important to being authentic. Mary, the language of your audience, that's so important. Yeah. Genuine, because sometimes if you're honest, it doesn't come across as genuine if you aren't considering how people are hearing you. Great thoughts, y'all. So as we've thought about authenticity, we have three kind of key strategies to really get at that authenticity in its truest form. And so we'll kind of start the conversation there of how we try to approach that in the work that we're doing. So we know that authenticity and social media means presenting the real and unfiltered and, as we said in the chat, honest truth about our lives. And so we're going to talk a little bit about what that honest truth about our campus is. And sometimes we can do that on our own with the beautiful sunset picture of our campus icon or game day footage of everyone in their game day gear. But more often, those real stories come from outside our campus. So at UA Fort Smith, we start sourcing those stories by building trust. At the beginning of each year, and now as we grow a little bit each semester, I attend as many student events as I can. Right now we're in my team are out at every event, getting to know student leaders who will be the faces at those events as they become upperclassmen and students who can tell powerful stories about what life is really like at UAFS. I talk to these students. I tell them what we're about. I give them my office number and my cell phone number because they want to text, not call. And I tell them to stop by when they have ideas and when they have problems. I make sure that they know my student workers who they'll see out at events and, you know, in the evening events. And I ask if they want to join our very unofficial at the moment influencer team. And because we make it such a priority to show up and to build relationships on the ground, when we have a crisis or a reputation issue, our student leaders are willing to talk openly about it because they already understand who we are and where we're coming from when we make decisions, even when they're difficult. I've had student leaders who will talk with our media, who will talk with our leadership, and who will post about us on the internet defending us because they know our values and we're communicating that authentically. On the administrative side, I'm a big believer in asking for access. So when I'm doing executive communications, one of the things that was so important when I got a new chancellor in 2019 was relentlessly pushing for a three-hour block of time on her calendar. I don't know if anyone has worked with the new chancellor, but that's tough. But I knew it was really important so I could understand who she was. I could ask what's important to her, what are her values, and what does she see as the value for our institution? And then I asked if I could have access to her calendar because I wanted to know what she was pouring into. I wanted to know where she was investing her time on campus and off campus. I wanted to know where she might have a blind spot and need insight into what really is happening in campus life. And because I asked and because I earned her trust, she said yes. You know, I think another key way to really get authenticity is having that seat at a table with key audiences. So one of the things that we do at UA Little Rock is we have meetings with those important partners on campus every single week. So I'm meeting with our advancement team, our admissions team at both the graduate and undergraduate level. Research is a huge focus on our campus, so we're meeting regularly, and athletics as well. And so that really gives us this idea and this notion that we're in collaboration. We're partners, we're engaged in where we're going and what are the processes and the things that we're trying to focus on. And because we have that seat at that table regularly, to Rachel's point, we're building that trust, we're building that rapport. And so it makes it really easy when we need to have those tough conversations about, hey, here's something we're seeing on social or here's a concern that we're having about this experience because we know about their families, their kids, the dogs, the, you know, challenges of the holidays because we've shared those lived experiences together. It makes it so much easier to do that. And then one of the things that we try really hard to do as well is to extend that same invitation to our students. So every single week in our staff meeting, we invite our students to come. That way they are two things. One, they're hearing the conversation and the context about the big things that we're talking about as a campus and as an institution. But two, they're getting that real life experience of what does it mean to be a contributing member of a team or of an organization. And so, you know, as we're having conversations about how would students think or experience something that we're talking about in those meetings, we literally turn to those folks and it's like we've got a perfect focus group right there of how do you feel about this and how would your peers respond to this. So I think, you know, getting a seat at the table with those key audiences is a really important way to do that. Yes, we try to invite our students to everything. As soon as our students start, I make sure they meet all of our administrators. I introduce them to our C-suite at least twice, if possible, within the first few weeks of their work so they know the people who they're going to be interacting with. And so they know the people who are making the decisions about their campus. They're in the room, they see them, they know them. We also know that no matter how important our work is or how delicately we craft a strategy, we are never going to reach perfection. And that's okay. Perfection and authenticity are kind of always contradictory, but on social that's especially true. We can see the rise of apps like Be Real, which my campus is really fond of, and the morning of a former Honest conversation space on Twitter. And while we love those pristine photos of our campus, like on the UAFS campus, our bell tower, and those dazzling national awards, that's not the bulk of our content. And so much more of our content is an inside look at campus, filmed by our students, life after campus filmed by our alumni, images from the past that our alumni are sharing, especially thinking about that now that it's homecoming week here at UAFS, seeing our history and our future and our present. And so when you turn over the telling of stories to people who are willing to share a look into their lives, like Carrie and my student workers, but also our alumni, as they're living it, your campus gets these moments of inspiration. They also get moments of imperfection. Our alumni talk about the process, but also the struggle. They talk about the joy of being a college student, but also how hard it was looking back. Our students giggle and make jokes and sometimes tiptoe on the lines of propriety. One of my very favorite pieces of student generation, student generated content, was an interview that my student Lena did. She found a spork and did a tiny mic interview with a spork she had at our first year welcome program. And she went through with the first year orientation leaders and asked them what their favorite thing about Cub Camp was. And one of them in a squid hat, while breaking into dance, said, being crazy. And knowing that we know better than to call people crazy on the brand account, we could have decided to pull that video. We didn't, because we knew that our prospective students were engaging. We knew that they would see themselves excited and impassioned and occasionally using those colloquialisms. We can use that as a moment to teach those students and the other students about how we communicate on the brand account. We can also accept some of that imperfection and understand that that's who our students are and that they're talking to each other in these same ways. All right, so back to the chat a little bit. I'm really curious, your thoughts on why authenticity is scary. Would love to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah, airing the dirty laundry and the fear of not being perfect. That is so real. I'm hearing a question. Yeah. Oh, Carrie can see the chat. Yeah, really great, great thoughts and Chase, good thought as well. That hyper politicized environment that we find ourselves, I think cancel culture plays into that as well, very much so. Yeah, yeah. The climate, the different constituents, that's so hard. I think when we ask on who we're talking to on social, almost everyone says everyone, right? We know that that's not how you build a strategy, but pride is who sees it. Yeah. So as we think about this, we're gonna kind of share six strategies that we have used to try to help us get at that authenticity and keeping that message real within the communications that we're having to, as Rachel pointed out, that broad audience of constituents from parents to donors, to students, to alumni, and everyone in between. And so the first is really framing messages within those brand pillars that exist for your institution. And so this is really coming from, this is a concept that Apple started 15 to 20 years ago, and they asked everybody, and in every communication, they told people that they were innovative, forward-thinking, and leading edge. And so I bet if I were to have asked you beforehand, what, when you think about Apple as a brand, what do you think about? Chances are you would have said something not too far from that, that leading edge, forward-thinking innovation. And what happened is over time, because that was tied into every message that they sent out, that naturally became part of people's subconscious about that brand. And so that's something that we're trying to do at UA Little Rock, is make sure that every message, whether it's something that is going out on a press release, it's a grant announcement, it's on social media, it's a student feature, that it's tying back to those brand pillars. At UA Little Rock, we talk about our brand pillars are student success, that idea of innovation that we're never gonna back down from trying something new, that we are leaders in our classroom and in the community, and the economic driver impact that our institution has in the capital city. And so those are the things that we talk about. However, it's not a scenario that every single message is, you need to donate to the food pantry because every student counts, and we support the whole student, and student success is important, but that is more subtly woven into those messages. And our hope is that by providing this to the entire campus, that we're empowering entities across campus that are communicating to be able to share these same messages and use these same brand pillars when they're talking about the things that they're sharing on their campus and in their areas, so that we're cohesively telling that story. And fast forward five to 10 years, we have that same effect of people know what to expect from the UA Little Rock experience. It can be really hard to pour into developing those brand pillars, and then remove yourself enough from those pillars that they don't feel redundant when you're looking at the big picture. So at UAFS, we use a content matrix to align our messages with our brand pillars and our institutional values. We'll show that content matrix on the next slide. So one of my very favorite people in higher ed, Liz Gross, who also first introduced me to the content matrix at a case conference, has always said that there is no such thing as having a social media goal. You just have goals, and social media helps you get there. You have institutional goals and department goals and reputational goals, but social media is just the way you move your institutional goals and your departmental goals towards your goals. Social media is just the way you move your institution forward to achieve those goals. It's the same with your press releases as your paid ads, same in your magazine as in your organic posts. So when we map our content, we aren't really asking whether we've posted enough pictures of the bell tower or too few. We are asking whether we have built social content that moves the needle on affinity, that moves the needle on belonging, whether our communications are supporting our goal to build a welcoming campus that empowers our students. When we're looking at those brand pillars, we're thinking about content that really shows off those beliefs and those values without being didactic about it. And I think it's really important that we engage campus in our work. And so some of the ways that we're trying to do that at UA Little Rock is thinking about photo shoots, video shoots, so you see in the background, one of these is a photo shoot that we had on campus. And so when we bring our faculty and our staff to activities and events and we engage campus, all of a sudden we get access. And so I think that's the key thing is that when we're engaging people about, hey, we wanna tell your story, we really need your help to find the right students. All of a sudden our deans, our department heads are incredibly flattered and we get a huge list of students and great information about why this is the right student. And then we say, oh, great, we've selected so-and-so, can you help us find a space in your area that is gonna help further that story? And all of a sudden we have access to the rooms and to the information that we're needing. And I think that's so important. We were doing a photo shoot a couple of weeks ago and there was a little bit of a schedule snafu and this poor professor walked in and we had taken over his lap. And I thought, oh, great, he's gonna be miffed and frustrated that there is a camera crew set up, we've moved classes, we've moved tables, chairs, all of that. I really thought he was gonna be annoyed. And he looked at me and he said something that I thought was really profound. And he said, what you're doing right now is a better use of this class for today, we'll go across the hall. And I just think it speaks to that idea that the campus felt engaged, they felt part of that conversation. And so that's really where engaging campus pays off. And then I think the other piece, when I was at a prior institution, I got feedback one day that I wasn't doing enough to tell individual program and department stories. And at first I honestly kind of got annoyed if I'm being real about the situation, I'm being authentic with my own experience. But then the more I thought about it, I said, well, I don't think that's the case. I don't think I was doing a good enough job closing that feedback loop back with those deans and those leaders. And so what I started doing is what I call my message musts. And I would go through and every single month, I would email each dean with this information. And I would just say, hey, here are the news features that our area did that represented your area. You may not have seen them all, but I want you to have this idea and understanding. Here are all the times that your area was highlighted on social media. Today we had a picture in the quad of a student doing X thing, and that student was one of your students. And here's some of the results we're seeing from some of the advertising and marketing campaigns that we're running. And then I would kind of turn the table on them and say, but I need your help. Can you, again, trying to get that access and open that conversation back up, can you tell me what stories and what news is happening in the college this coming month that I need to really be working on proactively? And then also, thank you for being a partner with me. Here are these moments that we've partnered together on some bigger things. Let's make sure that we continue to do that. And then closing that conversation with thank you. And I did this for three months. And then I went back to the academic folks that had kind of provided that feedback and said, we've changed things up a little bit. I would really love if you'd re-ask that conversation and re-open that. I'd love to see if we've moved the needle. And every single dean just was so pleased that we had, within such a short time, turned the tide on all the things. And we had received the message and all of a sudden, we were such great advocates for the departments and the programs. And we were telling that story. And I'll be very transparent with you. We did not change a single action as it related to marketing and communications. The only thing that we changed was communicating and making sure we were closing that loop back. And so I think that's a really great way to keep that strategy moving forward is making sure those folks know what you're doing. Because I think sometimes we are so busy doing all the things as communicators and as leaders that we forget to remind people about the collaboration and the work that's happening. Yeah. When we attend department head meetings with our deans, like Carrie said- And so this is kind of the next thing, and it's this- Sorry, were we talking over each other? Carrie, do you want me to add to that past slide? Carrie, can you hear us? Uh-oh. No. I think Carrie's frozen. Okay. Well, I'll talk a little bit. Okay. So at UA Fort Smith, we attend our department head meetings too. And like Carrie said, there are so many times when we're sitting there, Carrie said, from our faculty, that are fascinating and interesting to us as outsiders, but it also might feel like everyday work to them. So by attending those meetings and being present in those places, we can- We also hear from our faculty, our staff, and our students that they want to see themselves, and they mean it literally. So when we're planning our affinity month content, or we're talking to our Hispanic students or our black students, we make sure that those students are engaged in the creation of the content. We also say that they're engaged in the creation of the content, because those students and faculty and staff are going to think really critically about who they want to interview, what they want to present, and what they want to share about their communities as they build them. So Carrie's having some audio. She can't hear what we're saying. Oh, oh no. Yeah, okay. Is this the right side for you, Rachel? Yes. I'm sorry, there's that. I'm sorry, everybody. There seems to be some sound issues that we're hearing, like we do double what we're saying a little bit. Rachel, do you think you can pick up on this slide? Yeah, this is Carrie's editorial calendar. So they make sure to plan everything out months in advance, making sure that they know what's happening on campus, that they have projects coming up. And so you can see here, they have athletic content, they have affinity week content, they have first-gen content. And so they are showing off like all of the things they have going on, but also planning really far ahead so that their whole team knows what to say and what will be shared on social. And so this also captures all of the things that are going on in their, sorry, on their calendar. And so it's by week. So you can see everything planned out. You can see, okay, I have room to add something else here. I have room to add, you know, maybe no more content on this Friday, but on Monday we could do another post. Thank you, Rachel. So sorry, y'all. Is she not a rock star? Because all of a sudden I couldn't hear anybody or anything. And so I quickly moved to a different setup on my end. So thank you for pinch hitting as always. She's the best. But yeah, like this is kind of the gist of that. And the idea with our editorial calendar is that we can kind of see at a glance of where we are, where we can adjust and really make sure that we're getting that content plugged in at the right time and at the right spot, and also have the flexibility to move things around and know how something that's happening on campus might impact something else so that we can think about it. Because as we all know, sometimes in the communication space, our time is not our own. And so other things happen on campus. And so we have to have things in a way and in a place that we can quickly respond and react. And so that editorial calendar helps us see what's coming, helps us see where we are, and helps us see when those crises happen, how we can quickly move and adapt. Moving and adapting, isn't it, Keri? So good. So we put out all this content. We align the things that we write and we post with our brand pillars and we say it all in the same voice. But what does it all mean? We know that sometimes a really great story doesn't get picked up by media because there was a fire across town. Or that sometimes the algorithm crushes that perfect Instagram post because it decided it looked too much like an ad. Don't even get me started on the chaos that is Creator Studio. So assessing the broad scope of our work is really important. According to recent benchmarks from Campus Sonar, just 26% of any conversation online mentions any account affiliated with your university. That does not mean your main account. That conversation is happening on your library's ancient Instagram and a Reddit thread your admissions team started in 2004. And then 74% of the conversations never tag your institution at all. So if you want to measure the impact our work has on audience, we have to be listening to how they're talking about us outside of comment sections. We're really listening. We're not just analyzing. We're not just assessing. So at UA Fort Smith, we use Brandwatch to assess our conversation volume and the way the content we produce extends into other conversations online. This is an example of one of our dashboards. And in the top graph, you can see a teeny tiny light blue sliver that we are creating in central comms in that pie chart. The yellow and green is what's happening across all of our university-run accounts, our athletics accounts, our library accounts, our admissions accounts. And that huge mass of purple is what everyone else is saying about us. And the best way we found to measure how we're navigating all of that purple is to gauge sentiment. So those graphs on the bottom show that almost all of our online conversations are positive or neutral, which is really amazing. We're hovering at a 2% negativity rate right now, and that means that what we're putting out in our messaging is landing and that those other conversations are carrying that message forward. So our audiences are talking about us in much the same way that we're talking about ourselves. And I think the other piece of this, and this is so incredible, and I love that Rachel's team has access to this and is looking at this, but if you don't have this, that doesn't mean you can't assess your work. There are so many tools that are built into the platform. So thinking about looking at your impressions, looking at your engagements, your reach, when your audience is online, who is your audience on each platform and each of those spaces, I think that information is also really important. And that's information that already exists out there that anybody that's interacting online has access to. And so I think that's a really good place if you don't have the resources or the tools to do this right now, I think you can really get a good start at taking a look at what people are talking about when they're engaged, when they're online, and start to see what of your content is resonating and start to make some sound judgments and assessments as to why that is so that you're spending time and energy on content that resonates and content that's important instead of trying to be in all the places and all the things at the time. Because to Rachel's point, all that purple, there's no way at all that you could ever be in all of those places and all of those spaces. So it's making sure that you're making the best use of the tools and the time and the resources that you have. Yeah, that's so important. We segment by lots of demographics, of course, but one of my favorite segmentations for our ads are age groups, because those segmentations give us so many opportunities to educate our campus. About once a semester, we get a message from a staff or faculty member asking why all of our ads are so focused on fiscal outcomes. And then we get the chance to explain what we mean by strategic segmentation, to talk to influencers, to parents and advisors. What we know they care about is those fiscal outcomes, those life career outcomes for their students. And they're just not seeing those fun, beautiful campus life photos. That's not what those influencers are asking us about. So we've talked a lot about intentionality and choosing what to do and how to track it. Carrie and I have both learned some hard not do's. We know there's so much conversation happening at institutions. And when we look at the big picture, we help smaller departments and organizations by giving them space to say no about creating new accounts. We can show them how many places there are for prospective students to wander in and to get into the middle of conversations they think they're having about institutions with accounts that aren't active. We can help them see that maybe we don't need another place for a student to get lost on their journey. And when you really look at the volume of conversation that's happening every day, you might also find it a little bit easier to resist jumping on trends. At UAFS Pneuma, our mascot is a well-known Swiftie that has nothing to do with me being a Swiftie. So when Taylor drops a new album, he might make an appearance on our feed in new record attire. We have fun and our students have fun. And they know that our account can be lighthearted. But we steer clear of hopping on random trends, especially ultra viral memes, because there's so rarely time to decide whether they align with our values or even what the context of that viral photo is. Memes are almost never unique to your campus experience. They're rarely aligned with your brand voice and they can be distracting. And who has time to shift an entire content plan, like the one Carrie said earlier, to the whims of the internet? Yeah. So as we start to wrap up our conversation, I'm curious what strategy is hardest for you? Yeah, Rachel's point putting down those things that we don't need it so easy in our world to take on all of these great ideas, but we're usually not the greatest in higher ed at letting go of other things to take that space. Yes, Mary Kay Cooper making it relevant for all when they aren't that broad group yeah you're exactly right. The monolith of our audience is so hard. Yeah, aligning content. That matrix is really helpful for that that Rachel's team put together ways to do that. That's so true. How do you tell that story in a way that everyone can understand and doesn't need the background primer on all the, the research and all of the, the jargon that ends in there. And then also curious, which is hardest for your campus leaders, because I suspect that may be different. I have a super transparent Chancellor, so for me it's not that that level of leadership, but I think all of our vice chancellors are really nervous about saying something wrong and then getting stuck or held to it. They're all afraid of social media a little bit because you know it's forever. Jump on bandwagons. Yeah, I have many colleagues that, similar to what Rachel said they're nervous when they don't see the ad. Yeah, yeah. Student marketing. Yeah. Yeah, the bandwagons. I think that jumping on bandwagons is really hard too. You see something another university is doing, and they likely have a strategy, but sometimes they don't. So you can't just do what they're doing, or assume that you're targeting the same students even. Or the same alumni or the same donor. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Alrighty. And so with that, we want to open it up, we've got a few minutes for those questions that you might have. And so, Claudia, I'm going to stop sharing so that we can have more conversation around questions. Yeah, I have a couple of questions if you don't mind, I'll go ahead and ask that I got. One person asked, how are you surveying audiences? So what are like some of the tools that that you guys use in your institutions for surveying? I know that's a big, that's a big question. I would say high level, we do market research every probably five to six years, we should do that a little more frequently. But that's kind of the high level way that we've really focused on trying to make sure that we're hearing from those audiences. But then we also do that in sometimes on our end, at least sometimes very formal ways and sometimes very informal ways. You know, that may be at commencement, a member of our board of visitors chased me down the hall at commencement to tell me that he had been, you know, really focused on that newsletter and how excited he was about that. And that he was seeing the outcomes that really mattered. And so I took that back to our team and said, you know, anecdotally, we're hearing this, how does that align with some of our clicks? How does that align with what people are looking at? And so we kind of a little bit go that call to quantitative in terms of trying to, to map that. This is, this is pretty tool specific also, but at UA Fort Smith, we consider social media as like our largest, our largest focus group. And so we call it a focus group, everything we're reading and learning on social. And so we've built really sophisticated queries that are aligned with our strategic goals. So we know if someone is talking about our center for economic development, which is colloquial, we called our CED. We know that that's aligned with one of our brand pillars for community engagement. And so our queries are kind of helping us segment these things. So we know what's effective. On the marketing side, we're constantly looking at engagement. We're looking at how people are engaging with our ads, what audiences are resonating with our ads. We're doing A-B testing all the time. And now Meta has unveiled some AI tools to help do that a little easier. We're just dipping our toes into that, but, you know, using those tools that you have access to. So currently we use Campus Sonar to do that. And the tool they use is Brandwatch. And we have in the past used Meltwater, which I thought was totally capable, just didn't come with analysts who would help me do the work. And so, you know, whatever tools you have access to, building those queries that help you see what people are really saying about your campus. And then looking at your ads on the back end, how is this performing? What has Facebook recommended I do with this? What is Instagram recommending I do with this? And really taking that feedback, because at the end of the day, they own those platforms. So if you're running an ad and Facebook says it's not effective, it doesn't matter if it's the best ad in the world. When they say it's not effective, they mean they're not sharing. And how are you all kind of recording what you term as engagement? You know, I think we've kind of struggled in the past with, well, we have X number of comments or likes or whatever, but how do we really measure that in a way that we can put into a CRM and show our data, you know, that it's growing over time or whatever? How do you guys kind of tackle that? So at UA Little Rock, especially on the social side, one of the things that we do, and we do this with our media mentions as well, but we kind of we track those and look at those in our content planning team every month. We look at what the content looked like the month before, what was the most engaging in terms of engagement. We're less worried about likes, to be real honest. We're focused on those people interacting in some capacity. And so we're looking at what content was most engaging. We're also looking at that by our brand pillars. So which brand pillar is performing best and are we always having the most success in one of those brand pillars or does that kind of spread out? And then we look at that year to year. We don't do that a whole lot month over month just because, you know, August is going to look very different than December. And so I think we can get ourselves in these kind of self-fulfilling prophecies of we're not living up to whatever. But look at where we are year to year to kind of see that. And then we share that up once a quarter with our executive leadership and making sure that campus is aware of those benchmarks and how we're seeing. And then we do the same thing as we're thinking about media mentions. We do the same kind of concept when we think about advertising. And so we're trying to kind of look at that pretty tightly on our end and then putting that in an executive summary that we're sharing externally so that folks. I think folks externally want to know that you're thinking about it. I don't know that they necessarily get in the weeds of what the results are. So we're making sure that we're regularly hitting them with that information and providing some key takeaways, but not giving the full weeds report because I don't think that they've got so much other things on their time. Our chancellor just doesn't have the bandwidth to look at all of that data. Yeah, our chancellor gets my daily digest. So every morning she gets a list and she asked for this list of every single mention of us on the Internet. So some days it's like 300 mentions. And then for everyone else in cabinet I send a monthly update. So a narrative review of what happened on social and in our media outreach, along with a couple of very, you know, boiled down graphs. This is what performed the best. This is the kind of thing we're seeing online. I pull out one positive and one negative post. Hopefully there are no negative posts but if there is, I pull out one and show like this is, you know, a place where we could improve or an issue that it seems like we need to address. And this is something that our students and our alumni are really engaging with. And so it's not necessarily that they really liked that post with the lion. It's that we said this and the students were sharing it and their moms were sharing it and they loved it. And so think about how you can be having those conversations when you're meeting parents or when you're meeting with counselors. And so, yeah, a monthly digest is kind of how we report that up. And then I am housed in advancement so I and our admissions director share access to a dashboard that's constant. So we can always see how something is doing, how something is performing. And then anyone who needs access, you know, we've tried to do a lot of education on campus. We have this dashboard running all the time. If there's something you're concerned about, share it with us. If there's something you think is going to be really engaging, share it with us. And then we can report back like Carrie said, kind of changing the narrative of how much we do when we're sharing back the results. It's not changing the work that we're doing. It's changing the perception. So, right. Yeah, so we have we have NXT for advancement. But that like the stuff we're putting into NXT is like specific donor engagement. But we are keeping the comms and marketing strategies, kind of separate right now. I would love to hear about that Mary if you're putting that into it. I'm not, but I want to. But I'm trying to figure out as a one person shop how to how to do that. You know, right now, there's a Blackboard widget where I can do email. So with the press of a button, I can put any kind of alumni communication that I'm emailing from Outlook. It doesn't even have to be through Razor's Edge. I can dump that in there, but social media is is different. And so I would imagine if you're doing it for donors, it's the annual gift officer or the NGOs got that donor in his or her portfolio puts that in there. But since I've got all of the alumni, that's not. A thing right now yet. So I'm curious as to just the bandwidth and is there some easier way for me to dump some, you know, some of the social media engagement into because we do alumni engagement scoring and I would love to have that as part of the score. It is not currently because I can't figure out how to systematically get it in there in an easy way. Oh, um, so I would, I would consider what your communication metrics are in your, if you are doing an institutional effectiveness plan. So, you know, you could use a platform like Hootsuite to measure engagement and just sort of trust that number. Or of course, each platform has their engagement metric. And then if you're using a matrix like the case matrix, where communication is its own little bar, figuring out a multiplier for that engagement. Because just saying how often you're posting is kind of a hard way to navigate, including that but we are working on that process now with our alumni and annual giving offices. How are we measuring their success and what does that metric look like in that alumni engagement scoring, and so it is super manual to do it in the alumni score but at least if you can measure your alumni pages engagement you know that that's going to be a little more tailored audience, and really figuring out how to make sure you're talking to the right audience, and that they know where to go to find alumni content. And so then when you're measuring it, it is a little more effective. Very same thing. Yeah, we're not there yet. Yes. Okay, we had a question from Chase. Some leaders, shall we say, are obsessed with earned media aside from athletics, is there an academic unit or student focused program that has provided the most consistent source of narrative sharing. Okay, I have an easy answer for this one. So one of the best gifts I ever got when I started at UA Little Rock is they had already in collaboration with the provost. Our leadership had already decided what were the pillar programs on campus. And so there are 10 of those programs that those programs said, you know, this, these are areas where we want reputationally to be known. These are the programs that are willing to let their folks be media experts that they're willing to regularly have cadence with me to share those stories. And so having that gift. It also took out that frustration or angst point that we sometimes get from our academic colleagues that every, and rightfully so, every program thinks their program is the most important on campus. So the academic leader had really set the tone on that. And so that for me has provided that that opportunity to know where do I need to focus my efforts and because of that. I know who I can go to consistently to really tell key stories when it makes sense in the city landscape in the regional landscape. And then also just they're constantly feeding us information about things they're doing. Yeah, um, we have really close relationships with a lot of our staff run groups. So one of the ones I can think of that's doing really good work is our first gen student committee, so they have different some committees that do different work so some is engagement and some is communications and some is mentorship, but they have been so good about sending us stories and helping us generate content and that is one of our brand pillars is student access and opportunity and making sure those students are cared for more than half of our population here at UAFS is first gen, and more than 60% are Pell eligible so how we approach those students is really important to our overall strategy, and to our overall university strategic plan. So knowing that those people are helping us with content is so nice. But if that's not the case, you know, looking for those people who are engaged and who might be willing to jot down something small for you, even if they aren't running a page themselves. We might just be willing to engage with you a little bit and send you some of that content. So you aren't doing all the work. I think a big part of that is asking so we do a lunch and learn series, where we coach our entire campus about what makes good stories, what, what are things that our media partners are looking for what kinds of stories do really well on social typically. And so we try to provide that information as a resource to campus, so that they know what what we're looking for. I think that's part of the reason sometimes that folks are hesitant is they either think. Oh, nobody, that's not going to be a big thing and maybe it is, or they've had an experience where they've sent some things that to a marketing and comms unit weren't the right things. And so because of that they haven't felt valued and so they disengaged in the process. So I think really educating about what you're looking for in terms of getting those stories is probably one of the easiest strategies to go about starting to kind of shift that tide on your campus. I also try to be aware when I see some of those departmental accounts, posting things that are really good or that I like or maybe just one thing that I like sending them an email and saying, I know you run this account and this was really good content I would love to share it with a thank you, like you are doing good work, I know this is hard, and I would like to post this on the main page is that okay. And so that gives them some. Okay, I am doing a good job. It gives them some positive feedback but it also lets them know that you're looking at their content that you are engaging with their work that is in addition to their faculty duties that is extra work that they've taken on for the benefit of their program. And so, yeah, buy in, making people happy and making them feel appreciated and valued. It's so hard because we can't write every story and if you have 70 departments. You can't write about every program, but you can tell the people who are engaging with you. Thank you. Yeah, that little bit of encouragement that will hopefully spur them to continue sharing that great content right. I have one more question. We talked a little bit about students and kind of using them to help tell the institution's story. How do you kind of coach students to become ambassadors for your institution, you know, kind of keeping their authentic stories and their voices there but also staying kind of on brand on message for the institution. Is there, you know, a formal process that they go through like a training almost for those student ambassadors or is it is it just, you know, kind of here's, here's the party line. Tell your story while not jumping over that line. Yeah. So, um, I just worked with Josie Alquist to develop a course. So I'll just plug that the student social media. Which is like I did not intend to plug that here but it is so good. Our students use it. Oh, do they. So this is what I wished I had time to tell every student worker on campus. So I have a little piece about brand and voice, and then there are some other true experts who talk about creating content. I have enrolled some of the students from some of our accounts that are not run by my team, because I am doing this training with my student workers as soon as they start so I make them start. a week before I need them to do anything. And so we have a full week to do training. And so it's training on the brand training on variety training on what we post and what we don't training on when to go ahead and post them on to ask me. But this is what I wish I could give everyone. And so, you know, I think if you can't enroll in that course it's like $99 for the course per student. They engage with the material on their level but building something so that you aren't duplicating that work every single year, so I have a packet that every student who works for me gets that has our brand pillars, kind of boiled down for social media. So it's not the big words about social mobility and transformative education it's. We want to show the ways we help our students, you know, we want to show the ways we support our community and so giving them these tools that you can use year after year, so that your students know what they should be posting about what they can't be posting about. And, and, you know, just having open honest conversations. One of the things I tell my students is that if something seems wrong or if you feel like our content was not good or you feel like there's a problem brewing on campus you're hearing in your sorority that everyone should be posting something, bring that to me as someone who's looking at that on social. So they're really on the ground advocates do they're just posting content. But yeah, all those things you can do to build up your knowledge base and materials you can give them is really helpful because it's, it's hard to train every single student, especially if they're leaving after one or two semesters, particularly for the folks who are kind of in that ongoing student worker kind of relationship. One of the things that we have done is really tried to mimic the work experience so they have one on ones with their folks here on our team. And so it's a really good opportunity for them to get feedback to get those critique moments and to hear opportunities where they can be better bring their ideas forward and have those conversations. We also do a lot of the takeover work, and that is a little bit less structured, but they're not so dissimilar from Rachel we have a packet of here's what to expect. And those students are usually vetted from other folks on campus so we're not just randomly giving the account keys to somebody and hoping for the best. So those are students that have been selected for this for a particular reason a particular purpose and so we have that packet and then we've also informed their leader about that work so that that leaders in the loop as well, and can help make sure that nothing goes awry. Our students have pitch meetings to so they come to me at the beginning of the week with big ideas and then we talked about, okay, I would love a video from homecoming. I probably don't need a video of this for on for basketball tournament. I'd rather you spend your time at homecoming, or, you know, all of the things that that they might have planned for the week that I don't even know about that aren't on our university calendar their big science lab or, you know, whatever it is. Yeah, great way to stay on in front of things that are happening on campus really use those students that are on the front lines as it were. Thank you guys so much for being here. I'm so glad we got to do this webinar and I apologize for the little, little bit of sound issues in the middle there but I think we worked through it, you guys are consummate pros so I appreciate you. Thank you so much Rachel and Carrie. You guys are the latest in our best of to gather series but we have another one coming up in March, March 28, we will be joined by Jenna Goodman co founder and CEO of generous change and tie rock associate vice president for central development at the Oklahoma foundation, they'll be sharing their tips for supercharging your major giving efforts with the assess with their session title achievement versus innovation how to inspire next level fundraising. I also want to give a shout out to our upcoming conference happening, April 14 through 16 and San Antonio, you will see lots of presentations, just like this one, you can register right now the link is in the chat, and you'll get the early bird pricing if you register through March, because March, six or March 3 I can't. Sorry about that. You can register right now, using the link in the chat. Thank you all again so much for joining us and I hope that we'll see you on March 28. Thanks everybody.

webinar

marketing

communications

authenticity

brand pillars

trust

content mapping

student-focused programs

measurement