Social Media at Georgia Tech ResearchStrategyAction

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Social Media at Georgia Tech
ResearchStrategyAction

• April 16, 2009

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Why Do Social Media Benchmark Research?

• Institutional pull toward social media due to
  alignment with technology brand
• Other reputational gauges were in place
• Prior ongoing research on traditional media
  visibility and message penetration
• No comparable baseline on visibility, image, and
  competitive position in social media

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What We Wanted to Understand

• What is the visibility norm in social media for
  an academic institution and how does GT compare?
• What is the tone of social media discussion
  compared to that in traditional media, and how
  does GT compare?
• How likely are an institutions strategic
  messages to penetrate social media, and how does
  GT compare?
• What are the best ways to tell if social media
  users are engaging with your brand, and how does
  GT compare?
• How does traditional media influence an
  organizations social media opportunities?
• What role should social media play in GT brand
  projection ?

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Research and Findings
Katie Paine
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Methodology

• Local, National, TV media included in a
  longitudinal study of earned media.
• Selected peer institutions included
• Sports excluded
• All items read by member of target audience
• Specific course blogs not included
• External Blogs 332 Items from 50 blogs in 7
  categories
• Internal/institutional blogs 1901 Items from 114
  blogs
• Facebook 811 items
• YouTube 1668 items
• Bookmarking Sites 341 items

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27 Types of Discussion

• Acknowledging receipt of information
• Advertising something
• Answering a question
• Asking a question
• Augmenting a previous post
• Calling for action
• Disclosing personal information
• Distributing media
• Expressing agreement
• Expressing criticism
• Expressing support
• Expressing surprise

• Giving a heads-up
• Responding to criticism
• Giving a shout-out
• Making a joke
• Making a suggestion
• Making an observation
• Offering a greeting
• Offering an opinion
• Putting out a wanted ad
• Rallying support
• Recruiting people
• Showing dismay
• Soliciting comments
• Soliciting help
• Starting a poll

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Benchmarks

• Engaged 3 comments per post.
• Hyper-engaged 12 comments per post.
• After day 2 most comments are done, 14 days max.
• Messages were communicated in 1 out of 25 blogs.

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Lessons Learned

• Engagement vs. mentions
• Types of conversation tell you what to pay
  attention to
• Focus on two or three types of social media that
  matter to your audience
• Top schools stay on top via social media
• Keep it personal, real authentic
• Encourage individuals, not departments, to
  maintain institution blogs
• To drive engagement, encourage personal opinions
  and anecdotes
• Go where the interest is, dont reinvent the
  wheel

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Overview of Key Metrics
Peer 1 was the competitive leader in all but
YouTube, where Peer 4 and Peer 3 led. Actions
attributed to individuals were responsible for
most content, except on YouTube.
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Top 5 subjects of discussion in each channel
Few subjects appear across all forms of social
media, so tailor outreach accordingly
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Influence of Traditional Media

• On average, bloggers included as many as six
  links to external content in a post, the number
  three source being traditional news media sites.
• Links to its newsroom accounted for 26 of links
  to mit.edu on blogs.
• On Facebook, traditional news media sites were
  the source of 25 of popular items posted to
  profiles.
• One third of content on social news sites was
  from traditional media sources.
• Twice as many hard news stories were posted to
  social news sites as features.

Selected Traditional Media Outlets Among Popular
Sources of Content
BBC Boston Globe CNET CNN
EurekAlert! Google News Los Angeles Times The
New York Times
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette San Francisco Chronicle
Washington Post
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Focus on Facebook

• Less than 1 used network-level discussion
  features.
• By September, discussion hosted by freshman
  groups decreased 99.
• Almost 1/3 of content posted to profiles was
  related to a home institution.
• 22 of Facebook discussion was related to the
  asking and answering of questions, second only to
  advertising (30).
• 56 of questions went unanswered, but most were
  not related to the institution.
• High school students accounted for 8 of all
  questions. Almost all of their queries were
  answered.

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Where people get the content they share on
Facebook
Sources of content
Genre of content
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Standard Classification of Video Content

• Advertisement
• Animation
• Demonstration
• Event/Performance
• Fiction
• Film
• Home Video
• Instructional Video
• Interview
• Lecture

• Montage
• Music Video
• News Broadcast
• Promotional Video
• Sightseeing/Tour
• Slideshow
• Speech
• Television Show
• Video Log

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Facebook Recommendations

• Limit engagement with Facebook to contact with
  group officers
• Do NOT participate in discussions on the network
  wall or discussion board
• Provide administrators of freshman groups with
  links to online resources no later than April
• Consider using Facebook to create with other
  specific audiences like parents, graduating
  seniors and campus leaders
• Do not consider Facebook an appropriate vehicle
  for research discussions

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Understanding Brand Ownership of Online Video
Content
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YouTube Recommendations

• Use YouTube as a vehicle for strategic message
  communication
• Tailor materials related to high profile
  competitions
• Prepare media infrastructure for increased
  emphasis on online video
• Encourage faculty members to be subjects of videos

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YouTube Recommendations

• Focus on creating YouTube playlists of thematic
  content already found on the site
• Best Subjects
• Inventions
• Faculty i.e. Last Lecture
• Engineering research i.e. DARPA Urban Challenge
• Robotics Institute of CMU
• Humor FTRI
• Ads, Homecoming, Robotics also did well

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Focus on Social Bookmarking

• In the event of a crisis, expect seeding from the
  local papers
• Thursday Friday saw the greatest number of
  seeds.
• GTs status as a technical institution is an
  asset in the social bookmarking environment
• Few strategic messages appeared in social
  bookmarking sites

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External Blog Recommendations

• Consider external blogs an opportunity for
  third-party endorsements
• Treat influential external bloggers as you would
  industry analysts or key reporters
• Focus efforts on blogs written by more than one
  person, particularly in engineering and special
  focus areas
• Avoid local mainstream media blogs
• Focus on top-tier media outlets as key sources of
  content for bloggers
• Include blogger-friendly features in the FT
  online newsroom particularly video
• In a crisis, expect bloggers to collect
  background from personal web pages, user profiles
  and/or project sites

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Focus on Institutional Blogs

• Most blogs are written by individuals
• The location of links played the largest role in
  driving comments
• Technology drove the largest number of posts, but
  personal life drove comments
• Most posts consisted of making an observation,
  most comments asked questions
• Photographs were most frequently used multimedia
  content
• Institutional bloggers were significantly more
  likely to be positive toward their home
  institutions than mainstream journalists
• Currently enrolled students wrote one in five
  comments

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Recommendations for Institutional Blogs

• Recruit faculty to blog
• Guide message communications
• Tailor institutional blogs to the audiences
  looking for more in-depth information
• Encourage bloggers to be opinionated
• Mix in personal subjects
• Leave frequency of posting up to the discretion
  of the blogger
• Remove abandoned blogs
• Unify blogs with easy-to-find thematic lists of
  bloggers
• Make it easy to share content from your
  institutional blogs i.e., lots of music and
  visuals

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Selected Safe Bets for UGM Outreach

• Safe Bets somewhat frequent subjects that result
  in desirable, engaging discussion
• Research that has resulted in a new, demonstrable
  invention.
• Research in engineering, computing and robotics.
• Faculty achievements, lectures and appointments.
• Events, especially competitions.
• On institution-supported blogs, campus life,
  depictions of student life and admissions
  procedures.
• On external blogs, expert commentaries by
  faculty, especially political commentary.

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Strategy and Implementation
Kathi Wallace
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Goals Our Strategy Supports
Underlying Goals/Commitments

• GTs vision to define the technological research
  university of the 21st century includes
  leveraging innovative communications technologies
  that work
• Overall GT communications strategy recognizes
  importance of 2-way dialogue and reaching
  constituents where they are
• GT communications commitment is to help achieve
  the following, and to use all available tools to
  do it effectively
• ? Strengthen institutions sense of unity
• ? Further improve quality of student applicants
• ? Support fundraising
• ? Improve GT reputation

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Strategy / Tactics
Strategy Phase Early Exploratory

• Research showed merit to further social media
  exploration
• Sharing research with broad communications team
  fostered greater awareness of range of
  initiatives and better articulation
• of collective strategy
• Current direction best defined as Early
  Exploratory Strategy
• Behavior still somewhat opportunistic, but
  becoming more deliberate, targeted, and
  integrated with broader communications
  initiatives/campaigns
• Prevailing view is relatively low investment,
  low risk

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Strategy Component I

• Active participation in multiple forums to
  identify
• new relationship-building opportunities and
• further assess value - EXPLORE

• Use social media to gain GT visibility on student
  oriented topics
• Velvet Glove approach adhere to culture of
  restraint in introducing formal institutional
  voice to external forums
• Encourage dialogue participation by GT community
  members with legitimate associations with forums

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Tactic Example
I(A) Sponsorship of well-targeted Institute-level
blogs to increase campus community
engagement and foster information exchange
between leadership/campus

• Permit frank, open, and moderated comments
  (authenticity, effectiveness, alternative to
  off-site postings)
• Sponsor student admissions-related blogs to
  support recruitment
• Cross-refer prospective students to blogs in
  marketing collateral
• Include media team in information loop as
  preparation for managing any resulting external
  publicity

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Tactic Example
I(B) Incorporation of Twitter micro blogging into
PR and crisis management plans

• Large market for immediacy characteristic of
  Twitter communication
• Police Department plan includes use for campus
  emergencies
• Communications retweets on GT channel to
  broader audience
• PR department uses to distribute news releases,
  event information, links to GT articles
• Early audience includes peer schools,
  journalists, donors, students
• 600 followers on GT News and Information channel
  in first 2 months
• PR department also follows peer institution
  Twitter channels

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Tactic Example
I(C) Development/participation in Facebook groups
that reach strategically important
populations

• Students Organizing for Sustainability group
• Targets current GT students interested in
  grassroots campaigns for environmental
  sustainability (GT research thrust area)
• Student-initiated
• Institute provides student officer with
  information
• Hispanic Buzz group
• Targets Hispanic prospective students
• Uses university mascot as fantasy character for
  appeal
• Initiated by undergraduate admissions
  representative

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Tactic Example
I(D) Targeted use of Linked In professional
networking site to heighten alumni
engagement and support employee
recruitment goals

• Job postings on HR group pages have produced
  employment candidates
• Alumni Association uses on broad scale to
  increase alumni engagement and connection with
  GT
• Efficient to use existing mass forums vs.
  building own
• Additional targeted strategy to appeal to less
  social young alums

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Strategy Component II
II. Inclusion of social media in media outreach
to boost favorable visibility and strategic
message penetration

• Include social media element in every media
  campaign
• Use wire services to seed content to desirable
  external blogs (PR Newswire, Eureka Alert,
  Newswise)
• Directly pitch to well-targeted tech-oriented and
  higher education blogs (TechCrunch, Gizmodo,
  etc.)
• Create no-pitch list of bloggers who prefer no
  email story pitches
• Rely on traditional media outlets and blogs to
  reach social bookmarking site users
• For crisis news, prepare for content to be seeded
  to social bookmarking sites from AP and AJC

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Strategy Components III and IV
III. Development of administrative policies to
support effective management of social media
participation

• Monitor internal/external forums for major
  misinformation or information needs that warrant
  active participation in dialogue
• Discontinue non-active blogs after 6 months -1
  year and migrate blogs off GT web site in event
  of faculty departure

IV. Development of technical infrastructure to
support efficient use of visuals for social media
(videos, photos)
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Strategy Component V
V. Formal evaluation of impact of social media
participation on GT constituent engagement /
university reputation

• External forums include social media metrics in
  ongoing media measurement program
• Institute-sponsored forums track viewership and
  engagement levels
• Review how effectively individual social media
  selections are working together for impact

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Questions?