#UFBugs Campaign Re-Cap

We had an unbe-weevil-able (#punny) time celebrating all things that creep, crawl and fly! Now that we've finally wrapped up with Bug Week 2015, I put together a comprehensive report of our campaign results. To share some of the highlights, here's an executive summary and analysis: 

From 2014 –

·         194.43% increase in Impressions

·         85.45% increase in Unique Users

·         70% increase in Interactions

Twitter -

·         We shared more content and engaged in less conversation (follow up questions, etc.)

o   We garnered less link clicks. Reasons for this include: In 2014, we posted the Better Bed Bug Trap, which was retweeted by Science Friday with 580K followers; People will Retweet without clicking on links; UF/IFAS sent out content with less link variation (i.e., Bug of the Day and #BugWOTD linked to bugs.ufl.edu)

Facebook -

·         We sent 8 posts per day and gained MORE fans! This is significant because we see an increase in Page Unlikes when UF/IFAS sends 4+ posts a day. I'm most proud of the fact that we nearly doubled the number of individuals sharing/talking about our content!

Overall, the campaign ran very smoothly. We finally have a uniformed voice shining through - one that is friendly, relevant and educational. We created and shared lots of great photos - some of the best were of our UF/IFAS leadership with bugs and educational bug posters from the IFAS Extension Bookstore. We received more than 30 photo submissions on Facebook which we were then able to spotlight on Instagram. The best part was hearing feedback from our audience members (from California and Germany) who wanted to participate and learn because bugs were their passions!

To see our best posts, overall performance of #UFBugs campaign and reasons for bumps/spikes along the way, you can see the whole presentation here.

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Hootsuite takes control of your social business

So, it's been a while since I've posted...sorry about that! I took a hiatus once classes ended, enjoyed sleeping in and playing with my pup, Tobias. But now that fall is here (Happy belated Labor Day, btw!) I'm getting back into the swing of things.

I thought you should know that I'm not taking classes this semester either, but it won't stop me from posting diligently at least once a week. *Fingers crossed*

These last few weeks, I've been getting calls, emails, and presenting at work about different facets of social media and various platforms. And I'll admit, it's been a great experience applying my newly acquired knowledge IRL and providing my (albeit, limited) two-cents on content curation and engagement.

I recently just finished a webinar on Hootsuite, and thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about a few highlights that I've gathered on the online social media management tool.

Its original form dates back to 2008, when it was known as BrightKit, a dashboard for all things Twitter-related. It was renamed in 2009 and quickly expanded with new features, including the integration of other social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I found it especially important because of the following three features:

1. Listening - Only using Hootsuite to get the word out to followers? Sorry, but you're doing it wrong. You've got to listen, too! Listening to targeted conversations is often one of the underutilized methods of the management tool. You can listen to (almost) everything anyone is saying about you (or your company) by setting up streams for your platform. Take Twitter for example: you can follow Tweets Retweeted; Mentions; Keyword Search (domain name, a hashtag, alternate spelling); Sent Tweets; Your Retweets ; Direct Message (Inbox); Direct Message (Outbox); and Home Feed. This is especially great for engagement and user-generated content!
2. Insights - A social media strategy means nothing without analyzing your efforts. Luckily, Hootsuite allows users to measure ROI with real-time social analysis in brand sentiment, tracking a social profile's brand growth over time, and visualizing audience social demographics like gender and geography. You can pinpoint your reach down to the city-level. Whoa.
3. App Directory -  Hootsuite offers a collection of extensions and apps that users can add to their dashboard to create a customized experience. This goes way beyond the typical Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. You can add Instagram, EverNote, SlideShare, Reddit, DailyMotion... seriously, the list goes on and on. Users can manage, share, search, monitor, engage, optimize and explore streams of content that matter to them.

 

Hootsuite is great for its time saving capabilities. It allows users to manage social media sites from one place, no longer having to log in to four or more accounts separately. More than that, it's a crucial resource for a social strategy. Its scheduling and listening features are useful for content management and can help managers with creating additional timely/relevant posts. It's time to take control of your social business so social business can't take control of your time.

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Analytics of a Social Media Campaign

This week we learned the importance of analyzing a marketing campaign. The idea of tying social media to conversions and isolating social referrals may seem like a daunting task, but they're an integral part to tracking goals and social media marketing efforts like brand awareness, sales effectiveness and advocacy. Analytics are concrete data, meaning they can't be changed or altered. The way in which the analytics are approached, however, may vary from person to person. The little bit (or a lot) of time spent in this area help you make the most of your social platforms.

Below are sample analytics for a real company. For the purpose of this blog post, they are known as "ABC Company." ABC Company is a health oriented organization in the Central Florida area. ABC are active on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube. They also send out a bi-weekly e-newsletter to subscribers. We will only be analyzing their Facebook page and e-newsletter.

The first set of data is from Facebook Analytics. During the month of May, one can see they lost more than 50% of the people talking about them despite a .69% increase in total likes. According to the analytics, there was almost a 40% increase in weekly total reach. They reached and engaged the most people when they invited friends to partake in ABC-hosted activities.The fact that their number of "Friends of Fans" is at 340,325 means they have quite a bit of potential to influence this extended network. I think if they can find a way in which to engage them, interest would spark and the number of people talking about them would increase. 

What I found the most interesting are the more detailed analytics about ABC's demographics and location found on the next two screenshots. They illustrate engagement rates broken down into gender, age, countries, cities, and languages. Women make up more than half of the total demographic with 60.3%, with 28.6% aged 25-34. This is also their most engaged demographic. If this is their ideal target market, the data shows they are posting the right type of content to keep them talking about the ABC brand. If females 25-34 are not their ideal market, they will surely need to reevaluate the content being posted so as to reach other segments of the market. 

Males in the age range of 25-34 are also the most reached by ABC. The data shows that their audience is made up of mostly English speakers in Orlando. It is not surprising to see Spanish as the second-most popular language, as Puerto Rico is the second country in the list of countries being reached. The way in which they reach people is mostly by viral page content. 

The final set of analytics is of their email newsletter. I found this piece of analytics the most alarming. Although ABC has an almost perfect delivery rate at 99.3%, the number of opens and clicks should be causing them to make immediate changes to the contents of their newsletter. Out of 2,606 delivered emails, only 661 people opened them and only 72 found something worthy to prompt a click. And if that wasn't enough, the lack of conversions from the number of clicks is a sure sign of an unsuccessful email campaign. 

In short, ABC Company has a lot of room for improvement on their Facebook page and email newsletter. Re-evaluating goals would be my first recommendation for ABC. I think their Facebook would see much more engagement if it provided interactive material with polls, quizzes, contests, sweepstakes or puzzles. This would also evenly spread the opportunity for engagements across the demographics.

Then, I would suggest sharing information that complements what ABC offers in their email marketing campaign by including things like behind-the-scene images and videos, photos or videos of employees, sneak peeks of an upcoming event or sale (remember those higher numbers of engagement when they used the word "Join" in posts), previews of future projects or offerings, funny videos that relate to their business and other great links of information ABC has come across. By sharing pieces that delight, engage, and entertain, numbers for click rate and conversion will likely increase.

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