Department of Journalism & Communication Utah State University Social Media Business Plan Spring 2016 Kelsey Schwab

WHERE WE WERE: Observations from the Original Business Plan- January 2016 The JCOM department has struggled with networking and communication in general, which is ironic considering the fact that communication is central to the majors within. The three social media platforms used by JCOM are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. (Most successfully on Facebook and Twitter.) Saw potential for Instagram. Facebook page sometimes forgotten. There are two other Facebook pages connected to the JCOM department, both with the name “USU JCOM Dept. Alumni and Friends.” These pages are great for networking, however, the “official” Facebook page is called “Utah State JCOM Main Page.” Twitter  lacking university and other departments outside of JCOM involvement. Instagram  lacking involvement and the personal feel we want from Instagram. There were a lot of funny memes about school, but not much substance or personality.

GOALS and Strategies/Campaigns Increase the number of JCOM majors. (Hard to find data on this.) Improve the current JCOM program so that the students will have the skills they need to get better jobs. This includes helping the students develop special and unique skills. Build relationships with JCOM alumni and friends for networking and donations to the program. Increase social media follows (or “likes” for Facebook page) by 30% Strategies Use social media to drive to website. Post a motivational journalism quote to Twitter every Monday with the hashtag, #MotivationalMonday Post a quote and picture of a JCOM professor every Tuesday on Instagram with the hashtags #TeacherTuesday and #teamJCOM. Links to articles and ATV to see what the JCOM students are up to. (Chris Garff is pretty good at doing this already.) Live-tweet Pat Bagley, the PR fieldtrip, and other on-campus speakers and activities associated with JCOM. Highlight students who are involved in interesting internships or are heavily involved in the program once a week. Ask them why they love JCOM and post it with the hashtag, #teamJCOM. (Increase Instagram followers by 30%). Alumni profiles, which would be helpful for networking. We would post at least one alumni profile per month. Highlight students’ work from various classes, The Statesman, Hard News Café, etc. once every two weeks.

Analytics Overview Facebook: 196 page likes  218 page likes (Increased by ~11%) Instagram: 102 followers  142 followers (Increased by ~29%) Big Blue USU College of Natural Resources Herm’s Inn Blue Crew Twitter: 449 followers  502 followers (Increased by ~11%) USU IT Utah Public Radio Logan Utah A lot of USUSA involvement (retweets, mentions, etc.) More interaction with JCOM students. (“I love my major,” etc.)

Breakthrough “Total Reach” weeks on Facebook

Instagram: Week 1 and Week 10 No lost followers, 3x as many likes, 44 more comments total.

The last month of Facebook

Strengths Lessened confusion with the several JCOM Facebook groups. Involved other organizations on campus. #GoAggies @USUSA More tagging and interactions. Broad questions Holidays Individual students and teachers interacted. Instagram and Twitter campaigns #MotivationalMonday #TeacherTuesday #TeamJCOM

Successful Posts- Facebook On March 23-24, the JCOM Facebook page had a total reach of 1,397. Why? Using the checking in feature on Facebook was very effective. Tagging individual students automatically shares the photo with their friends.

On April 7th, the Facebook page had a total reach of 782 people. Why? Women & Gender banquet pictures of Deb Jenson, which involved people outside of the JCOM department. An album honoring the three students and one professor who received awards at the CHaSS banquet. BLOG POST: End of Semester Advice from JCOM students

On March 3rd, there were 490 page reaches, thanks to this post. Why? #ThrowbackThursday posts were a hit across all platforms. This post caused interaction in the comments section between the professors who were tagged. Students ate it up! Deb was one of us!

This single post reached 1,051 people! Why? This is a personality short with five adorable PR students. When students see people they know and love in a picture together, they will “like” it. The simple caption might have caught their eye. Simplicity in social media is SO important.

Successful Posts- Instagram #TeamJCOM

Successful Tweets

Weaknesses In the original business plan, we created a “Video Plan,” in order to captivate and involve more students. No videos were made. Many Facebook posts became lost. Because there are multiple admins on the Facebook page and no way to organize them, important posts are lost under a pile of Hard News Café stories. Very PR heavy. Most activities covered involved mostly PR students. Unable to track analytics for the USU JCOM blog, which leads to inaccurate information. This is the fault of wix.com.

How did we do with the goals and strategies? No statistics to prove an increase in JCOM majors, however, the awareness of our department has increased across the university. Live-tweeting success #MotivationalMonday #TeacherTuesday #TeamJCOM Directed to the website  Might revamp in the future? Needs to be more interactive. Alumni Student work  Double-edged sword Videos - Negative

WHERE WE WANT TO BE: Plans for the Future Better collaboration among the Facebook page admins. A possible solution to this could be to purchase Hootsuite and utilize the Team feature. Make a limit to how many Hard News Café stories are posted. Link up with A-TV news on the main introduction instead of reposting every video. If a video is reposted, explain why. Upload more creative posts to the blog. The posts with the most hits (as far as we could tell through Facebook likes) were shorter, sweeter, and involved other JCOM students. Use videos and tag as many pictures of students as possible. Those were the most successful weeks. Look to possibly switch to a more user friendly blogging site, especially for analytics.

Questions?