Social Media Sarah Mallen Information & Guidance Coordinator The University of Manchester Careers Service

Why did we get into social media? Audience 38,000 students plus graduates Issues Lack of awareness of information & help available Some students don’t do enough to make themselves employable University league tables I work at the University of Manchester Careers service in information and service provision. With a student population of around 38,000 plus our graduates we have a defined but large audience. • The most common thing we hear from graduates is “I wish someone had told me about this earlier or made me use careers” • League tables are a big issue for Universities and Employability is one of the metrics used. Therefore Careers services are often measured by the outcome of that data. So to kill 2 birds with one stone we need to make sure we are effective at getting out messages out there.

What are we doing? 2011 started with Facebook groups for schools Approx. 37,400 users now Twitter 9,500 followers on our main account and we have others too. But who are they? Blog 64,646 views in 2015. Declining interest. Much deliberation on schools or areas of interest? It was perceived that students identified more with their academic school as a community – so we went with school groups and then added some general interest groups and a FB page

How effective are they? Students tell us they still use Facebook. Interaction is low (liking or chatting with careers is not cool!) Best engagement in the small task groups where there is more sense of community Twitter Quick & can be set up in advance Some engagement, popular with faculty staff – lots of retweets Audience not easy to account for Blog Good for story telling Less corporate tone than the website Timely information We look at likes and numbers in groups, twitter & blog analytics. But what are we really measuring? How do we measure work in against effectiveness? I’ll let Tom talk more about analytics and measurement of engagement.

Social media review 2015/16 What are we trying to achieve? What messages do we need to get across to students? What actions do we want them to take? What channels are we currently using? What other channels are open to us? What works & what doesn’t? Who will do it? How will we monitor this? In 2015 we decided to have a social media review to look at how we are using social media, engagement and strategy It made us wonder about our overall communications strategy and bigger questions like our core values and what our aims are? We are not at the end of this process, staff genuinely have little spare time to really push this forward.

Outcomes Some Facebook groups disappeared – replaced by staff personal accounts to create a more personal approach. Twitter 5 staff 1/day – more personal quirky approach. Mainly themed days. Blog Relating articles to FAQs relevant for the time of year.

Issues The larger the number of people involved: The more difficult it is to organise & train There will be more differences of opinion It will take a long time to effect change But You get a breadth of expertise if that is needed More hands make light work There are around 60 people in Careers and about 40 of them have their finger in the social media pie or have an opinion. It makes it a bit hard to contain and manage. No-one has this as their only job it’s an add on.

Advice Put 1 person in charge of agreeing overall strategy (ideally have a policy) Have a manager for each social media channel to keep everyone on track Have a rota Decide on a voice (formal, quirky, personal etc) Decide on your measure of success If you want people to use it tell them about it! Having a policy will help when you get into difficult situations. Someone wants something advertising or behaves inappropriately etc A manager / channel will help: when staff need replacing or messages need to change Know who is doing what and when so that you can keep coverage during leave etc We decided on a less formal tone and to offer some of our personality and fun to humanise what can be a scary prospect for students Its obvious but tell people you have social media accounts and cross pollinate them or market them at specific audiences.

but it could be better www.manchester.ac.uk/careers We think it’s working but it could be better www.manchester.ac.uk/careers

Prior to introducing the social media framework, my library had Twitter and a Facebook page. This was staffed by 2 librarians, and weren’t consistently used. There was little planning behind it, it was just done ‘as and when’.

I introduced the social media framework in summer 2014 I introduced the social media framework in summer 2014. This defined our audience, goals, tone, content, staffing. We went from having 2 librarians staffing social media to 2 people per day, on a rota basis. We followed more people on Twitter and started to retweet more content, particularly from across the university. We aimed for a more friendly, informal tone.

The impact of the framework can be seen in our numbers – we went from under 100 followers on Twitter to over 500, currently. Our Facebook likes have also increased. We have more content going out, which is especially important on Twitter. Engagement is still low, though.

Staffing is still a bit of an issue; everyone is busy so it’s constant encouragement and reminders to post. Ensuring tone is consistent is also an issue. I do now get suggestions for content from across the library – sometimes library assistants will suggest things to add, not just the social media team. We at a place where I want to develop our presence further; perhaps by looking into new platforms, or at least ensuring our messages are consistent. I also need to look further into our metrics, to see what’s working and what isn’t. I think this is similar to a lot of libraries - you’ve got a social media presence and it seems to be going OK, so what next?