AMPLIFYING YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA AND CONTENT MARKETING

EFFORTS ON LINKEDIN

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VANESSA THEOHARIS ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,INTEGRATED CONTENT STRATEGYBABSON COLLEGE / @VANESSATSMILES

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THE HIGHER ED CONSTITUENCY JOURNEY

Driving Our Marketing Strategy

HIGHER EDUCATION CONSTITUENCY MAP

TODAY’S HIGHERED CONSTITUENCY JOURNEY

THE LOYALTY LOOP

INTEGRATED CONTENT EFFORTS

SOCIAL MEDIA GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

Brand Awareness: Enhance the College’s reputation

Community-Building: Build community, engagement, and relationships among Babson stakeholders

Marketing Goals: Promote babson.edu and related websites

Business Goals: Impact enrollment, retention, and outgoing recruitment goals in major lines of business

Stakeholder Goals: Enhance stakeholders’ ability to achieve their goals

SOCIAL MEDIA MEASUREMENT

Brand Awareness: Reach and mentions

Community-Building: Content engagement analysis

Marketing Goals: Website traffic from social media platforms

Business Goals: Conversions (inquiries, gifts, etc.)

Stakeholder Goals: In addition to conversions, qualitative advocacy and ambassadorship

CASE STUDY: BABSON COLLEGEDefine Your Brand and Know Your Audience

About Babson

• Small, private business college• Wellesley, Massachusetts

(14 miles west of Boston)• No. 1 in Entrepreneurship across

rankings publications• Programs

– Undergraduate– Graduate– Executive Education

The Community

• 38,000+ alumni worldwide• 2,000+ undergraduate students• 1300+ graduate students• Global Community

– 26% international undergraduate students– 65% international graduate students– 80+ countries represented

CASE STUDY: BABSON COLLEGE

WHY LINKEDIN?The Power of the Platform

WHY LINKEDIN?

• 414,000,000+ Registered Members Worldwide• 200+ Countries and Territories• 16th Most Visited Website in the World• Our advocates (i.e. our alumni) are there!

www.linkedin.com/alumni

LINKEDIN PROPERTIESBuilding Your Institution’s Presence

LINKEDIN PROPERTIES BREAKDOWN

• Objective• Audiences• Content Type• Content Source• Leverage Campus Partners• Recommendations

LINKEDIN COMPANY PAGE• Objective: Showcase your institution’s brand and thought leadership.• Audiences:

– Primary: Prospective Employees– Secondary: Prospective Students

• Content Type:– Institutional announcements– Faculty/staff thought leadership and

accomplishments

• Content Sources– Owned: Web properties– Earned: Media coverage, LinkedIn Pulse

faculty/staff posts

LINKEDIN COMPANY PAGE• Leveraging Campus Partners:

– Public Relations– Faculty Division Communications

• Recommendations:– Engage with others’ posts as your page.– Post on your Company or University

Pages at different times. You may have audience overlap.

LINKEDIN COMPANY PAGE: SPONSORED UPDATES

• Objective: Increase awareness of your brand and your programs using paid media by reach audiences beyond your page follower-base, using the Company Page as a source.

• Audience:– Dependent on the Request– Primary: Prospective Audiences (non-followers)

• Content Type:– Amplify thought leadership content– Programmatic business goals– Event promotions

• Content Sources:– Owned: Web properties

• Leveraging Campus Partners:– Work with business units (such admissions) to identify their prospective

audience targets and related content for those audience.

• Recommendations:– What about content? Built trust to engage your prospective audiences AND

reengage your existing audiences.– Work with key stakeholders to develop a process for requests.– Maintain a calendar – avoid overlap and avoid inundating your own community.

Other Advertising Opportunities:• LinkedIn Display Network• Sponsored InMail• Lead Accelerator• Text Ads

LINKEDIN COMPANY PAGE: SPONSORED UPDATES

UNIVERSITY PAGES• Objective: Build community and brand the institution as a

lifelong resource for alumni.• Audience:

– Alumni, current students, staff– Prospective students?

• Content Type:– Prideful (alumni stories, campus news)– Career

• Content Sources:– LinkedIn Pulse– Owned long-form channels– Events

UNIVERSITY PAGES

• Leveraging Campus Partners:– Work with departments whose target audience is alumni. Include

University Pages in their communication strategies for events and programs.

• Recommendations:– Target posts to personalize the content.– Update Notable Alumni and

Featured Groups.– Don’t use hashtags. Just don’t.

UNIVERSITY PAGES: ALUMNI TOOL• Leveraging Campus Partners:

– Educate colleagues (advancement, career centers) on how to use the tool to enhance their work with the alumni.

– Information gathering for fundraising and development.

• Recommendations: – Embed Alumni Tool Plugin on webpages (alumni, career, etc.).

LINKEDIN GROUPS• Objective: Provide a space where your community members can

connect with each other.• Audience:

– Primary: Alumni– Secondary:

Students, staff, faculty, parents

• Content Type:– Posts by members

• Content Source:– Members’ choice!

LINKEDIN GROUPS

• Leveraging Campus Partners:– Encourage alumni, development, and career center colleagues to

join the group, share updates, promote events and programs, and engage with the community – as themselves.

– Work with admissions to created LinkedIn groups for particular classes before they arrive on campus (best for graduate/executive education audiences).

• Recommendations– Your official groups should be unlisted. Set up an approval

process.– Market your groups.

LINKEDIN GROUPSSample Email to Alumni

Promoting our LinkedIn Group

PUBLISHING ON LINKEDIN PULSE• Objective: Share thought leadership of students, faculty, and staff.• Audience:

– Primary: Prospective students and employees– Secondary: Individuals’ networks

• Content Type:– Career – Industry research

• Content Source:– Long-form posts– Can be reposted from other blogs

PUBLISHING ON LINKEDIN PULSE• Leveraging Campus Partners:

– Ask faculty to require publishing in courses.– Work with student leadership programs to include in their requirements

• Recommendations– Encourage with your bloggers to repost.– Ask frequent posters to include your

institution in their profile title so it appears at the top of posts.

– DO coordinate the use of a hashtag to aggregate content.

REGARDLESS … MARKET MARKET MARKET

• Website• Emails• Print• In Events• Other social networks• Word of Mouth

WHERE DOES THE DATA FIT IN THE JOURNEY?

Reporting and Dashboards

MEASURING LINKEDIN ALONG THE JOURNEY

MEASURING LINKEDIN ALONG THE JOURNEY

LinkedIn Properties

AWARE CONSIDER EVALUATE BUY ENJOY

Company Page

Sponsored Posts

LinkedIn Pulse

Visits to Company and University Pages

LinkedIn Alumni Tool

University Page

Community Groups

MEASURING LINKEDIN ALONG THE JOURNEY

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

AWARE CONSIDER EVALUATE BUY ENJOY

Post Impressions

Views of Pulse Posts

Followers Referral Traffic to WWW Properties

Assisted or Direct Conversions

Post Engagements

LinkedIn University Page Metrics

Group Membership

Ambassadorship

Publishing on Pulse

MEASURING LINKEDIN ALONG THE JOURNEY

Traffic from LinkedIn to Babson web properties has

increased 317% YOY

RESOURCESBuilding Your LinkedIn Strategy

LINKEDIN RESOURCES

• LinkedIn for Higher Ed Professionals• LinkedIn for Students• Native Advertising on LinkedIn • LinkedIn Pulse Resource: Maya Pope-Chappell,

Education & Millennials Editor at LinkedIn

THANK YOU!#casesmc