huron education survey documents increasing use of social media in higher education

Social Media &Advancement:

Results 2013

Thursday, 18 April 2013

mStoner.com

HuronConsultingGroup.com

CASE.org


Overview• Fourth annual survey• Sponsors: CASE, Huron Consulting, mStoner• Method: survey mailed to 18,144 CASE members;

tweeted by Michael Stoner and other mStoner team members

• 1,080 response (a 6% response rate)


DemographicsNational originNational originUS/Canada 89%International 11%Institutional typeInstitutional typePrivate 54%Public 45%(U.S. only) What type of institution do you work at?(U.S. only) What type of institution do you work at?Doctoral/research university 32%Baccalaureate (four-year) college 23%Master’s college or university 17%Independent elementary/secondary school 16%Associate’s (two-year) college 4%Other 8%Which best describes your unit (immediate department or division?Which best describes your unit (immediate department or division?Communications 45%Alumni Relations 38%Development (including Annual Fund) 36%Marketing 26%Advancement Services 22%Enrollment/Admissions 4%Other 10%


Social media “traditions”• Top goals: engage alumni, strengthen brand image.• Most commonly used channels: Facebook, Twitter,

LinkedIn, and YouTube. But: year-over-year growth has flattened, except for LinkedIn.

• Management diversity: social media is centralized at some institutions & highly dispersed at others. This diversity of management shows no sign of diminishing.

• Most (83%) departments handle their own social media activities, usually with input from others.

• Comms/PR depts. most likely responsible for creating, monitoring compliance with, & enforcing, institutional SM policies (73%).


What’s new in 2013• SM is increasingly woven into campaigns,

particularly for alumni engagement and brand/marketing campaigns.

• The majority of respondents say their institution uses SM for fundraising & development, often to update donors on institutional news, solicit annual fund donations, and thank donors. Facebook predominates.

• We use SM more commonly to connect with current students & their parents, prospective students & their parents, and faculty & staff.


• Facebook still predominates, but the SM landscape is diversifying, with channels such as Instagram and Pinterest gaining share of voice.

• Use of Flickr and blogs declined, as did the use of an institutional website that aggregates social content.

• More institutions are investing in SM as a communication tool for higher education, as evidenced by increasing average FTE in this area.

What’s new in 2013


The ChangingLandscape


Audiences

2013Growth or shrinkage

Alumni 97% 2%Current Students 89% 20%Faculty and Staff 86% 20%Friends and Supporters 82% 1%Prospective Students 74% 18%Donors 72% 2%Parents of Current Students 67% 16%Parents of Prospective Students 58% 13%Media 51% -2%Employers 42% 2%High School Guidance Counselors 31% 8%Government Organizations 25% 2%

Use of social media is growing quickly for outreach to certain audiences but it’s flat for others


Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

YouTube

Blogs

Flickr

Web.edu

Vendor community

Home-built community

Geosocial

Pinterest

Instagram

Google+

Tumblr

-25 0 25 50 75 100

0

0

0

0

-2

7

-1

-9

-13

-13

-2

7

2

0

9

22

27

28

15

20

32

34

38

42

71

75

82

96

% Use % Growth

Channel use/growth


Responding to options• Many recommend a thoughtful approach about whether to adopt

new social media channels:“Attempting to be everywhere by jumping on the latest platform without a clear sense of purpose is wasted effort. This is a case where more is not better.”

• A sense of how the platform connects with your audiences is key:“Research where your audience is, and survey where they want to see you! If no one is on Google+, then it is a waste of time to add this to your efforts.”

“Targeting platform to audience—i.e. current students via Facebook, alumni via LinkedIn and Twitter, integrating strategy and selecting what platforms make sense and what platforms not to utilize, don't be on all platforms in small ways, strategically select key platforms and focus resources on those few.”


Responding to options• Respondents also caution that new tools mean a need for more

dedicated human resources:“Don't bite off more than you can chew. If you can't dedicate personnel to manage the tool properly (e.g. answering @-replies on Twitter) then don't use the tool.”

• However, one quick action may be necessary when a new channel appears:

“Across four of our platforms—Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest—someone else owned our name. Our lesson learned is squat on your name on all platforms. Even if you don't plan to do anything with it, you should own your name.”

But: “If you reserve it, you'd better be ready for followers. We signed up for [our name] on Twitter to hold it and suddenly found ourselves with 1200 followers without marketing our presence at all. We had to get a communication strategy together, quickly.”


For instance: Instagram• Early institutional adopters of Instagram report good results:

“Students love our use of Instagram and love when we ‘regram’ their photos.”

“We had a very successful Instagram scavenger hunt as part of homecoming. Our goal was 10 teams, but we had 22 teams of students and staff upload over 1500 photos to Instagram and generate a huge buzz on campus. This was the first time we leaned heavily on Instagram, and found that it was welcomed by the campus community as a new social platform on which to engage.”

• Careful planning helps to capitalize on a new channel’s inherent buzz:

“When deploying a new platform/tool, think before you act. And pick your launch time wisely. For example: we launched Instagram with the beginning of the school year. This was a great time to garner followers as the first years began and people were in the ‘fresh start’ mindset.”

• Respondents also note advantages in the way Instagram fits in with existing tools:

“Just try it! Last year, we launched our Instagram channel. To date, we have not promoted it anywhere on our institutional website. It has only been promoted organically via Twitter integration. However, our follower count has spiked and, more importantly, it has become one of our most engaging channels with an average engagement rate of more than 7% per post.”


Website 90%Email 88%Social media 79%Blogging 27%SEO or search engine marketing 24%Internal publications 68%Direct print mail 54%

External publications (not your institution’s pubs) 22%

Outreach and marketing at events 59%Radio 7%

TV 5%Other 3%

Promotion & marketingWe use mostly online tools to promote your social media initiatives, but also many offline ones.

Up 7% from 2012

Up 4% from 2012


Social woven into campaigns

2013

2012 41

52

Roughly what percentage of your campaigns* included social channels?

*campaign defined as “a focused effort to achieve goals using a variety of channels appropriate to the results sought”


Social media in fundraising


Social use in fundraisingDoes your institution use SM to raise money?

20%

39%

41%

yes no unsure

Does your institution use SM for stewardship or donor communication?

18%

47%

35%

yes no unsure


Social use in fundraisingFor which types of development and fundraising activities does your institution use social media?

Keeping donors up to date on institution news 77%Annual fund solicitations 58%Thanking donors for their contributions 52%Keeping donors up to date on campaign or fundraising news

49%

Inviting donors to donor events 48%Annual fund follow-up reminders 30%Referring to or reminding about solicitations received through non-social channels

25%

Capital campaign solicitations 14%Other 6%


Most successful channelsMost successful for fundraising efforts

Most successful for yourunit's goals overall

Facebook 80% 90%Twitter 34% 49%YouTube 18% 22%

LinkedIn 15% 31%


Funds raised are small ...Approximately how much money did your institution raise through social media channels in FY12?

Up to $10,000 67%$10,001 – $50,000 21%$50,001 – $100,000 6%$100,001 or more 6%


Metrics


Donations are not primary outcomes for socialHow do you measure success for your SM activities?

Outcome MeasuresRated in top two

(quite a bit/extensively)

Number of active “friends,” "likes" 73%Volume of participation 57%Number of “click-throughs” to your website 53%Event participation 40%Anecdotal success (or horror) stories 26%Penetration measure of use among target audience 19%Volume or proportion of complaints and negative comments 12%Donations 15%Number of applications for admission 10%Surveys of target audiences 9%


Measuring ROI“It is difficult to measure ‘return on investment’ from the use of social media”

2010

2011

2012

2013 38

33

32

34


The benefit of metrics• Many of those who reported their social media initiatives have

not been successful noted that metrics were lacking.

• By contrast, those who report their social media use has been very successful also say they have robust tracking mechanisms:

“We’ve created a weekly dashboard of target metrics for all of our social platforms and our main websites that shows changes and topics that resonated. This has greatly elevated awareness of our efforts among university leadership.”

“We don’t think, we know. Calculations and reports are submitted monthly on SoMe successes and returns, both subjective and objective. We’ve boosted ticket sales to events, recruited students, and increased awareness about many different things.”


And of multiple metrics• Respondents note that having a wide array of measures, beyond

number of followers or “likes,” is helpful to seeing the bigger picture. In particular, achieving a true conversation can be hard to measure:

“Due to the changing nature of technology and the preferences for its use, goals for social media often feel like moving targets. What's important in terms of metrics one day, may not be the case the following day. Ex. One of our department goals is related to direct engagement with posts. We've seen actual typed feedback fall away in favor of the one click ‘likes.’ Is direct engagement via typed feedback becoming a thing of the past, or are there new methods/suggestions (beyond open ended questions) that truly prompt dialogue?”

“When students start using your page for their own conversations ... you know you've hit success!”

“In the last two years, social media has been overhauled from stagnant and sporadic event promotion to planned content planning with plenty of time for listening. It has really become a conversation—key for alumni relations.”


Staffing


Greater time investmentMore work hours are being devoted to social media than last year. But: the change in number of employees working on social media was flat this year.At the institution level:

• 34% have social media FTE between 0 and 1, up from 24% last year.

• The proportion with 0 FTE is down to 5% from 9% last year.

At the unit level:

• 62% have social media FTE between 0 and 1, up from 45% last year.

• The proportion with 0 FTE is down to 7% from 17% last year.


Barriers to success persist% who see this barrier in their unit “quite a bit” or “extensively 2013 2012

Staffing for day-to-day content management 55% 49%

Staffing for site development 44% 42%

Lack of relevant human resources in my unit 40% 37%

Slow pace of change 31% 22%

Expertise in how to implement it 25% 23%

Funding 26% 22%

Lack of IT resources 22% 20%Lack of institutional clarity about who is responsible

for social media initiatives 22% 20%

Concerns about loss of control over content and tone of postings by others 19% 17%

Lack of commitment by decision-makers 19% 17%


Need for experienced staff• Many believe that lack of staff devoted to social media hampers their

success and that they could improve with help from ... “Dedicated staff person(s). Currently this responsibility is an add-on to current staff positions and responsibilities . . . .”

• There are advantages to concentrating social media duties in fewer staff people with greater expertise and sense of the big picture:

“I think we could do more to collaborate with other campus departments. In addition, our small staff . . . does not allow for social media to be an explicit part of someone's job description. If someone was able to focus on it day in day out, we would be pretty amazing at it. As it stands now, we all collectively try to post when we can.”

“We do not have in-house expertise to help establish strategic initiatives or to ensure our messages are consistent and aligned with other University messaging.”

“At our level (a college within a large university) we have been very successful because we hired someone with solid social media experience who is in charge of all of our social media outlets. This person has set clear goals and has integrated social media into the majority of our campaigns.”


Harmonizing, if not centralizing

• While the survey responses did not indicate that social media has become more centralized in its institutional use, some think that it should be. They advise:

“Centralize efforts instead of individual development units/officers creating their own Facebook pages and campaigns.”

“Do not allow unlimited numbers of entities on a social media channel (in our case Facebook) to dilute your brand. External audiences need to be able to find the official institutional page quickly.”

• We also see suggestions of other ways to reduce fragmentation without making social media usage highly centralized or top-down:

“We would like for more cross promotion throughout the university, from other areas/units than our own, and also from the central administration. It would also be useful with closer teamwork with other units in terms of promoting and/or creating relevant content.”

“We are a decentralized university and all 12 schools, as well as most of the 24 departments, all are managing a social media strategy. We have done an outstanding job of centralizing an otherwise decentralized voice. Our most effective tool has been using Facebook Groups as a vehicle for driving messaging from all of the disparate groups, upward to the main university profile managers. Every day, anyone within the university can post their top stories to the internal group and have a very strong chance of having their story posted that day, or the next on the universities main profiles.”


Champion, expertise key to success

2010

2011

2012

2013

80

72

61

63

52

“A champion is essential to the successful implementation of social media in our institution”

“Expertise to help our social media efforts is readily available”2010

2011

2012

2013 34

31

28

26


Campaigns


www.bluevblue.com/

#goetownblue

mstnr.me/HGJb3HThursday, 18 April 2013

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FSU “Great Gifts” by info source


Cheryl Slover-Linett and Michael Stoner

#SOCIALMEDIA AND ADVANCEMENT: INSIGHTS FROM THREE YEARS OF DATA

White Paper, 2012: #SocialMedia & Advancementmstnr.me/TpQPTv


Social Worksmstnr.me/TkXwLu

Sample Chapter[FSU “Great Give”]mstnr.me/X53Tzz


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Michael Stonerpresident, [email protected]@mstonerblogmStoner.com/EDUniverse.org

Cheryl Slover-LinettConsultantHigher Education Constituent ResearchHuron [email protected] +1 505.820.7256

Contact


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huron education survey documents increasing use of social media in higher education

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