Author: Joseph Field

Social media manager at Sheffield Hallam University.

Public engagement and social media, part two: Twitter threads, chats and LinkedIn articles

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In the previous post, I looked at setting objectives for your use of social media in a professional context, developing your online presence, and how you can collaborate with marketing-communications colleagues to promote your research.

In this post, I’m going to look in-depth at thought leadership on Twitter and LinkedIn, and highlight some ways you can start to engage in wider debates and raise your profile as a thought leader.

Being human vs being professional

Something that always comes up in discussions with academics is the line between the personal and professional. There’s a perceived risk in putting too much of ourselves into our online persona: what if we say the wrong thing? Someone might be offended, and we risk bringing our institution into disrepute.

But what’s the real risk?

Unless your political views are extreme, or you have outdated social values, your opinions are probably fine to share.

The bottom line is: use common sense. If you were in an open plan office, would you say the same thing? Treat online discussions the same as verbal discussions, and you’ll be fine.

In fact, there’s a risk in ‘always saying the right thing’. If we filter too much of ourselves out of our social media presence, constantly making sure that our updates and replies are corporately acceptable, our accounts can become bland and boring, and people might unfollow us.

Some people are comfortable separating themselves into two accounts: one professional, one personal. If you’re really concerned about saying the wrong thing, this may be the solution for you.

The no right answer that works for everyone. This is about your own values, your preferences and the culture of the people and organisations you work with. My own take on it is that the divide between the personal and professional are diminishing. The way people communicate online is changing, and people are much more comfortable expressing themselves openly.

So, if your activity on social media is a genuine reflection of who you are, your timeline will be more interesting, and people will be more likely to interact with you.

AkwugoAkwugo Emejulu’s Twitter account is a great example of an engaging academic profile. Her cover and profile images, for starters. She looks approachable and friendly, yet academic and knowledgeable.

Her username is her actual name, so she’s easy to find, and it’s clear that this is really her.

Names and faces will always be more interesting than logos and acronyms.

Akwugo’s biography tells us everything we need to know about her professional identity and research specialism, and we get a bit of flavour about who she is as a person. We can also see that Akwugo follows people, and she likes their tweets.

She doesn’t just broadcast: she replies and interacts, and this is a key part of thought leadership.

Telling stories in the real world

People and stories. When it comes down to it, that’s what social media is for. It shapes our approach to the marketing content we publish.

And, as experts, your storytelling starts with the people at the heart of day’s biggest stories.

Peter Neumann’s Twitter thread on the radicalisation of the Finsbury Park attacker is a very good example of expert analysis combined with storytelling. Peter starts with an analysis of the attacker, before exploring bigger themes around the process of radicalisation, current perceptions of radicalisation, and the spread of misinformation.

When the news is so bad, it’s important that there are rational, measured and academically-informed voices leading discussion and debate. Twitter is a great platform for doing that in real time, in response to current events.

Challenging current thinking, leading the debate

Twitter chats are a goo way to expand your network and learn from others, but they can also be a way to raise your profile by leading a discussion on a thought-provoking subject.

We’ve held a couple of Twitter chats recently. They were led by Hallam academics, in collaboration with the social media team here. The most recent one was led by Professor Laura Serrant, an expert on the nursing profession.

Twitter_promo_card_politicalnursing

You can see how it played out in this Twitter Moment, but essentially we engaged a large group of nursing professionals and academics in an hour-long debate about whether nurses should have more of a political voice.

From a Hallam point of view, we showcased one of our academics, and built on our reputation for being a real-world university. This kind of Twitter chat benefits from lots of planning, and genuine collaboration between communications professionals and academics.

LinkedIn has moved on, so should you

A lot of academics I speak to don’t realise how much LinkedIn has changed over the last couple of years. LinkedIn’s mission is to be the social platform for education and professional development. There’s a huge opportunity for universities here.

First, you can write articles on LinkedIn. If you publish regularly on LinkedIn, you have the potential to reach hundreds of thousands of readers (many of whom are 30-49 years old and, according to LinkedIn’s data, earn good salaries).

If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn articles, go and explore. There’s a lot of good stuff out there. They’re picked up by search engines, they’re easily shared (you can tweet your LinkedIn articles), and people can like and comment, which gives you another opportunity to interact with followers.

Lastly, how people use LinkedIn is changing. Have a read of this incredible article by Guy Kawasaki for some evidence of that.

Ride the wave, not the board

Surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku was asked how he always stays on the board when he’s surfing. He reportedly said: “Ride the wave, not the board.”

This same thinking applies to social media and communication. I’ve outlined some ways you can use Twitter and LinkedIn to do public engagement and thought leadership, but there will be other tools and technologies that enable you to do the same thing.

There are bound to be things I’ve missed here. It’s such a big subject. I’d love to hear from you if you’re interested in developing your profile for public engagement. Let me know if there’s something I can help with.

Joe Field, social media manager

@joemcafield

How to write killer blogs and LinkedIn articles

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I’m putting together some toolkits for Hallam staff who are using social media to tell their stories and engage with their audiences.

So this is the first in a series. It’s a simple how-to guide for people who want to write blogs and LinkedIn articles.

I’ll repost this under a new ‘Toolkits’ sub-heading in the social media guidelines.

What should I write about?

Your blog – whether you’re hosting it on WordPress or posting it on LinkedIn – is a window into your expertise, and you as a communicator. A good blog isn’t used as somewhere to store research papers and resources, or a method of sending out information. It’s a way for people to get a sense of your expertise, your ideas and your values.

So you should write about those things. Your expertise is what makes you different. Your ideas are what people will take away from your blog, and your values are what will keep them coming back.

A great way to get started is to write about something that’s in the news, and examine it through the unique lens of your expertise, ideas and values.

How many words?

The ideal blog post or LinkedIn article length is anywhere from 600 to 800 words, depending on the amount of rich media that you’re including in the post.

Getting the structure right

Your first paragraph is important. Along with the headline, it’s the hook that convinces the reader to read on.

Try a few different ways of opening your post, and run them by friends and colleagues. You could reference a recent news event, explore a personal reflection, or make a dramatic statement.

Once you’ve hooked them, your reader is likely to skim-read, so use section breaks, sub-headings, lists and bullets to break blocks of text up, and keep paragraphs short (one to three sentences).

Images and videos do the same thing, and they can help you illustrate a point. Make sure you have usage rights for visual assets. You can use the search tools on Google image search to find images that have been labelled for reuse.

Always check the usage rights for images

Picture captions can be a fun way to highlight a key point and re-engage the reader

Embed URLs as hyperlinks, and set them to open in a new window, so that your readers stay on your blog.

You want to take your reader on a journey throughout your post, so promise them something juicy (revelation, insight, facts) early on, then deliver it in the middle section.

Wrap things up with key takeaways and learnings, but don’t worry about making your ending too neat and perfect. You can leave loose ends for another post.

If you’re in doubt about how to end the article, pose your readers a question. Ask for feedback, opposing views, other sources.

And remember: your blog post is supposed to be a conversation-starter. Ask for comments, and respond to them. Maybe you’ll get ideas for a follow-up post.

Language, tone and punctuation

Unless you’re writing for a niche audience, plain language is a good idea. So, if you want to reach a wider audience, keep jargon to a minimum.

Avoid cliches and archaic words and phrases (use ‘while’ instead of ‘whilst’, for example). Your sentences should be a maximum of 30 words long. Your grammar and punctuation are important, but don’t use overly-complicated punctuation (I heartily recommend R L Trask’s Penguin Guide to Punctuation, by the way – it busts a lot of myths).

Use exclamation points sparingly, and only ever one at a time. Question marks can be used as and when you need them, and are also solitary characters.

Pay attention to the rhythm of your writing. Vary the length of your sentences to add pace and dynamics. Try it. It’s fun.

And it’s fine to start the odd sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’. But don’t overdo it.

Your tone of voice should be warm, personal and direct (‘During the event, I was amazed to learn that…’, ‘By now, you’ve probably noticed that…’). If you’re writing something from a position of authority, you can afford to have a more authoritative tone of voice, but beware of sounding pompous.

I don’t recommend writing about yourself in the third person. Ever.

Remember, a blog post isn’t a news bulletin or an announcement. It’s more than technical writing: it should give the reader an insight into the situation or issue from the author’s point of view.

Your blog’s not just informative: we want to see the human being behind the words.

Different approaches to headlines

Write the headline last. You want to address the reader directly, so make it engaging. It could be counter-intuitive and subversive (‘Why face-to-face meetings are making you less productive’) – if that gives you a springboard into an interesting argument.

The list-article format (‘Six ways to manage your inbox’) works for some people, but don’t use it for every blog post, because your blog will start to look like clickbait.

Here are some common approaches for blog post titles:

  • Numbered lists: “Five cat photos that changed the internet”
  • Dates: “The best cats on the internet in January 2017”
  • Questions: “Why are cats so popular on the internet?”
  • Call-to-action: “Download our expert guide to cats on the internet”

Tags are important

Be sure to add some relevant tags to your post before you publish. They help people find your posts. You might want to use categories, if your blog has that functionality, so that people can easily search and browse your blog.

Writing on LinkedIn

To post your blog on LinkedIn, log in to your account and hit the ‘write an article’ button in the status update box. This will take you to a simple WordPress-style interface, where you can:

  • Upload a header image
  • Insert a title for your article
  • Add formatted text, including bullet points and sub-headers
  • Add rich media, such as images, videos and links

You can publish your article by hitting the ‘publish’ button in the top right, or you can close the browser window and come back to it later – it will auto-save.

When you publish your article, you’ll be asked to add a status update so that you share the link from your profile. Add a comment about your article and hit ‘publish’. You’ve just posted your first article on LinkedIn!

If you look in your browser’s address bar, you’ll see you’ve got a unique URL for that LinkedIn article, so copy it and share it with your networks.

By the way, here’s a really good article about writing on LinkedIn. A lot of it applies to blogging in general. Have fun, and let me know if you found this useful.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

LinkedIn 3×3: Three really good things about LinkedIn

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Last month I presented at the CASE Social Media and Community Conference, an excellent two-day event for higher education mar-comms and alumni relations professionals to meet up and exchange ideas.

Alongside LinkedIn’s Higher Education Partner Charles Hardy, I spoke about our use of LinkedIn for brand awareness, business engagement and alumni engagement. You can see the full presentation here (make sure you click on the ‘notes’ tab so you can read my script).

The last part of the presentation looked at three groups of things: three good things LinkedIn does, three things which could be better, and three things universities could do differently on LinkedIn.

I’m going to expand on those thoughts in a series of posts (three, obviously), starting with three really good things.

The data is mind-boggling

LinkedIn has a lot of data on its users. Think about it: they know who you are, what your profession is and where you work. But they also know what skills you say you have, and what skills other people agree you have.

And, with the introduction of status updates and articles, they know what you write about.

The analytics are pretty good on LinkedIn pages. Free targeted posts are nice. Advertising can be very precise, and you can reach some very niche professional audiences.

And the alumni tool is still amazing.

For a university, the primary audience on LinkedIn is alumni. Businesses and employers are a secondary audience. LinkedIn’s data can be put to use for effective alumni engagement.

We know that alumni are a very diverse group of individuals. They don’t necessarily identify themselves as ‘Hallam Alumni’. They may think of themselves as ‘an art graduate’ or a ‘Sheffield Business School alumni’.

If we sift through the data, we could take a more targeted, personalised approach to alumni engagement. Of course, we’d need more resources to do that.

A snapshot of Sheffield Hallam alumni

A snapshot of Sheffield Hallam alumni

But the data is incredible. We have over 100,000 alumni connected to our page. We can see that the majority of them are UK-based. There are a lot of business and management graduates, and a lot of them are in business development, engineering and IT.

The data also suggests a gap: only 420 are listed as employed by the NHS. We train hundreds of radiotherapy, nursing and midwifery students every year. So we have to assume those alumni are not using LinkedIn, which means we can’t reach them through LinkedIn.

The learning portal is incredible

This is, without a doubt, the single best feature on any social media platform. Really. Facebook has Words With Friends, Twitter has the ever-evolving meta-game that is Twitter, and pretty much every social channel has stories, live video and stickers.

LinkedIn has learning and development, and lots of it.

If you haven't used the portal yet, dive in.

If you haven’t used the portal yet, dive in.

OK, so it’s essentially Lynda.com repackaged, and you need a Premium account, but it’s perfectly integrated, has a personalised interface, and it’s a comprehensive resource for anyone who wants to add some new skills to their profile.

LinkedIn is clear on its mission to be the platform for learning and development, and the learning portal really sets them apart. I’m looking forward to seeing what Charles and his team do with it in the future.

You can post news on LinkedIn

You can post news on Facebook and Instagram, if you present it in the right way (I’m looking at you, Buzzfeed). And you can do big announcements on Twitter, if you can tell the story in one tweet.

But news shouldn’t be 100% of your content mix on those channels. You’ll alienate people and they’ll stop listening.

On LinkedIn, news, announcements and future developments make for good content that gets a lot of organic reach, along with plenty of likes and comments from alumni.

People like that type of content on that specific platform.

Look at that organic reach. Now imagine posting that story on a Facebook page.

Look at that organic reach, and those likes. Now imagine posting that story, in that format, on a university Facebook page.

Again, you should mix it up, seeking engagement rather than reach by posting softer, more conversational content – I’ve written before about the power of nostalgia on LinkedIn, for example. But, in general, audiences on LinkedIn like news.

Those are three things I like about LinkedIn. I’ll follow up next week with three… less good things.

What about you? What sets LinkedIn apart for you? How do you use it? What’s different to how you used to use LinkedIn?

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

 

Five things I learned from the #DebateAutism Twitter chat

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What’s the point of a Twitter chat? For social media and marketing professionals, Twitter chats are a regular thing. They’re a good way for professionals to network, make new connections and learn from each other.

I’ve been kicking the idea of a regular Hallam Twitter chat around for a while, but it’s only recently that the pieces have started to fit together.

Here’s one piece: we’ve got a new university-wide strategy. It focuses on changing lives. We change lives, through educational development and self-improvement. Our academics are experts in their field, and their research addresses some of the toughest issues society faces.

Professor Nick Hodge and his dog Huck

Professor Nick Hodge and his dog Huck

For a university, a Twitter chat can be a way to engage large numbers of people in serious debate and inform our research and teaching. It can also be a way to raise our academics’ profiles, and connect them to people who are interested in, and invested in, their specialist subjects.

Our first academic Twitter chat took place on 21 March 2017. It was led by Professor Nick Hodge, an expert in autism who’s very good at using Twitter to develop his professional network and share ideas around autism. Nick’s research focuses on issues that affect the education, development and well-being of disabled people and their families.

The initial catalyst for the Twitter chat was Nick’s professorial lecture, which sold out very quickly. I was interested in working with Nick to raise the University’s profile among autism academics, practitioners and autistic people (and their families), by engaging them in a conversation about perceptions of autism, and the challenges faced by autistic people and their families.

Nick’s inaugural lecture presented us with an opportunity to explore public engagement with a very diverse and interesting community. Opinions and perceptions of autism vary hugely, and practitioners don’t always agree on how autism should be diagnosed and supported.

And Nick’s thought-provoking blurb for his lecture was the starting point for how we framed our Twitter chat:

People think differently about autism.

Some people think that children with autism need to change to be more like people without autism.

Other people think that we should learn to appreciate different types of people.

Sometimes arguments about this can feel like an Autism War.

Disabled people have the right to be who they want to be.

I say this means that we must support people with autism to lead lives that make them happy.

It is our duty to help people with autism to achieve their goals.

There are so many engaging and interesting statements here that I knew it would make for a great Twitter chat subject. The whole concept of a war of ideas around something so emotive and personal as autism seemed rich with potential.

But, of course, there are risks in tackling a subject like autism. We didn’t want to come off as authoritative and prescriptive. We wanted to be inclusive and open to ideas, and we wanted to learn from autistic people’s experiences.

Audiences

By using Nick’s own networks, we engaged academics and practitioners early on, by asking them to supply questions for the chat. We also raised awareness of the chat by promoting it to autism charities and societies.

It was important that we involved autistic people from the start, and one of the first people I contacted was Kashmire Hawker, the disabled students rep for the students union. Kashmire has a strong presence on Twitter, and was keen to be involved. He promoted it among his peers, and he turned out to be a really positive contributor to the chat.

Here are my five tips for running a successful Twitter chat.

Pick a good hashtag

We wanted to stimulate discussion. We also wanted to convey the notion that this was a genuine debate, and not everyone would agree with each other. We settled on #DebateAutism for those reasons. It was Nick’s idea, and it worked.

It also created a bit of a stir, because some people thought we would be debating autism’s existence. We thought that might happen, so there was a little bit of work to do behind the scenes to reassure people that weren’t going down that path.

Get the structure right early on

A Twitter chat is more than just a loose conversation around a broad subject. You need a defined amount of time, and some clear parameters for the chat. We used the idea of an autism war to frame ours.

Have a clear idea of how many questions you’re going to include in the chat. We started with six questions, but realised on the evening that we would have to cut one due to the amount of contributions we were getting. Ten or fifteen minutes per question is about right.

Work with your host

Having Nick on board meant we could reach the right people (people who don’t follow the main Hallam account). He’s very well-respected, and his involvement also gave the whole thing a genuinely academic flavour.

He works closely with autistic people and has a much clearer idea of what the risks are, what wording to use and what issues are likely to be important to people.

Crowdsource the questions

Nick did this early on, messaging his contacts in other universities and organisations, asking for their input. This gave us two things: questions that were relevant to the audience, and an already-invested group of people who wanted to see the outcome of their contribution.

Get a room

No really. Things can move very quickly, and the flow of the chat can easily overtake you if you haven’t got the right things in place.

Book a room with some decent facilities, and space enough for the three or four people that will be facilitating the chat. We had Tweetdeck up on the big screen, with two columns open, tracking chat around the #DebateAutism hashtag.

This meant we could see the general flow of conversation, and zoom in on specific tweets to reply to or retweet them. A colleague spent the whole chat looking after Tweetdeck, retweeting things that stood out as particularly insightful and interesting.

It freed me up to do replies from the University account and advise Nick on his responses. I also had my laptop with me so I could edit the question cards on Photoshop if we decided they needed some last-minute changes.

And being face-to-face with your chat host is a really good idea. You benefit from being able to talk things over before you respond online.

#DebateAutism

So far, there have been a total of 997 tweets which contain the #DebateAutism hashtag. We also saw a huge increase in the number of impressions, replies, retweets and likes our own tweets had on the day of the chat, and the day after.

Nick also saw some changes. In March, he gained 97 new followers, had 105,000 tweet impressions (a rise of 945.3% from February), an increase of  606.8% in profile visits, and an increase of 694.6% in mentions.

And people are still using the tag, and responding to our original questions, weeks after the Twitter chat. #DebateAutism as a conversation topic has plenty of potential to just be a thing in its own right now, long after our initial Twitter chat.

Would we run it again? Yes, we would. Although a lot of planning and preparation went into the chat, it’s had an effect on those who took part, and it’s still resonating with the audience.

I’ll leave the last word to Professor Nick Hodge.

He says: “I was out of my comfort zone going into the Twitter chat, as I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t anticipate the level and quality of support that you would provide for the event, and I imagined that I would need to sort it out myself.

“So the actual experience of hosting a Twitter chat was very different from how I imagined. I felt extremely well-supported and informed, and I was very impressed with the high standard of presentation and professionalism that you brought to the chat event.  It was an incredibly exciting, fast and furious hour that has been really positively responded to and evaluated by my Twitter community.

“This will make a valuable contribution to any autism impact case study for REF 2020.  Before the event I was feeling the onset of Twitter burnout, and I’d decreased my engagement with social media. This event re-energised my interest – it reminded me of the potential of Twitter to reach people and effect change.”

To discuss organising a Twitter chat at Hallam, drop me a line or Tweet me.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

World Cancer Day 2017

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Awareness days – there are a lot of them. Some of them are just silly (World Emoji Day?) but there are a few awareness days that do a great job of uniting organisations and people, raising awareness of serious issues.

Saturday 4 February 2017 was World Cancer Day – a global awareness-raising event created by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC). Its aim is to encourage fundraising by raising awareness of cancer and the issues people face in fighting it.

Having a huge health and social care provision, we wanted to be part of the conversation, so we turned to our excellent radiotherapy and oncology teaching team. Students from our radiotherapy and oncology courses do their placements in treatment units, and they have lots of face-to-face contact with cancer patients throughout their placements, so we knew they’d have some good stories to tell.

I worked with senior PR officer Sarah Duce on planning our #WorldCancerDay campaign. Sarah manages the faculty’s PR account, and has excellent links in faculty. Jo McNamara, senior lecturer in radiotherapy put us in touch with some brilliant students, and Sarah and I filmed a series of talking heads with Jo and her students.

We didn’t ask them to talk about the course, the facilities, or life as a Hallam student. Instead, we asked them about the impact they’d had on patients’ lives, the challenges they faced, and the reason they’d chosen a career helping people with cancer.

In their responses, the students were incredibly generous with their honesty and warmth. The resulting videos were a great way for us to show our our support on World Cancer Day.

We had some great engagement with the videos (over 700 individual engagements – clicks, likes, shares and replies – on Twitter, and 2,500 engagements on Facebook). They had 32,000 organic impressions – deliveries to a Twitter timeline – on Twitter, and generated an organic reach of 38,000 on Facebook. There were also some really nice comments.

FB_comment

Comments like Judy’s are gold-dust for a university’s social media presence. We can talk about league tables, cutting-edge facilities and outstanding teaching and learning, but Judy’s comment is about the real-world impact that our students have. They work with real people, making a difference wherever they can. And they care.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

Why you should stop posting your content and start posting theirs

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Facebook, eh. People keep saying it’s had its time, but it’s still the largest social media platform, with almost 1.8 billion monthly active users, and a huge growth in advertising revenue.

It’s the living room of social media platforms. You use Facebook to chat to friends and family, organise your social life and hang out with people who share your interests.

For organisations, it’s a tricky one to get right. If all you do is play the success trumpet and shout at people about things you think they should do, you risk alienating your audience.

As a result, you fall foul of the algorithm. And that’s a Bad Thing®.

The annoyance factor is real

The annoyance factor is real

I’m working on our Facebook strategy right now. The first draft is almost finished, and I’m at a stage where we need to determine the content mix that’s right for our audiences.

It’s clear – based on things we’ve done that have worked*, and things that other organisations do that work well – that user-generated content needs to be a big part of that mix.

*how about a nice example? Here you go.

Back in the summer, I met with two colleagues: one an academic from the University’s events management course, the other a representative from our ace schools and colleges liaison team.

We talked about school proms: something I know absolutely nothing about, but that the students and staff from the events management team do. With the help of our schools and colleges team, they were helping pupils from seven local schools plan their proms.

It’s a lovely project, involving real people and communities. We knew that the pupils, parents and teachers from those schools had a lot of pride in their school communities, and that we could use our social media presence to mobilise those communities.

So we discussed ways of using social media to engage those audiences.

There was one objective: develop brand affinity with the University. Our goals on social media were around engagement and positive perception. We wanted to get lots of likes, comments and shares, and hopefully some positive mentions.

We asked the pupils from each school to make a video about why they should win a package of support worth £5,000 from our events management staff and students, helping to make their prom an unforgettable experience.

We posted the resulting videos on our Facebook page over the course of a week, with a call to action for our fans to like, comment and share to show their support for their school. We asked the schools to share the posts, mobilising their own community.

The resulting videos generated loads of engagement and reach, without a need to boost posts, by mobilising a highly-engaged audience with a very simple call-to-action.

This one, by the pupils at Dronfield Henry Fanshawe School, generated 2,650 reactions, comments and shares, and reached nearly 70,000 people. That’s organic reach.

Silverdale School’s video reached 41,757 people, generating 1,600 reactions, comments and shares.

In total, we reached 186,188 Facebook users who were not fans of the Sheffield Hallam page. That’s a lot for an organic campaign, and the stats show that the social media activity directly supports our business objective of developing brand affinity with the University among a key target audience.

We were looking for examples of positive perception as well, and a few people left nice comments about our work with the schools.

“So lucky to have this opportunity. Thank you Sheffield Hallam. Please like and share!!”

“A local school working with a local university a perfect combination.”

So user-generated content works well on Facebook. No great revelation, but it’s nice to have the evidence.

Plenty of universities are already onto this, of course. I took to Twitter to find some examples, and the excellent Matt Horne pointed me to Newcastle University’s Facebook page, where they regularly post photos and videos taken on campus by their students.

And, as you’d expect, US universities are very good at making entire campaigns around student content.

So, we’ll be doing more of it on Facebook. It has the potential to support our business objectives, and it’s in the strategy. We’ll also be measuring its performance, and when it generates engagement and reach, we’ll ask ourselves why.

But, as always, don’t let the cart lead the horse. User-generated content isn’t a silver bullet, and it shouldn’t be the only type of content university posts. But it’s a key part of the mix.

Got an example of user-generated content done well? Ping it my way – here, on LinkedIn, or on Twitter.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

Six principles of doing video better

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There’s been a massive growth in online video consumption in the last two or three years. According to the latest stats, half of us are regularly watching video on mobile devices.

screen-shot-2016-03-30-at-15-27-57

And the trend is set to continue. No big surprises, then.

But the definition of video is changing: we watch video on a plethora of platforms, in a number of different formats.

We watch disposable 15-second clips, filmed in portrait and covered in scribbles and doodles, on Snapchat and Instagram. We watch two-minute semi-professional instructional videos, product reviews and comedy skits on YouTube. And we watch live streams on Facebook and Periscope.

Video has grown sideways as well as upwards.

This trend brings a problem for the content producers: saturation. As organisations cotton on to this trend, they shift their focus to producing video content, and social media users become overloaded, swiping and scrolling past your carefully-crafted video.

So there’s a need to adapt. These are some of things I’ve been doing to adapt. You might find them useful too.

My six principles of doing video better

  1. Make shorter videos. Vine may be dead, but short viewing times are here to stay. They say a photograph should say one thing – it should have one idea to communicate. Video needs to be the same.
  2. Subtitles. People are watching with the sound down, so bite the bullet and sub your videos if they’re for social channels.
  3. Make it about people. If you can, make it about your audience. Who are they? What do they want? Tell them a story that answers those questions, and I guarantee they’ll engage with it. This graduation video is an example of it working for us.
  4. Do less, but better. Stop posting badly-edited, shaky smartphone videos, and invest in a decent bit of kit. Even a basic camcorder on a tripod will get you better results. Look at how the most popular YouTube vloggers do it.
  5. Make paid-for promotion a part of your strategy. If your videos have a call-to-action, or you’re trying to achieve huge online consumption of your content, stump up for a bit of advertising. You don’t need a huge budget to reach new people on social, but you do need a budget.
  6. Make it for the platform it’s being distributed on. Someone looking for pretty things on Instagram wants a very different experience to someone searching and browsing YouTube.

These are principles I’ve adopted over the last few weeks, and they’re working for our social channels. During graduation fortnight we posted eight graduation-themed videos on our Facebook page, including a live broadcast from Sheffield City Hall.

Those videos generated a combined organic reach of 185,000 over two weeks, and a couple of the posts generated a ton of comments from users who wanted to share their own pride in being a Sheffield Hallam student, graduand or alumnus.

We did OK for likes, comments and shares on Twitter too.

Lastly, it’s important, as always, not to get too dazzled by the technology. As communicators, we’re sometimes driven by output, and there’s always a danger of us falling into the ‘we need a *insert output*’ trap.

So start with the goal, then move onto the audience, platform and output. Keep asking why. If you’re sure video is the right medium for the story, you’ll get a lot more out of it if you plan the video. You don’t need to storyboard it, but you should definitely think about these things:

  • Concept – what’s your ‘elevator pitch’ for the video?
  • Narrative – how is the story told? Down-the-line, over-the-shoulder, voiceover?
  • Locations – what do you know about your locations? They bring with them a whole range of challenges.
  • Pace – how many shots will you need in the edit? How fast do things move?
  • Technology – what kit do you need to make it happen?

I hope that gives you some food for thought. I’m always keen to hear how people approach video, so let me know your own tips for creating engaging video content – in the comments, or over on Twitter.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

Social strategy in four (easy?) steps

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LONG POST ALERT!

TL;DR: Writing strategies for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Long process, loads to do, need help. Watch this space.

I’m currently leading on a very exciting piece of work: a set of platform-specific social media strategies for the University’s corporate social channels.

Until now, I’ve argued that we don’t need a social media strategy – we have a communications strategy which directs our approach to all of our comms, and social media is a set of tools we use as part of that.

That’s still true. We don’t need an over-arching social media strategy. But we do need to know exactly what we use Facebook for, what we use Twitter for and what we use Instagram for.

We’ve come a long way over the last year, developing more collaborative approaches to social media, opening corporate channels up to student takeovers and becoming much more serious about our approach to content planning.

So it’s an opportunity to take things to the next level.

Taking things to the next level

Taking things to the next level – there will be challenges and pitfalls, and an enormous monkey

The starting point for these platform-specific strategies is identify the priority platforms. I’m looking at Facebook first – because it’s just huge, with 1.7bn monthly users – followed by Twitter, then Instagram.

In fact, let’s call those platforms The Big Three.

Why are they a priority? Because a lot of what we do on social media is about recruitment and retention of students, and those channels tend to be where most of our engagement happens with that target audience.

Added to those three, Snapchat and Yik Yak are lurking in the background. We were late to the party with Snapchat, so our network is less developed than it is on The Big Three. That doesn’t mean those platforms are out of scope, it just means I’ll get to them when they emerge as priorities.

Additionally, I’m doing a similar piece of work for our LinkedIn presence. It’s a very different platform to The Big Three, so is completely separate to this work.

Of course, there’s a process to follow here. Although there’s knowledge and expertise in our marketing and communications teams, much of what we do is instinctive. So we’re starting from scratch.

Step one

Step one is putting the team together. Initially, we have representatives from across our mar-comms teams, from content specialists to internal comms experts. That group might expand, and we might break into smaller groups for specific pieces of work.

Step two

The next step is to establish some goals. This bit is essential for an effective strategy. We’re looking at business objectives first (get people to an open day), then aligning them to goals we can achieve with social media (track clicks, measure conversions).

Basic stuff, but without it we’re jumping straight into tactical stuff.

It’s very easy to get sidetracked during this step, as we either get lost in the possibilities, or we get dazzled by shiny things. When this happens, it’s important to ask ‘why’.

“What’s our objective?”

“We could do with a social media account for X audience.”

“But why?”

“So that we can achieve Y.”

Bingo. That’s a goal. Everything leading up to it is tactical, and can be shelved for now.

Step three

The next thing to do is an audit of existing channels. Specifically, what we’re doing with the corporate Facebook page. With the main Twitter account. With our Instagram account.

How do we use Messenger? What are we doing with check-ins? Reviews?

What works well as an organic post to our timeline? What generates engagement? What works well as an advert?

Who’s doing it well, or better than us? What works well for them? What are they doing that we’re not?

A lot of this is about the technology. How are we using it? And what does that say about us?

What does our use of social media say about the culture of the University?

This is a huge piece of work, and needs to be focused on each channel separately. The aim here is to look at functionality, audience and competitors. Top level stats like the size of the network are less relevant right now (unless ‘to grow a bigger audience on X channel’ has emerged as a goal).

What’s clear from this step of the process is that knowing your audience is essential. And that knowledge needs to be qualitative, as well as data-driven.

Step four

Finally, once we’ve established the goals, done the audit and audience research, we’ll be ready to work out what content we need for each platform. That’s when we’ll have a strategy.

There’s a mix of content to be determined. ‘Shouting about’ things and endless promotion switches audiences off, so we’ll need to be conversational and human.

The annoyance factor is real

The annoyance factor is real

We do need to promote things and raise awareness of stuff, but we need to do it in the right way, and at the right times.

Our content needs to be tailored to each channel. The days of ‘have you put it on social media?’ are over.

Audiences choose their platforms because they want to experience that platform. If we want to engage an audience on Instagram, we need to make a thing for Instagram. And knowing that audience, what they want from a platform, and what they’re OK with from us, is fundamental.

Your audience: who are they and what do they want?

This is such a big piece of work (really it’s three pieces of work) that I expect it will take two or three months to ‘complete’. And, even then, it will never really be finished. We’ll need to review and adjust regularly, depending on what happens to each platform.

I’ll post more about our strategies for our social platforms as the work develops. It’s still very early. If you’ve got questions, or you’d like to know more about the process, drop me a line or a tweet and I’ll tell you what I can.

And if you’ve got experience of writing a social media strategy, let me know in the comments, or on Twitter. I’d love to hear from you.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

Clearing 2016 – three ways we used social media to make a difference

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A-level results day. It can be an incredibly stressful time for students and, depending on what happens, it might involve them changing their study plans very quickly.

At Hallam, hundreds of members of staff (and student ambassadors) from across the University worked tirelessly to help those people, recruiting new students to the University through the clearing and confirmation process. Like previous years, Clearing 2016 was a huge team effort, bringing staff from every department together.

Our social media presence has grown significantly over the last few years, and the way we use it during clearing and confirmation has changed. This year, we wanted to do a few things differently.

Firstly, we wanted to tell our clearing story: the range of people involved, the excitement on the day, and our enthusiasm for changing people’s lives.

We also wanted to reply to everyone who took the time to message us about how excited they were to come and study here. No, really. Everyone. Engagement with our new fans and followers was really important, and we wanted to get it right.

Lastly, we wanted to use the technology to add real value to the clearing process at Hallam.

This is how we did it.

Telling our story

Our promotional content focused – as it often does – on our students. We found four students who came to us through clearing, and we created visual content based on their experiences.

Because we wanted to reach new audiences, we did a lot of advertising on Facebook and Instagram with our student stories. We also did some organic posts with them.

This organic post reached over 13,000 people, had over 4,500 video views and got a bit of engagement, with over 150 likes, comments and shares. Our paid-for posts obviously reached many more people – people who fit our target demographics and who didn’t already like our Facebook page.

Engagement

We knew activity on Twitter would peak between 7am and 2pm, based on previous years. We’d get questions, in the form of @s and DMs, and we’d get notifications from people happy they’d secured a place at Hallam.

So we assigned a team member to each stream on Twitter: we had someone looking after notifications, one person looking after DMs, and someone else ready to post relevant, interesting and useful content to our timeline. The system worked well, and it meant we replied to every message.

In total, we sent 190 tweets during Clearing, and 35 DMs. We received 353 mentions, and our tweeting behaviour over the key two days of Clearing was 92 per cent conversations and 8 per cent updates. 72 per cent of our tweets were with new contacts, and 28 per cent were with existing contacts.

To increase engagement further, we set up a Facebook Live broadcast from the clearing suite, featuring one of our ‘faces of clearing’, Ben. This live video reached over 14,000 of our fans, and got shared nearly 30 times.

We used the live stream to answer questions, show the buzz in the clearing suite, and humanise our operation. We did something similar with our Instagram and Snapchat stories, which even featured a surprise appearance from the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Chris Husbands.

Adding value

Our biggest change this year was to open up the application process through Facebook’s Messenger service. On results day, people could begin the application process by sending a direct message to our Facebook page.

Once they’d done so, one of our dedicated Facebook triage team would ask for their qualifications and other details needed to create an application. Or, if they didn’t meet our requirements, they’d sensitively let them know.

It was exactly the same process and conversation that new applicants would experience if they called our clearing hotline and spoke to an adviser. But on a social media platform.

We used Facebook’s functions to enhance and manage the process. We used saved replies for parts of the conversation, and we tracked conversations with the labelling function. We also added a note to each conversation, identifying the status of the application – either ‘application created’, ‘didn’t meet requirements’ or ‘other’.

In total, we put around 20 applicants forward through this process, knowing that if just one of them converted, it would be worth our time and effort.

Overall, this was our biggest social media operation yet, involving two separate teams: one dedicated to engagement and publishing, and one dedicated to facilitating the application process. A whole range of Hallam people took part in our social story-telling: from students to the VC.

As a result our content across social platforms was genuine, engaging – and it was about people.

Joe Field, social media manager
@joemcafield

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