Tag: Facebook live

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

Installation successful

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Last week, our Vice-Chancellor, Professor Chris Husbands, was formally installed in a ceremony at Sheffield Cathedral. There was an audience of more than 300 guests in attendance- a mixture of local bigwigs, staff and students.

Professor Husbands is only the fourth VC we’ve had at Hallam, so these moments of pomp and ceremony are rare, and we wanted to open the installation ceremony up to our whole community.

Aside from the traditional content we knew we’d be putting out, like a press release and a staff news item, we wanted to use social to involve people and make them feel part of the event by giving them front row access.

We decided a livestream would be the best way of doing this, but wanted to take a minimal approach, in terms of kit.

We’d also started to think about our Facebook audience, looking beyond current students (who a lot of our content is pitched at) to other really engaged audiences. We know from looking at our reactions (formerly limited to likes) and comments that Hallam staff are really engaged with our Facebook page.

With Facebook Live now available to all Facebook users (not just celebrities, as was the case when it launched in summer 2015) and offering us greater potential reach than Periscope would, we decided to dip our toe in the water and try out this fledgling technology to broadcast the 30 minute ceremony.

A week before showtime, something happened- well, someone happened, to be precise: Chewbacca Mom.

chewbacca_mom

She blew up the internet and took home the record for the most-watched Facebook Live video ever (currently at 154m views)- as well as notching up TV appearances, college scholarships, a visit to Facebook HQ and more Chewbacca masks than she can shake a stick at.

This left us more psyched than ever to try out Facebook Live for the VC’s installation. This was a technology that people were excited about so there couldn’t have been a better time for us.

On the day, we chose a location for our tripod which would give us a great view of the action, allow us to rig our small mic up to the podium and, importantly, mean others involved in the event wouldn’t be tripping over us.

We quickly gained live viewers, reactions and comments. We peaked at 64 live viewers, with people dipping in and out. One advantage of Facebook Live is that the video stays on your timeline after the live broadcast and can be shared- so we’ve currently had almost 4,200 views of the video. (Fancy boosting that? Check out the video here).

Some other stats, for all the number nerds like me out there:

  • The video post has been shared 19 times on Facebook
  • It’s got a total of 195 reactions, comments and shares
  • Our post has so far reached 12,606 people, which is great reach for organic content

So, not quite a Chewbacca Mom (they’ll be a rare phenomenon), but not too shabby for an iPhone on a tripod in a Cathedral.

My top 3 tips from this experience:

  1. Have a pre-written, pre-agreed (if necessary) description for your video saved on your phone that you can quickly copy and paste across to your Facebook Live post before you start broadcasting; I did this and it really took the pressure out of worrying about typos in the heat of the moment.
  2. Have a second device (another phone or tablet) to hand so you can follow the viewers’ experience, be doubly sure of any moderation requirements and also as backup in case of failure.
  3. Carry out a location visit in advance of your Facebook Live broadcast, so you can check that your data connection or WiFi will cope. WiFi coverage for the bit of the Cathedral I was in wasn’t optimum, but luckily my 4G was up to the job.

VC_install

Have you tried Facebook Live yet or are you considering it? What was your experience? If you haven’t used it yet, what do you think the risks or barriers are? I’m looking forward to using it again in future to engage our staff.

Sara Kouchakji-Allen, head of employee and change communications
@sara_koo