SJC Twitter Campaign - Evaluation and Recommendation Report

December 2020

Evaluation and Recommendation rEPORT #ImpactTheWorld An Analysis of the SJC Twitter Campaign, October - November 2020

Prepared by Patrick Scriven Paola Mora Zepeda

School of Journalism and Communication Colcord Dr, Collegedale, TN 37315 (423) 236-2732 https://www.southern.edu/journalism EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

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Executive Summary Throughout this Twitter campaign, a lot has been learned about the benefits of Twitter as a platform that fosters opportunities for growth, awareness and engagement within the SJC community at Southern Adventist University. The campaign was launched with the hopes of connecting prospective students to the SJC as well as engaging with current students and alumni. Ultimately, the central goal of #ImpactTheWorld was to demonstrate the various opportunities journalism and communication have to offer. A significant challenge to this goal was the pandemic, which hindered opportunities to showcase popular department events to the public. Nevertheless, we were able to alter our content strategy around this obstacle and maintain a consistent online presence throughout the campaign.

Introduction Before deciding on a campaign to launch, we wanted to ensure it would line up with the School of Journalism and Communication’s mission and values. After much deliberation, our team decided on #ImpactTheWorld, a phrase that actually appears in the SJC’s mission statement. From the beginning, our goal was to broadcast the plethora of career opportunities the department has to offer, as well as the importance of related fields on a global scale. To achieve this, we adjusted our brand voice to where it portrayed an element of inspiration while maintaining the playful, friendly tone from previous campaigns.

We met several challenges along the way and had to adjust certain goals and strategies along during the campaign, but the data analysis provided by Twitter helped us make adjustments accordingly.

#ImpactTheWorld

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Findings and discussion Consistency with brand voice Something that our team struggled with at the beginning of the campaign was being consistent with the brand voice. With our campaign, #ImpactTheWorld, it was easy to create informative and friendly content that showcased the SJC family and the career paths available with a degree in communication. However, it was a bit harder to keep up with the fun, lighthearted side of the account. At times it felt like the campaign and the word “fun” did not really match, but after becoming more familiar with our audience we understood that the two were not mutually exclusive.

Considering the ages of our audiences as well as their knowledge of current trends, it is important to create and curate relatable tweets. We learned that the best way to achieve this is to keep updated with current memes, GIFs and trending hashtags.

As we moved forward with our camIt is important to be consistent with the fun side of the SJC Twitter’s as it helps keep audiences engaged.

paign and were more intentional about

our brand voice, we noticed an increase in engagement and positive feedback. This is specially highlighted in our last tweet in which, by using the “Official sources say” trend, we were able to connect with our students.

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

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It’s about the people The SJC is not just a department, it’s a family. Twitter should be seen as a tool to connect students, alumni and professors. Even more important than classes and events are the people. During the period of this campaign our team realized that the best performing posts are those that contain a familiar face. This included posts such as #WhatchThemGo (alumni feature), #WatchThemGrow (student feature), and “Tell Me More” (professors explaining a major). Current students like to see their old classmates and alumni like to see their old professors.

While not every tweet has to feature a picture or mention a specific person, it is important to understand that this type of content is what helps build an online community The audience needs to feel appreciated. Keeping in touch with the SJC family should be a priority when running the SJC’s Twitter account.

Tell Me More #WatchThemGrow

#WatchThemGo

Posts that featured students, alumni or professors performed better.

#ImpactTheWorld

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Make connections Social media is a marketing tool to make your organization know. During this campaign we learned that an efficient way of increasing your exposure is by reaching out to influential individuals in your area of expertise. With a simple retweet, mention or like you can start creating connections with these individuals. Unfortunately, we did not catch on this until the last few weeks of the campaign, but once we did we were able to connect with prominent Seventh-day Adventist communicators. Having these interactions helped increase the accounts’ visibility.

Yet, It is important to note that you should only join a conversation when you have something to add. There were times when we wanted to reply to prominent figures just because we wanted to have content and receive the attention; however, saying something would have been out of place. We learned that if you struggle to come up with a reply then it may not be the right time for you to put out that tweet.

This tweet received a mention from Justin Khoe and a retweet from Kaleb Eisele, both SDA influencers. As a result, this post had the highest number of impressions (1,612) from the entire campaign.

Do not fall for vanity metrics One of our greatest takeaways from this campaign is that vanity metrics can be deceitful. Prior to our first measurement report, there were some tweets that we thought were performing well due to the amount of likes and retweets they were getting. After

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

5 studying the engagement rates, however, our team learned that vanity metrics does not show the full picture. In fact, many of the tweets that got a high number of likes usually received low impression rates.

Our team decided that the most accurate way to record how well a post was doing was by studying the engagement rates. Engagement rate is the total number of impressions divided by the total numbers of post interactions (likes, retweets, media click, visited profile, etc) . By analyzing these stats we could more accurately understand how many accounts saw our posts and compare that to how many individuals interacted with it.

Nonetheless, we would like to note that this may change depending on the goal of the campaign. As two of our S.M.A.R.T. goals was to steadily increase impressions and gain new followers, vanity metrics and interaction numbers alone were not enough to measure how our campaign was doing.

Be on the lookout It comes to no surprise that social media, especially Twitter, is a fast paced environment. It is important to have daily tweets planned out in advance so as to not fall behind.

In addition, these tweets need to vary in content such as polls, images, GIFs, videos, an curated tweets. However, it is also critical to understand that you cannot plan everything ahead of time.Though our team met every other week to plan content two weeks in advance, there were some things we could not predict. Someone always needs to be monitoring ongoing trends and what people are saying about your organization.

Trends come and go. If you did not hop in the conversation while it is happening, you will miss out. Some of the things our team struggled with was the fact that we could not plan curated content two weeks in advance. In addition, we could not predict what memes or tweet formats were going to be popular ahead of time. The solution for this is to always assign someone who will check trending hashtags, scroll through Twitter’s feed and observe what your mutuals are talking about.

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Sometimes it is hard to admit that not everything is going the way you planned. This was the case for our team when we realized we were falling behind our S.M.A.R.T goals.

Originally, our objectives were to bring up the follower count by 10% (which meant 38 new followers), to receive a total of 50,000 impressions by the end of the semester, and to interlink Twitter with our other social media platforms and our website.

Unfortunately, when these goals were prosed, we did not take into account that many of the yearly events that create buzz among our audiences were either not happening or were moved online due to the ongoing pandemic. These events included things such as SAC, RoundTable, SJC Convo and the SJC Showcase. As a result, our team decided to adjust two of our S.M.A.R.T. goals as followed: Increase following by 5.5% (20 new followers) and receive a total of 12,000. In no way does this mean that our team’s efforts decreased, but it was important to be realistic, flexible and adjust to the ongoing situation.

Data analysis Our team used Twitter’s metrics to evaluate the #ImpactTheWorld campaign. After altering our S.M.A.R.T. goals to better adapt to the current events, our objectives were as followed:

1 Bring up the follower count by 5.5% (20 new followers) by the end of the semester.

2

3

Increase impressions to 12,000 by the end of the semester, with a biweekly increase of 4,000 Impressions.

Make it easier for audiences to find more information about our website and other social media accounts by connecting the platforms to each other with links.

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

6 Though there were still some goals that we fell short on, the overall results were promising.

Engagement from oct. 04 to Nov. 20

For our first wave of content we received an average engagement rate of 3% to 25% per tweet. The content that performed best were those posts that featured a student, alumni or professor. During those first two weeks we earned a total of four new followers and received 3,888

7.2%

Average engagement rate

impressions - averaging to 229 impressions per day. The post that received the highest engagement rate was a #WatchThemGo tweet featuring Elena Anunciado.

During the second wave of content, our tweet impressions saw a 222.8% increase. The engagement rates

244 likes

On average, 5 likes per day

were similar to the first wave, but we did notice a more consistent metric - meaning that the lowest engagement rate was higher than from before (3% vs. 4.7%). During this fifteen day period we gained six new followers and received 4,499 impressions - averaging to 300 impres-

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sions per day. In addition, we finished linking the SJC’s

On average, 0 link clicks

Twitter account to the department’s other social media

link clicks

platforms. We also received two link clicks.

For the final wave of content, we gained four new

32

Retweets without On average, 1 retweet per day

followers and received a total of 7,005 new impressions. This average to about 407 impressions per day. A big reason for this improvement was a tweet where we mentioned Justin Khoe and Kaleb Eisieli, both prominent communicators in the church. During the last week we

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replies On average, 0 replies per day

#ImpactTheWorld

did not receive any link clicks. The lowest engagement rate was a 4.9% and the highest engagement rate was a 21.5%.

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The overall results were as followed:

GOAL

RESULT

1 Bring up the follower count by 5.5% (20 new followers) by the end of the semester.

We gained 14 new followers in the span of six weeks, falling 6 followers short of our goal.

2 Increase impressions to 12,000 by the end of the semester, with a biweekly increase of 4,000 Impressions.

We received a total of 15,392 impressions, passing our goal of getting 12,000 impressions by the end of the semester

3 Make it easier for audiences to find more information about our website and other social media accounts by connecting the platforms to each other with links.

We linked Twitter with the SJC’s other social media platforms and the website. In total, we were able to get 2 bio link clicks.

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

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Recommendations & Conclusions Min corionsequas etur, tectatem abo. Nequate porume essi omnia nectemporion niet ut omnia vendae pre maximod itaque consequi nis vel in cor rem as magnis eosti doluptatecab ipiet, sequae volumque cus et ut oditibus apiendaniat mil ipsam que lit, sa esed molorehenda et quas et rem nam reriatemodit eius voloribus moluptae a si dicitiu ntione nam, si blacearcid maximolo es res quistibus mi, omnimpero etur, et ius dentium cullorio blab in nobis mollabo. Aque est eosam nissum net quos autas voluptas necte vellabore eniat excepti de seque dolorem volum, ex estrum nulparuptate sin poribus, explace perchici conseque eos di doluptae essumqu atiumquam quodi veliae pro blaudit illendit alignam, volupta sperio venem. Ad modit, officid quo essimus.

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Appendix

Total Impressions

214

Total Engagement

15

Joel Guerra

Total Impressions

1,667

Total Engagement

103

Patrick Scriven & Paola Mora

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

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Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

372

Total Engagement

33

Joel Guerra

Total Impressions

472

Total Engagement

82

Paola Mora

#ImpactTheWorld

12

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

170

Total Engagement

20

Paola Mora

Total Impressions

N/a

Total Engagement

n/a

Paola Mora

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

13

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

283

Total Engagement

42

Paola Mora

Total Impressions

122

Total Engagement

10

Patrick Scriven & Paola Mora

#ImpactTheWorld

14

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

316

Total Engagement

122

Paola Mora

Total Impressions

1,612

Total Engagement

63

Paola Mora

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

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Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

158

Total Engagement

14

Patrick Scriven

Total Impressions

160

Total Engagement

34

Patrick Scriven

#ImpactTheWorld

16

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

Total Engagement

609

81

Paola Mora

Total Impressions

356

Total Engagement

22

Paola Mora EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

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Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

307

Total Engagement

19

Joel Guerra

Total Impressions

248

Total Engagement

34

Paola Mora

#ImpactTheWorld

18

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

Total Engagement

145

7

Paola Mora

Total Impressions

265

Total Engagement

24

Joel Guerra

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

19

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

704

Total Engagement

73

Patrick Scriven

Total Impressions

N/A

Total Engagement

N/A

Patrick Scriven

#ImpactTheWorld

20

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

316

Total Engagement

122

Patrick Scriven & Paola Mora

Total Impressions

319

Total Engagement

33

Joel Guerra

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

21

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

238

Total Engagement

24

Patrick Scriven & Paola Mora

Total Impressions

206

Total Engagement

32

Patrick Scriven & Paola Mora

#ImpactTheWorld

22

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

507

Total Engagement

23

Patrick Scriven & Paola Mora

Total Impressions

167

Total Engagement

20

Patrick Scriven & Paola Mora

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

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Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

730

Total Engagement

34

Paola Mora

Total Impressions

367

Total Engagement

Paola Mora

#ImpactTheWorld

71

24

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

984

Total Engagement

108

Paola Mora

Total Impressions

146

Total Engagement

11

Patrick Scriven

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

25

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

207

Total Engagement

26

Patrick Scriven

Total Impressions

182

Total Engagement

29

Patrick Scriven

#ImpactTheWorld

26

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

436

Total Engagement

43

Paola Mora

Total Impressions

159

Total Engagement

27

Patrick Scriven & Paola Mora

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT

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Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

523

Total Engagement

22

Paola Mora

Total Impressions

411

Total Engagement

68

Paola Mora

#ImpactTheWorld

28

Appendix cONT.

Total Impressions

486

Total Engagement

63

Patrick Scriven & Paola Mora

EVALUATION AND RECOMMENDATION REPORT