Higher Ed Marketing Memos: Going Global with Social Media Ambassadors by Lansing Bryan

Social Media Ambassadors with an International Flavor

This year Green River College (GRC) piloted a Social Media Ambassador Program led by our International Student Ambassadors from Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Netherlands.

We have over 1,700 international students from 64 different countries. Our college is located in the town of Auburn, a suburb of Seattle, Washington. We have a vibrant Student Life program that all students, both domestic and International, are encouraged to join.

From Student Government and the Community, Leadership, Education and Outreach (CLEO) leadership team to Intramural sports, shopping and sightseeing trips; Green River offers events and activities that interest a wide variety of students.

Why start an International Student Social Media Ambassador Program?

Our International Student Ambassadors are part of the CLEO leadership team and their main duty is to promote major events and encourage student involvement on campus.

In the past they promoted their events using posters and flyers designed by the Graphic Designer in the Student Life office. Often times I would post those flyers on social media.

As you can imagine, my social media posts did not have much flair. They were downright boring and basically got ignored. We needed something to bring our social media to life.

I learned about Social Media Ambassador Programs, among many other things, in the Social Media Marketing for Higher Ed course taught by Karine Joly>. I was so excited to give it a try, that I began implementing our own program before I even finished the class.

According to Nielsen’s latest Global Trust in Advertising report, 92% of people around the world say they trust earned media, including recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.

In other words, students will listen to what the students have to say more than they will listen to the college reps! It was time for me to step aside and hand over the communication to generation y and z.

Goals, expectations and platforms for our International SMA Program

It made perfect sense to add Social Media to the International Student Ambassador’s current job description. I brought them all together at the end of fall quarter and we discussed goals and expectations.

Goals for social media ambassador program:

• Build excitement
• Spread the word
• Raise awareness
• Create a sense of community/belonging
• Create content that engages
• Encourage dialog
• Increase reach
• Increase interest in GRC

Expectations:

• Share posts
• Comment on posts
• Like posts
• Tag posts
• Add photos
• Add video clips

Social Media channels:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Flickr
• Instagram
• VK – Russian market
• Blogs
• Snapchat
• Weibo – The Twitter of China
• WeChat – Text and friend finding app
• QQ – Blogging platform
• YouKu – YouTube of China

Mission Accomplished

What happened next was an explosion of engagement and so much more.

The social media channels came alive! The students took ownership and the content became so much more interesting.

Our International Student Social Media Ambassadors even built a cardboard cutout of our Facebook and Instagram page to encourage follows!

In addition, one of the ambassadors took the initiative to add all the upcoming events to Facebook. They said it would make signing up for events so much easier. Another student took the responsibility of creating albums for each event. Here is the album for the snow tubing event that happened in February.

It was great to see students take ownership of our social media accounts.

Engagement and likes went way up. We have doubled the amount of likes to our Facebook and Instagram page, and started a Snapchat account.

We even increased leads from social media sites to our website according to our Google Analytics report.

The Student Life events fill up a lot more quickly because of better publicity. There is not only more engagement online but also offline.

I call that a win.

Web & Social Media Specialist /Regional Contact for Western Europe
International Programs
Green River College

Meet the Author: Lansing Bryan

Lansing Bryan is the Web & Social Media Specialist and the Regional Contact for Western Europe at Green River College. She is also a graduate of 2 Higher Ed Experts’ professional certificate programs in Web Analytics and Social Media Marketing.