In this 3-question interview, Krista tells us about the best content advice ever, content performance measurement and a favorite content tool.
1) What is the best advice you’ve ever been given when it comes to content?
Give the people what they want! Social media management is at its best when it builds connections and trust. Using this advice to craft content for today’s busy students has helped me understand their perspective in tandem with our strategic goals. For teams of one out there in the Higher Ed Social Media space, listening to what your students or prospective students need and then taking the opportunity to respond with strategic, curated content can be a slam dunk.
I can’t wait to show you an admissions case that we built out in @UofT’s Instagram Stories turned 24-7 guides in Instagram Highlight in my session at the upcoming Higher Ed Content conference — a template you can use for your own goal-oriented content. If you engage people with what they want throughout the process and deliver with specific flow, the results will follow.
2) How is the performance of your content measured/evaluated at your school?
At the University of Toronto, our measures of success depend on specific campaign goal, however there are some consistent factors that we evaluate. For social media, we pay a lot of attention to engagement, growth, views, view time, impressions and referral traffic. We also like to break down engagement with a qualitative sentiment analysis to see if we’re changing attitudes or actions through our social content (ie. Did our followers find this helpful? Were they able to make a smooth transition from social to web and did they stay for long?)
Excel is so great! There are so many exciting measures of success waiting right there in the raw data. With Excel, all you need is some analytical motivation, a comparative time frame and benchmarks to get started with and a lot of patience to fill in all the data as you go. Whether it’s year to year, or even day to day, these metrics will empower you to tweak your content to be more successful through each trial you take.
Reports generated with the power of Excel that show engagement and growth for each channel can show your next strategic move or where your team should shift gears, as a new content approach could make all the difference. Data is a huge driver for change and ROI, and also a great way to showcase your success stories and repeat formats that works.
3) What is your favorite content tool?
I’m totally biased, but my favourite tool as a whole fits in the palm of your hand. Of course, that’s your mobile phone and all of its app potential.
Within that phone, I think Instagram is a great tool to build ephemeral or evergreen content. As Instagram Story features become more engaging each and every day (hello polls and GIFs!) there so much room for experimentation. Our student audience is tinkering on the app as much as we are, and when we meet them there and create relatable content, we’ve found engagement to be high. In fact, Instagram has become the best engagement tool in our social media roster.
Creating storyboards to plan out the flow and points of engagement within your Instagram Story before you even start is super helpful. To up the ante for your Instagram Stories, I suggest you use content tools like Canva (first heard about this tool from Erin Supinka’s #HESM17 presentation), Boomerang and Hyperlapse to add intrigue and polish. Once you find that sweet spot of a template that works for your audience, it’s a game-changer. Plus you’ll have so much fun testing it out, you’ll want to make more and more!
A conference focusing on higher ed content?
The Higher Ed Content Conference is a must-attend event for higher ed content professionals and teams looking for new ideas and best practices.
Read below what a few of your higher ed colleagues who attended the past editions of the Higher Ed Content Conference say about the experience.