UM-Flint Social Media Update | August 2010

What’s New

After a summer of brainstorming and researching, University Relations is excited to do more with social media in terms of engaging audiences and measuring our success. Facebook is an initiative that we have long embraced, one which has seen great results. Over 4,000 people are now connected with UM-Flint on Facebook, and we have seen steady growth in user interaction. There’s more to social media than Facebook, though. We’ve had a presence on Twitter for some time, and we’ve been checking out applications like Foursquare, Gowalla, and others. But what do we do with them?

Our first goal is to make UM-Flint’s presence on Twitter purposeful and beneficial. Our social media outlets, Twitter specifically, provide opportunities to interact and engage with our audience, and to show (not tell) them who we are. To achieve this, we will strive for @umflint to be an outlet for brand-related messages, a source for notes to and about our community, and a point of contact for our followers. Conversations with and about UM-Flint will be monitored and we will respond when appropriate. Twitter is worth the effort, and an invaluable interactive tool with which to engage others.

To monitor our efforts, we’re now exploring services like bit.ly, which tracks how many clicks our tweeted links receive, and Klout, which measures our online influence. We hope that by analyzing which content is of interest to our followers, we can better communicate with them in a way they find useful.

With the increasing popularity of location-based social networking, applications like Foursquare, Gowalla, or Facebook Places certainly warrant our attention. Before jumping in, however, we wanted to do our homework.  Members of the UM-Flint community seem to use Foursquare more than Gowalla. Facebook Places is not yet accessible on all mobile platforms. It seems logical to focus our energy on Foursquare, if only to contribute to the information users will find there. Our first step has been to claim ownership of UM-Flint-related venues on Foursquare. Once our claims have been confirmed, we can do more with the content listed for each venue.

Foursquare is currently piloting a program that will allow universities to create branded pages that house their venues. Early examples include the University of Michigan and Texas Tech University. We’re not able to take advantage of this yet, but we’re definitely watching for further developments.

Social Media Facts and Figures

Below, a summary of UM-Flint’s social media efforts in the month of August.

Our Audience:

Our Reach:

  • The highest number of “interactions per post” on Facebook was 7.2 on August 31.
  • The highest number of “total interactions” in one day on Facebook was 46 on August 26, when numerous news stories and a photo of the Welcome Back t-shirt were posted.
  • The highest number of photo views was 303 on August 19, when photos from the inside of the remodeled Durant were posted.
  • The tweeted links most often clicked were related to Facebook content, usually photos.

Contribute

University Relations is always looking for things to promote across the social networks. If you have anything you’d like promoted, please forward your information to Alaina Wiens at [email protected].

Connect with UM-Flint!

Be sure to become a fan of UM-Flint on Facebook, or connect with us on other social networking sites!

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