Talking Stick - January/February 2015 - 42

influence purchase decisions. And
it's not just our friends - posts by
brands also influence 78 percent of
consumers." In addition, the 2014
E-Expectations Report, which looks
at the online preferences of collegebound high school seniors, showed
that 75 percent of them use Facebook,
40 percent use Twitter, and 73 percent
use YouTube.
Therefore, knowing that students
are likely to interact with a campus
or a housing department via social
media, content must be crafted in a
way to address relevant issues and
to establish a presence as a credible
and trusted source for information.
"We find our Facebook pages are very
useful. Currently 63 percent of our
on-campus populations are members
or liked one of our pages," says
Jessica Buchanan, assistant director
of marketing and communication at
Virginia Commonwealth University in
Richmond.
Greg Bowers, the assistant director
of communications and marketing
at the University of South Florida
in Tampa, describes the many ways
social media and marketing positions
can overlap. "Online reputation
management is a growing service field
due to social media. An engaged social
media expert can build your positive
brand online, correct misinformation,
and provide customer service support
to a mass audience," he says. "A

creative director can ensure that
your department has a unified look,
message, and customer perception.
A strategist should be involved at the
leadership level who can provide data
and guidance about how to reach the
department's objectives."
Social media are also establishing
themselves as avenues for twoway communications. Rutherford
describes an occasion that occurred
when elevators were offline in one
of the campus residence halls,
and students were voicing their
displeasure online. "It was a great
learning experience between our
department, residence life, and
facilities. I looked into the comment
internally, and it turns out we took
the elevator offline for needed repairs
which were going to last several
weeks. All the sign on the elevator
said was 'out of service,' with no
timeline or explanation. We jumped
in and quickly executed signage and
social media posts to help residents
understand the why behind the outage
and the timeline for completion."
For all the attention paid to social
media, though, the E-Expectations
report also reveals that, as often
as students use social media,
they find campus websites to be
overwhelmingly more influential
and more reliable. In the survey,
77 percent of students described
the college websites as influential

(compared to less than 20 percent for
Facebook posts), and 97 percent of
students said the college website was
most reliable (compared to just more
than 50 percent for college social
media). Reading this statistic should
not be a call to shutter a Facebook
page, but it does highlight the
strategic decisions that must be made
about where to publish marketing
messages and information as well
as how to present it. The issue here
is that a message that works on one
platform may not be as successful on
another.
It is practices, information, and
metrics such as this that a marketing
department should be able to bring
to the strategic conversation. While
much marketing work can be creative
and draws on intangible, emotional
appeals, the planning still needs to
come from a place of knowledge
and information. This is done by
establishing key marketing metrics
so, as a team, everyone will know if
the project is successful. What should
be measured? Is it attendance at an
event? The number of views for a
video? The number of students who
reapply to housing? The number
of students who sign up for meals?
These are key decisions that help with
the overall development of the project
and ensure its success. For example,
a strategic goal may be to achieve a
20 percent increase in the number of

"THE MARKETINg FOlKS HElP TEll THE STORY OF THE DEPARTMENT.
WE ARE All STRONg-WIllED, SARCASTIC, AND PERPETUAllY PlAYINg
DEVIl'S ADVOCATE SO OUR CONVERSATIONS CAN BE lIVElY AND
SPIRITED AS WE SEEK TO ESTABlISH A MUTUAl UNDERSTANDINg.
HOWEVER, THROUgH THESE ONgOINg CONVERSATIONS WE HAVE
DEVElOPED AN UNDERSTANDINg OF WHERE WE ARE TODAY AND
WHERE I'D lIKE TO SEE US gO."

42

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