Social Media Playbook

Process and Best Practices

Content Calendar

Content planning, creation, distribution and measurement should follow the guidelines set out in the Content Calendar Development section.

Optimizing Content for Each Channel

When sharing across multiple channels, take time to optimize content for each of those individual channels using the guidelines that follow. Do not automatically cross-post content.

Tracking Tools

Please note, specific instructions / information in the Tracking Tools section may be outdated. This section will be updated during the next phase.

Each designated channel manager must proactively monitor for comments or questions directed to your department, and for comments made about your department.

For monitoring and engagement, you may want to use the following tools. All email notifications should be directed to one designated email account for automatic group distribution.

There is some duplication between search and monitoring functionality in your toolset. This is intentional to combine real-time and summary alerts, to provide additional assurance all mentions are being caught, and to provide redundancy in your toolset in the event of any key areas of functionality being lost or going offline.

Google Alerts

https://www.google.com/alerts

Set email notifications for “As-it-happens” to monitor new web mentions of keywords and phrases

Mention

https://mention.com/en/Set email notifications to “Daily,” install desktop and mobile apps, and enable push notifications to monitor and provide consolidated daily reports of both direct and indirect social mentions (comments made about you but not specifically directed to you), as well as to monitor keywords and phrases on photo and video sharing sites, blogs, forums and across the web.

It can serve as the hub of your monitoring efforts, providing backup to your real-time monitoring, aggregated and easy to review daily reports and short-term archives.

Note: At this point Mention is not pulling from Instagram unless the content is shared via Twitter or Facebook pages.

Hootsuite Pro

https://hootsuite.com/Hootsuite is a browser-based tool on desktop but has a mobile app that allows you to enable push notifications and schedule posts.

This tool can be used to manage Twitter and Instagram accounts.

• For Twitter, it will be used to monitor and respond to direct @mentions of your username, indirect mentions of your name and variations of your name and any relevant hashtags you are monitoring.
• For Instagram, it will be used to monitor and respond to both direct and indirect mentions and any relevant hashtags.

Sprout Social

https://sproutsocial.com/Sprout Social is a paid tool that offers listening, publishing and analytics features for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. Its analytics suite can help you identify trends in responsiveness and engagement

Facebook Admin

The Page Admin responsible for accounts should enable email notifications and “On Facebook” notifications, both located in Settings. Page Admin responsible for accounts should also install the Facebook app on his or her smartphone.

Responding to Comments and Mentions

Responsibility for managing each of your social channels does not simply include sharing content and growing your audience, but includes critical responsibilities of listening and (where appropriate) responding to what others are saying to or about you.

When and How to Respond

Never ignore questions or comments directed to one of your social channels, unless the question or comment is abusive or clearly does not merit a response.

This includes both posts and comments on your Facebook page, tweets and responses to content posted on Instagram, Snapchat, LinkedIn and YouTube.

• Treat every question as an opportunity. 
• Questions received during business hours should ideally be responded to within two hours. 
• Questions received outside of business hours should ideally be responded to within two hours of start of next business day. 
• If appropriate, include a link to additional resources or an invitation to connect via a more private forum such as phone or email. 

Positive comments

Every positive comment posted on or directed to one of your social media channels should be acknowledged. If a user has taken time to leave a comment, you want them to know their feedback is valued.

• A text response will not typically be required. In most instances a simple “Like” (Facebook or Instagram) or “Favorite” (Twitter) will be sufficient.

Negative comments

When people are unhappy, you will receive negative comments posted on your Facebook page, most likely in the comments on a post, and across your other social media platforms. Because the institution name is on the channel, people—especially students—are prone to express more vitriol than they might in a face-to-face meeting.

Here are some tips for handling the situation:

• If the comment is made in good faith, do not delete the comment unless it is abusive, offensive or spam. (This is specific to Facebook and Instagram as you can delete comments, but you cannot delete someone’s tweet on Twitter.) Remember that anger is not, in and of itself, abusive. Responding is always the preferred option and deleting should always be a last resort. Hiding a post on Facebook may be an option for posts that forward misinformation, are off-subject or are poor, but not offensive, attempts at humor. Hiding keeps the post visible in the thread for the user and the user’s friends, but will not be visible to the public.

• Recognize that a response might not always be appropriate. Use discretion as to whether a response might help alleviate the situation. But never engage in any argument or discussion; simply acknowledge the comment and offer a redirect to a more private communication channel. That may mean stepping from behind the institutional veil to engage the user through a private message or email. At some point, contact from an administrator may be the only remedy.

• If a comment or question concerns specific Wichita State University policy, or you are not confident of giving an accurate response on behalf of the organization, reply with an acknowledgment that a more detailed response will follow, and refer to Lainie Mazzullo for clarification and further instruction.

• If a thread on Facebook becomes negative, make sure that you post or share one or two items within a few hours that will push that thread lower on the page.

• Identify opportunities. In addition to questions or comments directed to you, if your monitoring process identifies indirect questions or comments about your department or identifies a potential prospect, review whether proactive engagement is appropriate.

In instances of indirect mentions about your department or organization, respond using the same process (response or acknowledgment), but also consider context. Consider the comment or question and whether a response would be beneficial or may instead come across as “creepy” and off-putting, and engage tactfully. For example:

• A comment such as “I wonder what the Geology program is like at Wichita State?” might not be directed specifically to us but could be positively responded to with “We noticed your comment and thought this link might help” or “We noticed your comment and want to know how we can help you.”

In instances where a mention appears to be from a prospective student or parent, review the user's account before responding to check for context.

• If a response is appropriate, be mindful that unsolicited contact can be intrusive. Engage the user with a short message.

If appropriate, include a URL linking to additional information. Alternately, ask if they would be interested in speaking with someone at WSU. For example:

• “We noticed your comment about XX. Here’s some information from WSU that might be of interest: [LINK]” or “We noticed your comment about XX. WSU would be a great fit. Can we get you info?”

Content Calendar Development and Analytics

We recommend that departments create a content calendar to help plan upcoming posts. Your content calendar will ensure that:

• All key business goals and objectives are clearly identified and content themes are built around that primary objective, which will form the core of your content calendar.

• Additional content opportunities that meet approved strategy and suggested themes are identified in advance and used to build out a calendar that both directly and indirectly supports your primary objective. Then content frequency requirements can be met in a way that delivers value and interest to your target audiences.

• Creative support (photos, graphics, etc.) and any other resources should be properly identified, and budgets and responsibilities properly allocated.

The content calendar is an important document in ensuring that activity aligns with goals and strategy, and that you are properly serving the needs of both the university and your target audiences.

Process and Responsibility

Process and responsibility for the social media content calendar should be determined at the departmental level. The following is how Strategic Communications conducts the process and responsibility, and can be used as an example of how your department handles its content calendar.

Overall responsibility for developing our social media content calendar falls with our director of web and new media. The content calendar is populated during a weekly planning meeting consisting of individual channel managers, our news staff and the director.

In the meeting, we review information and calendars from strategic communications, admissions, and entities concerned with student involvement, campus life and diversity to identify events and initiatives that support content development and targeted engagement.

When those items are entered, the calendar allows us to easily identify days where content needs to be filled in. We often fill these holes by creating content that forwards the vision and mission of the university.

Remember: No department should undertake social media for social media’s sake. As much as possible, we should align social media content to support department and university goals.

Once we have the weekly calendar populated, we identify creative needs and assign personnel to generate the content. We also decide what channels are appropriate for the content and who will post.

Content Calendar Basics: 

• Weekly, identify content themes and events that can be effectively integrated into the content plan, keeping department and university goals in mind.

• Enter relevant dates and deadlines in the coming week’s content calendar.

• Use the calendar to identify holes where addition content is needed.

• For each item, identify actions to be taken in response to content and assign responsibilities.

• Designate appropriate channels for each content item based on our guidelines.

• Review audience growth, trends and engagement and set specific goals to ensure that we are always striving to increase both reach and engagement with our target audiences. We always want to learn and grow. Strategic Communications uses analytics to review and compare content that performed most effectively against content that wasn’t well received. The content meeting is a great place to put the lessons learned from analytics to work, changing format, media and themes and channel selection to improve overall content effectiveness.

Measurement

Measuring impact is critical to understanding the success of your content strategy and will allow you to effectively adapt and evolve what and how you share and achieve more effective results.

You want to understand the impact your content strategy has on increasing your footprint in the social space and growing your targeted social audience, the success of content on a channel-by-channel basis, and the success of your social strategy in driving traffic to specific owed URLs tied to key university goals.

Basic metrics should be tracked and shared during your planning meetings, as you set goals and review and evaluate your ongoing content strategy.

bit.ly

While social metrics such as likes and shares are important, the traffic you are able to drive to specific WSU-owned URLs is critical to helping support our greater marketing and admissions goals.

If you use bit.ly for sharing links across your channels, you will be able to track overall traffic driven to a specific URL from across channels and through both direct and indirect shares. It will demonstrate the total traffic driven to a specific destination as a net result of your original social shares and content seeding.

Social Activity and Channel Growth

While traffic driven to your website or to specific URLs is vital to meeting university goals, you also want to be sure that your social initiatives are driving positive activity that helps increase brand awareness, enhances your digital footprint and facilitates brand advocacy. You also need to understand how users interact with the content you create and share, and be sure to share content users will see value in, engage with and amplify.

In terms of content shared, we value social interactions and firmly believe they not only contribute to our bottom line but also drive advocacy and word of mouth. Prioritize these interactions in the following order:

• Clicks (direct action taken)
• Shares or retweets (amplification)
• Replies or Comments (engagement)
• Likes or favorites (passive engagement and amplification)
• Useful channel-specific metrics to track

Social Brand Voice

Beyond sharing links and promoting content, your social channels give a unique opportunity to stand apart by communicating with personality, being helpful and supportive, being encouraging, serving as a trusted resource, and fostering conversation about your department – capturing the passion of current and former students, and amplifying that passion to prospective students, their families and other key audiences.

Your social brand voice should: 

• Be confident, proud and positive, but never arrogant or aloof.
• Be conversational, engaging and approachable, never sounding like you are simply there to market a message or don’t have a real personality behind your accounts.
• Be helpful, encouraging and supportive.
• Focus on building relationships, not simply broadcasting information.
• Have a sense of fun at appropriate times.
• Always be professional. Even though social media is an informal medium, you are still representing Wichita State University and need to engage at a level that commands trust and respect. Always spell check.
• Always be authentic and consistent.
• Never engage in any online argument or dispute.

Important Reminders

• Whatever you post online is public and permanent. “Delete” is not an effective option.
• Social media makes you a frontline ambassador for Wichita State University, and what you post and how you engage with the online audience can heavily impact perceptions of our entire brand.
• While the typical social media and marketing references are to “users, audience and prospects,” you must always think beyond that in terms of “individuals.”
• Creating effective engagement is a key to success, but should never come at the expense of authenticity and commitment to brand values or identity.

Use of Mobile Apps

Many brands have suffered embarrassing public relations issues as a result of personal updates being accidentally posted on brand accounts.

Typically this has been the individual user accidentally selecting the wrong account on a touch-screen smart phone, which is very easy to do.

Always check that you are on the correct account before publishing content.

A Commitment to Collaboration and Education

For the social media initiatives outlined in this playbook to be effective in the long term, they must regularly be reviewed and updated.

• As individuals we must also strive to educate ourselves on the latest trends and technologies impacting us as professionals and impacting our key audiences.
• Strategic Communications is committed to supporting channel managers and Social Media Ambassadors with ongoing education on relevant subject matter. However, we must also take an individual responsibility to stay informed and to identify specific training or education needs to be met for us to be able to meet these playbook objectives.
• Recognizing that our brand’s social media representation extends beyond Strategic Communications, we are also committed to facilitating structured collaboration and empowerment so that Wichita State University is represented in the most effective way possible not just at a university level, but at an individual school and department level through our WSU Social Media Ambassadors group.

Not only will Strategic Communications support and empower those localized initiatives in a way that makes sense for the overall goals of Wichita State University and protection of our brand name and identity, but we will also use our ambassador network to support and enhance our own social media goals and content.

Joining WSU Social Media Ambassadors

To request entry to the WSU Social Media Ambassadors Facebook Group, go to facebook.com/groups/wsusma or email lainie.mazzullo@wichita.edu.