A key insight for social media managers looking to encourage staff & students to use social media for brand advocacy is that they must build effective channels first. This approach looks at a practical way to start a capacity building program for social media amongst staff and students.

1. Toby Beresford
Founder Rise.global
@tobyberesford
Marketing via the crowd
How personal dashboards can be used to
transform university staff & students into
effective social media ambassadors

2. Social media is being used across all
university life
• Social Life
• Staff recruitment
• University Brand
• Academic Dissemination
• Student recruitment

3. In the US, 2/3rds of prospective students use
social media to research college choice

4. A pattern mirrored around the world

5. On more than one social media platform

6. Inevitably there are winners and losers

7. Using current staff & students as influencers
is key to social media success
"It's useful to talk to people who are already at
university and you can use social media to get in
touch. I'd say you should take on board family and
friends' opinions, but the people who are already there
are the people who know the most.”
Emily Dring, 23, is going into her fourth year
studying French at Oxford University

8. How do we position a social media ambassador
program?
Strategy Question

9. How NOT to do a social media
ambassador program (1)
Dangle a reward for whoever tweets / posts the most
with a hashtag
 inauthentic content and spamming
 not sustainable post campaign end
 channels themselves limited in reach

10. How NOT to do a social media
ambassador program (2)
Measure everyone and tell slackers to ‘buck up their
ideas’
 top down measurement approaches are disliked by
staff (employees) and are ineffective among
students (non-employees)
 a basic leaderboard will only encourage the top 10%
whilst disincentivising everyone else

11. How NOT to do a social media
ambassador program (3)
Focus on promoting brand content not building
channels
 If the channels are weak then even if they do post
branded messages, they won’t be heard.
 A good social media channel isn’t simply an
amplifier of another channel – it is unique in itself

12. Key insight
Channels matter more than messages

13. Why? Multiple channels compete for
attention across the algorithms
Facebook Instagram Youtube Twitter
Bath Bristol Southampton Edinburgh Keele Brunel Durham

14. To win, your staff & student channels
should loom largest
Facebook Instagram Youtube Twitter
Bath Bristol Your University Keele Brunel Durham

15. Good social media ambassador program
Grows channel capacity first

16. Tactical Question
How do we deliver a successful social media
ambassador program?

17. Social Ambassador Program
Registration
Capacity
Content

18. Registration
Encourage staff & students to opt-in to your program
using their personal social media accounts.
Avoid “empty bar” problem by pre-populating program
with top 20 or so known ambassadors

19. Capacity
Provide / recommend the right tools for staff &
students to create effective social media channels
Offer access to training and resources as necessary

20. Content
Offer a content feed for optional re-posting of
university material
Create conversation points such as hashtags
Notify ambassadors via the capacity building channel

21. What tools would you use to implement this today?
Implementation Question

22. Social Ambassador Program Tools Stack
Personal Social Dashboard
Personal
Social
Analytics
Team
Social
Analytics
Awards &
Recognition
Content
Curation &
Scheduling
CommunityCoaching &
Training

23. Personal Social Dashboard
 Staff & Students Opt-In to program
 Weekly alerts
 Integrated with analytics & recognition
program

24. Content curation & scheduling
 Discover new content relevant to their
channel
 Schedule curated postings
 Access content feed of university news

25. Personal Social Analytics
 Track social impact
 Get a relevant social score card
 Compare my progress over time

26. Team Social Analytics
 Benchmark against others in the team
 Track progress as a team / university
 Compare progress over time
 Iterate design of teams / divisions / scores

27. Awards & Recognition
 Celebrate progress and achievements
 Permanent markets of success

28. Coaching & Training
 Automate training suggestions
 Maintain a library of learning materials, best
practice & usage policies

29. Community
 Discuss experiences and best practices
 Connect with other ambassadors

30. UN Social 500
“The UN Social 500 really
helps bring us together,
fosters better understanding
across our organizations
and as a result, strengthens
our individual and collective
work to have a positive
impact on the world.”
Kent Page, UNICEF
www.unsocial500.com

31. Does the main university social media channel need to be
mature? Up and running so prospects have somewhere to
go deeper but not necessarily all singing and all dancing.
What’s your Klout score Toby? What is average on UN
Social 500? 60, around 40
How can this relate specifically to internal communications
within an organisation? Same process but use an internal
private board, add in your own metrics
Workshop Q&A [notes]

32. Seems a little bit like Edurank, but for individuals
within an institution rather than the institutions
themselves? Yes similar approach. We benchmark
against it monthly, we look at what successful
institutions are doing and see where we can improve.
Exactly the same behaviour we see on Rise boards. We
can seed content by doing “how did you do it?”
interviews on top climbers.
Primarily this is about engaging staff as they have a
vested interest in promoting the uni, does this
progress also work with students? Yes because it is
positioned as being a benefit for them – learn how to
create an effective social media presence for yourself.

33. Benefit for the students is that we are improving their Klout
and teaching them effective social media skills? Yes though
be sure to position it so that score and rank is an indicator
of progress in the main goal – content & engagement on
social media – not an end in itself.
It’s not an approach where you can give them content,
difficult to provide content that’s relevant to all? We
suggest you include a content curation tool like
www.cronycle.com and serve your content via a cronycle
feed to encourage them to repost.
We find students aren't really fussed about Cred.ly badges.
They rarely collect them. A few love them though and stick
them on Linkedin etc. Badges are part of a program, they
provide a permanent record of achievement. Not everyone
may want them but some value them highly.

34. We're putting a lot of effort into educating departments
and schools to create engaging content. We're not at a
stage of ranking them just yet, and think that it would
turn people away who already fairly timid about having
a Social Media presence.
Is there a way to push past the ranking stigma? Using
it a as a tool for motivation?
Yes, you can use Rise simply for personal analytics –
use the privacy option “Private – Score Only” and it
will show depts / indivs their score and history but not
their relative rank on the leaderboard

35. Links to services mentioned
• Personal Social Dashboard
– try as a follower/player – www.rise.global
– create your social ambassador program - www.risefuse.com
• Content curation & feeds
– Paper.li, flipboard.com, www.cronycle.com , anderspink.com, scoop.it,
hootsuite.com, buffer.com, rebelmouse.com
• Personal Social Analytics
– Rise.global, Sumall.com, klout.com, analytics.twitter.com, linkedin.com/sales/ssi
• Team Social Analytics
– Rise.global
• Awards & recognition
– www.credly.com
• Coaching & Training
– Moodle.com, edmondo.com, wordpress.com, blackboard.com
• Community
– Slack.com, hipchat.com, yammer.com, www.muut.com , disqus.com

36. Next Steps
• If you’re interested in setting up a
pilot program then contact Nick and
Toby at Rise. We’ll help you get your
trial up and running:
– hello@rise.global
• If you want to have a go at setting up
your program yourself, please feel
free to try:
– www.risefuse.com