Introduction to the assignment
Ah. Finally. We’ve gotten to my favorite thing in the whole world: Social Media. *sarcasm*
I’m just kidding. As time has gone this semester, and I have begun a position at the Branding Iron, I have come to thoroughly enjoy Social Media. I enjoy getting to use analytics on Facebook and through WordPress to see which posts are the most effective and which sites are the most effective.
With that being said, our latest assignment is one that I am kind of excited to explore. We get to do an analysis of two similar sources. The sources that I chose to examine are the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University. I get the opportunity of going deep into the depths of the Social Media accounts of these two universities. I will go through the accounts that each one has and make comments about what they are doing right and wrong.
I will begin with the UW because CSU is the worst, and it sucks to be a CSU Ram, and we have the Border War coming this weekend.
University of Wyoming
Facebook:
One of the themes I noticed with the Facebook posts is that they are all written with an informal voice. I enjoy this and it is a good technique because they are sticking with a more conversational tone, which is what people want to see. If the posts were written in a formal manner, then they wouldn’t be as engaging because they wouldn’t be relatable to the audiences they are trying to reach. I did enjoy the fact that with some comments they liked them, but they didn’t like all of them, so there were some inconsistencies. They also did not comment on any of the comments made on the statuses, which is a deterrent to engagement with the audience. I do believe they are doing something wrong with Facebook because they have 52,343 followers on their Facebook page and, on the last five posts, they have only had on average 135 likes. That is substantially lower than the amount of people who are seeing these posts on a regular basis.
Instagram:
The first thing I notice on their Instagram is that they have the same profile picture as they did on their Facebook. I appreciate this because it shows consistency with their Social Media accounts. The other thing I notice is that the posts are very similar to the ones shared on their Facebook page. One thing that I know, through past experience, is that the types of things you post on Instagram versus Facebook should be relatively different. While they do have their small differences, they aren’t big enough. I think Instagram should be all about the art of photography with conversational, short captions, and some of them are the exact same thing they wrote on Instagram. Their Instagram account, on the other hand, is doing very well because it has had on average, with the past five posts, 336 likes. Those are some pretty good numbers for a site that has way fewer followers than the Facebook page.
Twitter:
The first thing I would note is that there are many different pages. I actually had to go to the UW website in order to find the link to their official Twitter account. I ended up finding it and they tweet the right way. They are sure to post with short captions, that are concise and to the point. They also share the shorthand versions of the URLs so people don’t have to look at the long URL, which is shown to be important too. They are also sparse with the way they do their postings, to ensure that they are not posting an excessive amount of stories with photographs, which was important to avoid because people get frustrated with too many pictures, though they are the most effective way to ensure engagement, too much is a bad thing. Since I’ve made not of it in all the other discussions, I will note that they have 2,359 followers and I am not sure how to work Twitter so I don’t know if you can tell how many likes they get (Returning from CSU’s Twitter page, I now know that you can tell, and we just don’t have any on our last five posts). But this is the account with the least amount of followers so far.
Pinterest:
There are many Pinterest accounts attributed to UW, and I think I was able to find the most relevant one, however, it is hard to tell because there is no direct link to it from their website. I like their use of nice pictures from around campus, but I think it serves essentially the same purpose as the UW Instagram. It just provides another platform to share much of the same type of media. They do have 405 followers, which is actually their new lowest Social Media account.
Followers: 405
Average Likes (five posts): They don’t do likes on Pinterest.
Snapchat:
N/A
I was unable to find a Snapchat that was attributed to the university, however, there were stories attributed to the location of UW.
LinkedIn:
I was able to find the LinkedIn of UW, but I did not like what I saw. Yes, they have many people associated with them and it is a very popular location, but their last post was 9 months ago. That is a long time to go without posting on a Social Media site. It is also terrible for people who would reference the university as their place of education to potential employers because employers could look at this and be left wondering what is going on at the university. Why haven’t they updated their professional website? It’s an interesting thing. The post that they did 9 months ago was a welcome back to students, and I’m assuming it was following the return of students from winter break in the 2016-2017 academic year. There are only four posts on the LinkedIn, so I think they created it and then realized that they had to manage it and stopped. That is not good.
Followers: 49,694
Average Likes (five posts): 167 <- This actually the last four because there are only a total of four posts on the website.
Colorado State University
Oh, how I’ve dreaded having to look at CSU’s Social Media accounts. Good luck to me, am I right?
Facebook:
First impression, dang. They don’t just have an aerial view of the CSU campus; they have an entire video representing the things CSU has to offer. This also includes videos of students, which I think is incredibly important in creating that connection to the students that attend. Also, browsing through the posts on their Facebook page, I noticed that there are so many interesting posts. For instance, they have a video showing students how to carve a pumpkin. They also have interactive posts asking students why they chose CSU. They also, on the posts I saw, were sure to like the comments made on their posts. They are doing a very good job keeping with a diversity of posts on their sites and continuing to interact and have fun with their audiences.
Followers: 141,212
Average Likes (five posts): 856
Instagram:
The posts they have on their Instagram are also very similar to those on their Facebook account. However, they do make some small edits to the captions they include with their posts, in some cases adding more to give more context to the post and continue the conversation. I think it is important to have some differentiation in the quotes that they use for their posts. This helps to keep people both checking the Facebook and the Instagram and not just thinking about the one account. Also, they still maintain their shorter captions, which is very important with a Social Media platform that is not about words and is about photography.
Followers: 54.5 thousand
Average Likes (five posts): 2,512 <- They are doing something very right.
Twitter:
Their Twitter account was much easier to find even though it was among many other Twitter accounts. It is nice that it would be such an easy to thing to find, and that I was sure that I had found it right away. This is a major contrast to UW’s Twitter. The posts on their Twitter account are very personable, they have a very human element. I can tell this by looking at the fact that they share GIFs with their posts. They are also sure to have short, catchy captions that bring in people through their comedy. The one thing I would note is that they may use GIFs too much, using it as a crutch to seem more outgoing and personable. The overuse of these tactics like pictures and GIFs makes it repetitive and is not sustainable for a Twitter account, as we read.
Followers: 54.3 thousand
Average Likes (five posts): 21
Pinterest:
In finding their Pinterest account, it was hard to tell which one was there. The top three results were of similar description, meaning it was very hard for me to differentiate. However, the third result did say athletics so I assumed that wasn’t it. Then, I realized the second one was for the online college and not the actual campus, so now I know. Their actual Pinterest has quite a good following and is pretty active as well. They also have the different boards that help in various aspects, including future students, styling for students and other examples.
Followers: 5,287
Average Likes (five posts): They don’t do likes on Pinterest.
Snapchat:
N/A
CSU also does not have its own Snapchat account, at least from what I could find. The too had the stories attributed to them as UW did.
LinkedIn:
This is where they have UW, for sure. No questions asked. The last update that CSU made to its LinkedIn was 16 hours ago (at time of posting). The story they posted was about a course that they offer about “Water, Gender and Human Rights.” It was cool to see that they do update their LinkedIn and they do focus on the things that highlight their university and build a good name for their alum.
Followers: 205,592
Average Likes (five posts): 90
Conclusion:
In closing, it still sucks to be a CSU Ram, but the Social Media accounts of CSU are not sucky by any means. Now, UW, on the other hand, needs to get its crap together. We have so much potential with the way we post, it is just going untapped. There are many ways that UW could improve its Social Media, and I would suggest reading the articles our professor shared with us would be a dang good place to start. I would also recommend that the people who run the Social Media accounts should limit the amount of Social Media accounts for each site.
Seth Sigward Haack 