Social Media Memo
Background
The purpose of this memo was to propose a Butler University Instagram takeover strategy. The goal was to create a new point-of-view to persuade perspective students to select Butler over other universities.
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Part of the memo was to provide three sample Instagram posts in addition to the memo. Coming up with a creative tactic to reach perspective students during the month of December was a fun challenge.
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I went with the strategy of a faculty lead social media takeover. The content of the memo gives more specifics of positioning and reasoning for choosing my selected takeover proposition.
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It is important to note that all of the work within this memo is not associated with a Butler University given task to complete.
#BeYou is a previous campaign used by Butler University that puts emphasis on the idea that students can be themselves here on campus.
This post features a faculty member interacting with students and featuring the idea of heping them to succeed after graduation.
This post features a faculty member with a student at a yearly holiday party. This post is used to show the kinds of relationships faculty and students have in our close knit community.
#BeYou is a previous campaign used by Butler University that puts emphasis on the idea that students can be themselves here on campus.
Example Social Media Memo
TO: …
FROM: Allie Pence, Butler University Student
DATE: December 1, 2017
SUBJECT: Proposed Social Media Takeover
Marketing and social media have often been used as a persuasive tool in recruitment for new students to Butler University. Social media posts have the ability to push prospective students to choose various universities during their senior year. I am proposing a social media takeover for one day in December with the purpose to provide a different perspective for potential students during their decision-making process. The takeover would be done by a Butler faculty member for one day of the @butleru Instagram account. The goal of the faculty takeover is to create multiple posts with a first-person point of view of daily life on Butler University’s campus. By creating these posts, we are aiming to attract high-quality applicants and persuade them to choose Butler University over other colleges.
Takeover for the Perspective Students
Since December is an important month for many students who are considering multiple Universities because they are waiting for all of their acceptance or denied admissions. This will be an opportune time to provide a new perspective on life at Butler through the Instagram social media account. Butler’s current campaign focuses on “Be You (BU)”, which features various students giving their personal stories and providing insight in student life and why people chose Butler University. However, I think a large part of what makes Butler unique is also the faculty, and this perspective will bring out a new look on students considering Butler for their college career. With this takeover, faculty will still follow the “Be You” campaign, but in light of the faculty perspective.
Research and Examples
The overall strategy behind having a faculty perspective is to show how they act as mentors and want Butler University students to be successful. The posts will provide a second-hand view of student life through their eyes of teaching students. The appendix includes three sample posts that shows how the strategy could be executed. The first post follows a similar structure to “Be You” campaign but with a faculty instead of a Butler University student. This provides an example of how faculty want students to succeed and could even highlight some of the statistics of graduation rate and networking advantages. The second post will show an example of a typical class interacting with the faculty member. With this post, academic statistics and class size can be featured as an advantage. Finally, post three will feature a faculty and student at a Christmas party which occurs every year.
Purposes
The previous Butler campaign of “Be You” sparked the idea for this approach. I liked that this strategy allows for Butler students to share personal stories and point-of-views that are relatable to other students. Not all of the posts showed many of the great statistics about student achievement after college and believe that the perspective of a proud, second-hand viewer could give these statics more naturally than a student can, because faculty has had the opportunity to see students through their college careers and into the real world. The strategy will follow all of Butler University’s social media guidelines. In addition, the strategy should give prospective students valuable data through statistics and help them think about what they will ultimately get out of college, which is a job. This would provide a unique modification to the current social media strategy and provide more back ground information for perspective students to think over during their decision process.
Conclusion
A new perspective to the current social media strategy of “Be You” with the addition of a faculty day takeover can have benefits to the recruitment of perspective students. The three-post takeover can provide more statistics and information about Butler University graduate success for high school seniors to consider when making their final decisions.