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Livestreaming at Duke: How, When, Why

Unless you’ve been living under the proverbial rock, you’ve probably started to pick up on the fact that livestreaming is a pretty big deal on social media these days. We do a bit of it at Duke. In this post, I’ll share with you how we do it, and the strategy that drives our livestreams.

How do I livestream? I want to, but I don’t know where to start.

You have a couple of different tech options, depending on how fancy you want to get (and how much money you want to spend).

Quick & Dirty

Get it done with just your phone and a few additional pieces of gear.

You’ll need:

Your phone

And maybe a few other things:

This is the cheapest, quickest way to get your livestreaming off the ground, and you can do it with as much informality as you like. The nice thing about livestreaming is that people expect it to be a little bit rough and behind-the-scenes looking.

Hangouts-Style

You can also use YouTube’s built-in livestreaming if you want to do a hangouts-style broadcast with several hosts interacting remotely. All you need is some time to set up, and for each of your hosts to have a laptop with a webcam. We do this style for admitted student chats, and we’ve written a really long and comprehensive blog post on that!

On the Cheap

At Duke, we tend to use a version of livestreaming that’s a bit of an upgrade from the quick & dirty version, but still not a full production. Try using your web browser and webcam for a Facebook livestream, or upgrade to using software like OBS (free!) or Wirecast (not free) with a webcam and mic. Add branded elements like lower thirds for more impact.

At Duke, we use a set-up that includes:

A laptop (with a wired Ethernet connection if you can get one– it always works better than WiFi)
OBS
A webcam
An XLR mic
An XLR-to-USB adapter

We used a set-up like this for this year’s class photo livestream:

It’s portable and fun, but still delivers fairly high quality.

Studio Produced

If we’re looking for something that looks more like a live TV show, we hire the experts. At Duke, that means Media Services. They can do a beautiful set-up with multiple cameras, great sound and additional graphics. You could get something close to this if you had a studio set-up of your own with a soundboard and a broadcast-quality camera or three.

We livestream Duke’s commencement ceremony this way.

But what things should I livestream and what should be my livestreaming goals?

Great livestreams all have a few things in common:

They’re interactive!
- Things like faculty chats are great for this sort of video. Ask a question to get things started.
- Make sure to also take time to stop and respond to comments and questions.
They’re at a time of day that works for people. After all, the point is to get people to tune in LIVE.
- You might have to experiment with a few different times of day before you land on the right one.
They’re consistent.
- Think of your livestream like a TV program. If people know when to tune in regularly, they will!
- Think about a weekly show or a monthly event that you could livestream.
They drive toward your strategic goals.
- Of course everything in your content plan should drive toward your strategic goals, and livestreams are no different. If your goal is to generate leads, then you need a way to capture that information. If your goal is to launch or promote a product, then make your livestreams support that.

Go out there and have fun! Livestreaming can be stressful and a lot of work, but live interaction and getting your audiences to experience things real-time with you makes it all worth it.

How Duke Covers Commencement

One of the most common questions the social media team gets each year as we head into commencement is “What is your shot list and how will you cover the event?” To many of our colleagues’ frustration, our answer is almost always, “We will see what we get on the day of.” Basically, at this point our plan about consists of a whole lot of this:

And a little bit of this:

Now, let me explain. This is not simply due to a lack of planning or to purposefully drive our commencement committee insane with unknowns. It’s because, truly, coverage of a live event is all about what I see once I get there. Sure, we can make educated guesses about what sort of content we will be looking for at the ceremony (students in robes, a timelapse of some sort, cute parents being excited), but the best part about these things are the unexpected content opportunities.

For example, these fashionable dudes simply could NOT be anticipated. I just happened to notice them in the procession and was lucky to grab a moment of video footage for our Instagram stories.

Another example is the content we posted that morning prior to the ceremony. I had no idea that I would be inspired to get a lovely campus shot of the quiet at 7:30 am before our ceremony. It just sort of happened as I was making my way through campus to the stadium.

Now, this is not to say that you shouldn’t have some sort of idea about content before going into an event. We knew we would have student shots, behind-the-scenes coverage of Wallace Wade Stadium before the ceremony began, etc. We knew our hashtags and that we’d want coverage of Tim Cook as this year’s commencement speaker. Sonja planned for and manned the live stream on our Facebook channel while I covered real-time content on the field on Instagram stories and Snapchat. But the real fun begins once the students arrive and you see the wacky fashion choices, hat decor, excited parents, etc. None of that content can be planned for.

This year, we also held off on posting photo content to our Instagram feed until post-ceremony, which gave us enough time to get shots from our amazing photo team AND see what the graduates and other schools/units around campus had shared from the event. We really had our pick of content using this method instead of rushing to get something up in real-time. This is just another great bonus of the Stories feature on the app! We were active on Instagram before the ceremony even started, but with stories, we were able to share content without rushing to post something we didn’t absolutely love right away. This really gave us a greater variety of content to share in the afternoon and in the following couple of days.

Forever, forever and #ForeverDuke! 😈🎓

A post shared by Duke University (@dukeuniversity) on May 13, 2018 at 10:19am PDT

Big thanks to @dukealumni Tim Cook, MBA ‘88 for joining us at today’s ceremony. #ForeverDuke #duke2018 //Photos courtesy of Apple.

A post shared by Duke University (@dukeuniversity) on May 13, 2018 at 12:33pm PDT

So there you have it! It’s never an exact science, but our biggest bit of advice is to keep your eyes peeled for a variety of shots and behind-the-scenes content that can only be captured while the event is happening.

Animoji in Motion: How Duke Announced the 2018 Commencement Speaker

Commencement season is one of my favorite parts of working in higher ed communications. Gearing up to send a fresh batch of Dukies out into the world, all glowing with accomplishment and brimming with promise, makes for a lot of work and long days, but is one of the most personally gratifying projects I work on each year.

And when your boss hands down the task of coming up with an innovative new way to announce this year’s commencement speaker, it’s time to get pretty creative. After all, we announce a commencement speaker every year, and we’ve done it the same way for as long as anyone can remember. But at Duke, we like to think of ourselves as “big idea people.” We aim for the Pie In The Sky and see where we land. We’re also fortunate to have an extremely supportive team of leaders who encourage us to think BIG and run with it. And this time we really went for it.

We learned that Apple CEO Tim Cook would be this year’s commencement speaker only a few weeks after the launch of the iPhone X, which gave Apple’s jazzy Animoji ads just enough time to make the rounds on social media. In our team’s brainstorming meeting, I threw out the idea of making something similar to announce Cook as this year’s speaker and things snowballed from there into the end result: two students and Duke President Vincent Price – and their Animojis – introducing Cook as our commencement speaker.

We could have rolled the video on our social channels and left it at that, but since we really wanted to make a splash with the students, we arranged to have the video on the jumbotron at Cameron Indoor Stadium during a Duke men’s basketball game. And the reaction was better than we could have ever hoped for.

What everyone didn’t see was the weeks of hard work and late nights that went into making this project. Here’s a look at some of the behind-the-scenes work (and play) that made the magic happen:

Duke’s Director of Social Media & Content Strategy, Sonja Foust, playing guinea pig for our lighting test.

Sanford School of Public Policy MPP candidate Kavya Sakar films with her Animoji.

Senior Matthew King during filming.

Really testing out that facial recognition software.

Even Duke’s President Vincent Price was game. Behold, a series:

And here’s a look at how those of us not lucky enough to be designated as “talent” spent the day:

Special thanks to our hosts for the day of filming in Blue Devil Tower, Chad Lampman, Executive Director of the Blue Devil Network.

Kristen Brown, AVP of News, Communications & Media, gives the Animojis a try in between filming. We’re big fans of the bunny.

Taking my job as Chief Fly Away Wrangler v seriously.

Me (appalled at how we are STILL in the studio some 9 hours later) along with Duke’s AVP of News & Global Communications, Laura Brinn, and VP for Public Affairs and Government Relations, Mike Schoenfeld, who loved watching the process from the monitors as President Price recorded his lines.

Live Video: Higher Ed and Beyond

2016 was undoubtedly the year of live video. Although YouTube was one of the first social media platforms to introduce live video in 2011, Facebook’s introduction of Facebook Live at the end of 2015 was the catalyst that sparked the beginning of the live video movement. It didn’t take long for this new broadcasting medium to catch on with viewers, leading Instagram and Twitter to follow suit with their own live features a year later.

Live video is authentic, engaging, and powerful, demonstrated by its quick rise to popularity and high engagement rates among viewers and broadcasters alike. Compared to 2014, 81% of internet and mobile users watched more live video in 2015. Out of all of the social media platforms that currently have a live video feature, Facebook Live sees the most traffic of live video viewers. On average, viewers comment 10 times more on Facebook live videos than on regular videos. Viewers’ attention spans are also longer during live videos, with the average viewer watching a live video 3 times longer than a typical video.

How are people using this new portable broadcasting medium? Companies and organizations may broadcast live during news announcements, performances, behind the scenes tours, demos, interviews, and more – the possibilities are endless. Those that come to mind for many social media users are live videos by individuals that document their personal experiences, whether in a serious or casual setting. My personal favorite is Candace Payne’s Chewbacca Mask video, which holds the current record for the most viewed Facebook Live video at 160 million views.

While it may be obvious for some individuals and organizations of what they should use live video to broadcast to users, higher education institutions have differed in their experimentation with live video. The most popular live video platform used by universities remains Facebook Live – although many have not yet stepped into the realm of live video at all. However, over 85% of universities have a presence on YouTube, demonstrating that the vast majority of universities understand the importance of video in engaging their audiences. It’s exciting to see more and more institutions use live videos on social media to reach new audiences and provide a different and immediate digital experience for their viewers. The majority of higher education institutions use Facebook Live in a way that reflects the type of content they publish. This is frequently demonstrated by live streaming of lectures, speeches, and notable events on campus. Duke recently streamed it’s 2017 commencement ceremonies (above) and the first press conference by Duke President-Elect Vincent Price.

During these videos, many of the videographers utilize Facebook Live API, allowing them to broadcast using a professional camera rather than through a mobile device. While using live video for these types of events can be effective, live video provides an avenue to do something different than what might normally be done through video. Since live videos in essence become regular videos once the live stream has ended, live videos should sometimes take the opportunity to distinguish themselves through content and style. Broadcasting live events can draw an audience, depending on the anticipation of said event and whether it is time-sensitive or crisis related. However, in order to truly make the most of what live video has to offer, making use of all of its features, such as live chat, will be vital.

Live videos can be used to allow social media users across the globe to glean an intimate and personal experience of life at the university. Social media is increasingly becoming a space where brands are expected to be authentic and expressive, while social media in and of itself is a place where corporations and individuals alike can let their personalities shine. I hope that universities will be at the forefront of using live video in creative and innovative ways to captivate their audiences. Vanderbilt has used live video to bring prospective students on virtual tours on campus while fielding questions using live chat. Here at Duke we have used live video to allow online viewers to ask questions to professor and author Dan Ariely during a Q&A with students in Perkins library.

Watch live: Duke professor Dan Ariely runs a demonstration of his new book, "Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations." The book reveals insights into motivation and what drives people — how it works and how we can use this knowledge to approach important choices in our own lives.In this Facebook Live, Ariely is asking students to participate in solving a puzzle for money … or pizza, demonstrating the complexity of what motivates people.Leave questions for Dan in the comments.

Posted by Duke University on Sunday, November 20, 2016

The world of live video combines the immediacy of live TV with its ability to immerse millions into the same place and moment, the omnipresent and immediate nature of social media and mobile phones, and the ever-transforming landscape of technology. With live video, the sky’s the limit and you’re the director. I’m looking forward to seeing how this versatile and immersive tool will empower higher education institutions and individuals alike to create, engage, and connect.

How Duke Students Welcomed the First Members of #Duke2021

For the 861 student applicants who got good news about their admission to Duke University Wednesday night, the acceptance notice was just the beginning of the welcome they received.

For the Devil’s Advocates, a Duke student social media team working with the Office of News and Communications, the notices were a highlight of weeks of work to create social media graphics and digital swag and to electronically greet the students.

Here’s a replay of how last night played out:

PREPARATION

The Advocates oversee @DukeStudents accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, tumblr, and Snapchat. When the Early Decision notices went live online at 7 p.m. Wednesday, the team was ready with personal greetings to the first acceptances of the Class of 2021.

Most of the greetings carried best wishes, but there was some early advice as well:

“When you arrive, make sure to talk to those around you; their life stories may be eerily similar or wildly different, and each person you come across will have something valuable to teach you. Keep your ears and heart open, and you’ll learn just as much from them as you will in class.” Jair Oballe, Class of 2019

The Advocates helped the Class of 2021 celebrate their news with a Spotify “Happy Dance” playlist around the theme of admitted students being “The One,” a playlist that had no problem fitting in Orleans and Olivia Newton-John as well as more contemporary singers.

Leading up to 7 p.m., current Duke students shared words of encouragement and their own memories:

At 7 PM

When the admissions notices went live online at 7 p.m., Twitter was immediately filled with admitted students sharing their good news and posting photographs of their letter of admission (with their addresses blacked out). The first admitted student to tweet with the hashtag #Duke2021 was Michael Castro.

The @DukeStudents Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat accounts immediately started sending congratulations and welcome messages to admitted students.

THE REST OF THE EVENING

Soon after the Class of 2021 started the celebration, parents, siblings and Dukies joined in:

Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Christoph Guttentag tweeted: “Loving these #duke2021 tweets. Congrats to the first Blue Devils of 2017!” At one point, #Duke2021 was trending on Twitter in Durham.

To wrap the celebration up, the Devil’s Advocates ended the evening with this tweet:

This was originally published on Duke Today.

Admitted Chinese Graduate Students Get Answers via Sina Weibo

By Laura Brinn
Their questions were typical of incoming graduate students: What are the best housing options on- and off-campus? Are tuition payment plans available? How successful have graduates been in pursuing careers in New York and Washington D.C.? And of course, are graduate students able to get tickets to Duke basketball games?

What made the group of admitted graduate students posing the questions different is that they were using Weibo, a popular Chinese social media channel, to connect with current graduate students and Duke staff in real time to learn more about graduate school and campus life at Duke.

The session Tuesday morning was hosted by the Graduate School’s Admissions Office, in collaboration with Duke’s International House and Public Affairs and Government Relations team, the Career Center and the Duke Chinese Student and Scholars Association.

Nearly 40 percent of the Chinese applicants who have received admissions offers from the Graduate School signed on to join the one-hour chat session, during which seven students and five staff members scrambled to keep up with the constant influx of questions and comments. While some of the participants have already accepted their offers of admission to Duke, others are still weighing their decisions, and finances, housing and career prospects are among the many factors they must consider.

Representatives from the Pratt School of Engineering’s graduate programs, as well as the computer science department, also attended the session to provide specific answers to questions about their programs, which attract large numbers of applicants from China.

“This is a great way for us to answer common questions in real-time, in a conversation-like forum,” said Liz Hutton, associate dean for graduate admissions. “The Graduate School has experienced tremendous growth in applications from Chinese students in recent years, and connecting like this helps us overcome time-zone and connection challenges and provide instant access to current students, program staff and experts on campus life.”

This is the second year the Graduate School has used Weibo to connect with admitted students. The Office of Undergraduate Admissions will host a chat session for admitted students from China this Friday on RenRen, another Chinese social media channel.

Duke maintains official university accounts on three Chinese social media channels: Weibo, RenRen and Youku. If you are interested in using these channels to connect with prospective students or other groups in China, contact Laura Brinn, executive director of global communications, or Cara Rousseau, social media manager.

This post originally appeared on Duke’s global website.

A Social Media Glossary

Last month, I traveled to Lenox, MA to co-present on social media in admissions with Ma’ayan Plaut at the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) 2014 Retreat. As part of the presentation, we created a quick handout to provide a quick glimpse at social media strategy and definitions for some of the most commonly used social media terms. It’s a handy thing to keep around, especially for educating your faculty and leadership. Download the full PDF of our COFHE Handout.

Included in the handout are short descriptions of popular social media platforms. What else would you like to see here?

Facebook – Currently the largest and most popular social media platform: users create profiles, post status updates and friend other users to follow their posts. Facebook is most commonly used to communicate personal information among family and friends.

Foursquare – A platform that allows users to check-in to their current location and connect with other users.

Google+: A platform where users create “Circles” of contacts in order to share posts selectively. Users post status updates in the form of text, photos, link, video, or events. Google+ is also heavily integrated with Google Hangouts, Google Chats, and YouTube profiles.

Instagram – An exclusively visual platform where users share filtered photos or short videos for followers who view and “heart” posts within a feed.

LinkedIn – A professional social network that allows users to connect to potential employers and business associates. LinkedIn profiles act as online resumes and can feature users’ skills, academic and career history, leadership roles, and more.

Pinterest – A platform where users “pin” visual content to themed “boards.” Popular content includes fashion, home decor, food and how-to’s. Users can follow other users or individual boards and can “pin” posts to their own boards.

Tumblr – A multimedia blogging platform used primarily to post pictures, short text entries, and GIFs. Users may follow others and “note” posts by “loving” or “reblogging” in their dashboard from other Tumblr users. Tumblr has been the foundation of many subcultures and communities around like-minded bloggers.

Twitter – A microblogging platform where users post short (140 characters or less), often news-related, text updates and links. Users follow each other to see their real-time tweets in a chronological timeline. Users often follow a combination of influencers and news sources along with acquaintances and friends.

Vine – A social media platform for seven-second-long videos made within a proprietary mobile application. Similarly to Twitter, users may view and “revine” videos of users they are following. Vine also tends to skew to a younger population and is popular among teenagers.

YouTube – A video-based publisher and platform where users upload original content to share with viewers and subscribers. YouTube is also commonly embedded on websites across the web.

I Can Haz Photo Contest? Boost Your Facebook Engagement with Crowd-Sourced Photos

People love seeing photos of themselves online. “Selfie” was word of the year for a reason, after all.

But if there’s one thing the Internet has taught us, it’s that as much as people love seeing themselves, they love adorable pictures of animals even more. And if you turn that into their adorable animals, well, that’s a perfect storm.

After several years of running a successful Halloween photo contest that solicited snapshots of dressed up coworkers and decorated offices, Duke’s Office of Communication Services decided to see what kind of response we’d get from organizing a pet-themed photo contest on our Facebook page in February.

Instead of finding the most creative costumes, we wanted to find “Duke’s cutest pet.”

How we did it

We promoted the contest through our Working@Duke social media channels (Twitter and Facebook) and on Duke Today, having entries submitted to us through a Qualtrics form in order to easily capture participant contact information and photo submission.

In all, we received 39 photos and tallied nearly 1,200 votes over the course of a week. Winners were determined by public vote, but we also had “judge’s choice” selections to spread the wealth of pet-themed prizes.

We asked that entries try to focus on a Duke-related connection when possible, which included shots of a turtle in “Cameron Indoor Aquarium,” a hamster sitting in a Duke hat and even a dog wearing a Blue Devil cape.

Why we did it

While the goal was to offer a fun way to engage our community, it also benefited our presence on Facebook. All voting was held on our page in the form of likes and people were allowed to share their pictures however they saw fit to drum up support.

With so many people coming to our page to vote, here are some of the stats where we saw increases from January to February:

204 percent increase in monthly likes
270 percent increase of views of our Facebook page
306 percent increase in the number of people clicking on our content

All this was boosted because people were voting in our contest, but even after we announced our winners on Feb. 18, we saw sustained engagement with all our posts through the end of the month, whether it was related to the contest or not.

Should you consider a contest?

Since Facebook changed its terms of service to allow for these types of contests, it seems like a goldmine for potential engagement, if only because you’re creating the opportunity to show off something your fans are passionate about. In our case, their furry (or slimy) loved ones.

Once people submit photos, the heavy lifting is uploading them and their information. Since voting is done through likes on your Facebook page, the platform does the work for you.

Most important, you’re likely to see an uptick in your monthly stats and grow your Facebook fan base. In the months since the February contest, we’ve seen increased engagement to go along with our growing number of page likes.

This is a guest blog post by Bryan Roth, senior writer/producer with Duke’s Office of Communication Services.