Archive | Social Media at Duke

Duke Does Digital Swag

By Elysia Pan and Cara Rousseau

On December 11, 2015, Duke welcomed 811 Early Decision students to the Class of 2020. Along with their acceptance letter, the admitted students and their families were given the gift of Duke digital swag – a collection of Duke images displaying the hashtag #Duke2020 and #DukeFamily for mobile and desktop backgrounds, social media sharing and posting in online spaces.

Under guidance from Duke’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions and the Office of News & Communications, the project was executed by DiDA, a Duke student-led, full-service marketing agency. Four students were involved in creating/updating the site and creating themes that would appeal to admitted students and their families.

The site garnered more than 40,000 page views, 10,000 unique visitors and 3,000 total downloaded files.

Why Digital Swag?

The project helped us reach three goals:

Create a virtual community for admitted students and their families

By creating the digital swag, we fostered an intimate online community for the incoming class as soon as admits received their acceptance letters. Students and their family members were able to use these graphics as a digital marker that they joined the Duke community (think “online bumpersticker”).

Create engagement between current and prospective students

Our approach was to showcase Duke in the best way possible: by creating connections between current and prospective students so that they end up recruiting each other. This project was a way for admitted students to interact with current undergraduates, and vice-versa.

Show off cool student work and organizations

We always want to show off the talents that our undergraduates possess! We also were able to show design/media-savvy students that there is a community here on campus for them.

Lessons Learned

We learned a few things that can be applied to other digital media projects in higher education:

Make your project easy to update in coming years

When you’re working with student teams, it’s important to think ahead on projects that will need to be updated in coming years, as students graduate and study abroad. We created a generic Gmail account for the Squarespace site we built and we saved the graphics on a shared box.com space. This way, we were able to work with a new graphic designer the next year and he was able to access the website and all of the files he needed.

People prefer iconic/beauty shots to images featuring people

We created a heat map of the images that were downloaded and learned images showing people typically performed the weakest. The most popular downloads were Duke spring, #ForeverDuke buttons and Duke ducks.

We’ve seen that people shots are effective on social media when the audience can identify people who they know in the shot. For admitted students and their families, they probably didn’t identify with photos of current Blue Devils. But, they were eager to share pictures of iconic Duke places and things.

Make projects accessible to as many audiences as possible

By creating the suite of #DukeFamily graphics, we made the site appealing to people beyond the incoming class. Alumni, staff and faculty were excited to be able to show their Duke pride on their devices and social media profiles, too.

We’re excited to evaluate how Early Decision students receive their digital swag this year, and perhaps tweak the site based on their reactions for Regular Decision students.

Now, go swap out your cover art and show your Duke spirit!

The project was led by Duke’s Office of News & Communications and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, and was implemented by the student-led Duke Innovation Design Agency (DiDA).

Elysia Pan is a Duke alumna and works as an admissions officer in Duke’s Office of Undergraduate Admissions, where she focuses on yield activities, recruiting in the arts & humanities and manages in-house design.

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.

Duke Launches New Tumblr: Site uses social media platform to highlight Duke experts

It’s a new website where Dan Ariely discusses the new Apple Pay system, Peter Feaver considers the threat of ISIS, Priscilla Wald asks why Americans are so scared of Ebola and Karla Holloway ponders a post-racial America.

Launched earlier this month, the Duke News Tumblr has begun sharing the views of these and other university experts with journalists and other subscribers. Duke’s Office of News & Communications (ONC) designed the site on the increasingly popular Tumblr platform with rich graphics, video clips and other material.

Other recent posts have focused on fracking, LGBT issues and climate change, as well as on less-publicized topics such as free samples at Costco or California’s plan to ban plastic bags.

A recent Duke News tumblr post

“Social media keeps growing in importance as a source for how people get their news,” said David Jarmul, associate vice president of news and communications. “Over the past few years, we’ve shifted our strategies to keep pace on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Now Tumblr is emerging as a player, especially with journalists and young people.”

Duke’s news office remains active on other social networks – more than 240,000 people have “liked” the main Duke Facebook page – and through more conventional approaches such as news releases, research reports, op-ed articles and video stories, as well as the Duke Today website.

“We’re constantly watching our audiences and experimenting with new platforms to reach them,” Jarmul said. “We quietly started our Tumblr a few weeks ago and solicited feedback from Duke alums active in the news media. They offered some excellent suggestions, and we tweaked the site accordingly. Now we plan to reach out to more people who might enjoy the material. Tumblr just keeps getting bigger, especially on mobile devices.”

Danielle Nelson, ONC’s social media fellow, is running the site with Keith Lawrence, ONC’s executive director of news and communications, and Cara Rousseau, its social media manager.

This post was originally published on Duke Today.

Q&A on Duke University’s Google + Presence

This interview originally appeared as a CASE blog post by Janna Crabb.

As part of a series of blog posts around Google +, I talked with Cara Rousseau, manager, digital and social media strategy at Duke University, about the school’s use of the platform.

Q: Tell us a little bit about the Google + presence your department manages and related goals. Does your institution have other accounts not managed by your department?
A: Duke University has a very active Google + presence with more than 280,000 followers and more than 2.5 million views. The main Google+ page is managed by our social media team in Duke’s Office of News & Communications. Duke Athletics and Duke Men’s Basketball also manage a very strong presence on Google+, with combined followers exceeding 500,000 and almost 2 million views, respectively. Our goals for Google+ are to reach niche communities (research, science, medical, health, etc.), to optimize search results and to leverage the Hangouts On Air video streaming platform to connect our audiences.

Q: Why is your institution on Google + and how do you find it valuable? Who is your audience?
A: Duke uses Google+ primarily as a place to optimize search results and for the Hangouts On Air feature. We first started using Google + in August of 2011 when pages launched, but we were really not sure what to do with it. Then, in April 2012, Hangouts on Air launched in beta, and we decided to explore the application, holding eight video chats for prospective and admitted students in the month of April. We used venues across campus, selected based on the theme of the chat. For example, we held our chat on “Duke spirit and pride” in the Cameron Indoor Stadium, which also houses our Hall of Fame. We held our “Duke research in the world” chat at the Duke Lemur Center to show how hands-on research happens for students. By connecting admitted students to current students in spots across campus, we were able to open a window to campus culture and student life.

Because Google+ is a social layer, it spreads across other Google applications like Google search, YouTube and Google Maps. Because these platforms all talk to each other, things that are posted on Google+ (and have good engagement and reach!) also perform better across other Google products like search. This is important if you are trying to boost the visibility of a small department or if you are promoting a faculty member who doesn’t otherwise have a public presence.

We also use Google+ to reach certain communities that are more active there than in spaces like Facebook or Twitter.

We’ve found that Google + is strong in niche areas of research and science health; it’s a cerebral place so we focus less on pride and sports and more on geekier content. Because Duke is a leading research university, we have a lot of stuff to share that is interesting to those users.

Q: What are some of your Google + successes? What have you learned? Any tips for other institutions?
A: Hangouts On Air have been my favorite thing that we’ve done on Google+. In addition to our student web chats, we’ve also done office hours with alumni and faculty for events such as the Oscars. Christoph Guttentag, our dean of admissions, moderated a debate between two high schools in California via Hangouts On Air. Duke’s Class of 1984 held aseries of Hangouts On Air with its class for months leading up to the 30th reunion. We have even held Hangouts via mobile devices live fromBlue Devil Days, our main student recruitment events. We are really excited to keep pushing the envelope by trying new things on this platform.

Tips for using Google+:

Browse the “discover” tab and find interesting things Google+ is featuring.
Search communities to see if there is a community already existing for your school (hint: it probably already exists, so it’s a good idea to find out who is active there).
Figure out what’s trending on Google+ and use the hashtags to share your content (as it makes sense).
Try a Hangout instead of a phone call the next time you have a virtual meeting. Using the tool will help you get much more comfortable with it.
Keep it visual! Google+ has more visual space in posts and cover art than Facebook does. Make sure you are posting beautiful things with captions that sizzle.

Q: How does Google + compare with Facebook at your institution?
A: Google + isn’t a replacement for Facebook; it is a very different space. We find that our audience on Facebook (and Twitter) is more interested in school pride and sports. Our engagement on Google+ tends to be lower than on Facebook, even though we have more followers on Google+ than on Facebook. However, engagement is growing, and we get an especially good response to posts when we use keywords that are “trending” and apply that trend to our content. Google+ also has a “communities” feature that is more searchable than Facebook groups.

Q: What Google + projects would you like to focus on in the future?
A: I’d like to leverage it for more departments and uses on campus. For example, we’ve started thinking about how our career center and global education departments can use Hangouts On Air for advising and information sessions. We’re also excited about continuing to explore how we can use mobile devices to host video and connect with audiences across the world.

Duke Plays 2048

Few things hold a captive audience for more than a few minutes in our busy media environment. That’s why the viral “2048” game stood out to me. After seeing a few hilarious examples using the 2048 game template around the web, our digital team brainstormed how we could make a Duke version.

We decided to reward those who played our version by offering prizes to whomever reached the coveted “2048” tile. We used photos from our @dukeuniversity Instagram account so when they reached the “2048” tile they could find the corresponding Instagram photo and comment on it to win. This also gave us the opportunity to show off beautiful parts of campus and the student experience to players.

The game was a big success! Not only did we have our two winners within minutes, but community members continued to play and post comments on the winning photo for days.

We knew the game was especially popular with younger audiences so we then made another customized version for admitted #Duke2018 students. We shared a link to this version via email communication from Duke’s undergraduate admissions office and saw immediate success again. Dozens of admitted students commented on the winning Instagram photo and even followed our account as a result. During Blue Devil Days (our recruiting events for admitted students) students and parents commented again and again how much fun they had playing Duke’s 2048 game. One parent even told us how her daughter saw a beautiful red bridge in on one of the game tiles that led her to search for the real bridge in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens when she visited campus! It was great to see our digital efforts pay off in real life.

We tracked over 2,400 clicks to both of the games over the course of our campaign. This was more than just a high click-through rate. It represented hours spent playing the games and getting glimpses of the Duke experience through our Instagram photos. We learned that it pays off to keep your finger on the pulse in order to latch on to larger cultural moments. By adding a Duke flavor to this one, we were able to connect to key audiences in an unexpected way.

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.

The State of Social Media at Duke, Spring 2014

The social media universe has seen many changes this semester. WhatsApp was purchased by Facebook for $19 billion. Snapchat usage blew up. Google+ lost its founder. Facebook changed their algorithm again and again and again …

Here at Duke, we’ve been busy over the past few months. Our social media team created a Duke-styled 2048 game. We hosted a #DukeSpring photo walk in the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, resulting in hundreds of crowd-sourced seasonal images of campus. The Office of News & Communications produced a fast-paced video guide on using social media effectively in higher education. Current students held a number of online chats using Google+ Hangouts for admitted students.

We also did some data crunching. Amanda Peralta, David Jarmul and I prepared a short report/infographic showing the state of social media here at Duke this spring. Below is a snapshot of the data our team compiled.

A quick glance at some of the aggregate numbers for all of Duke’s institutional accounts reveals a vast presence on social media.

A look at growth and engagement on the main Duke social media accounts. One of the things we are watching very closely is the explosion of engagement on Duke’s Instagram presence.

From the data, it’s clear to see social media continues to grow in importance as part of Duke’s news, communications and marketing efforts. We’ll be updating this report every semester here on Duke’s social media blog to keep you informed of our social media activity and trends.

Want more? Here is a link to the full PDF.