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Boosting Ecampus Efforts with a Solid Social Media Strategy

Oregon State University logo

Client

Oregon State University Ecampus

Location

Headquartered in Corvallis, Oregon

Services Provided

  • Social media strategy 
  • Tactical operational roadmaps
  • Ongoing counsel 

Overview

Oregon State University Ecampus has robust program offerings for full-time students, corporate clients, and professionals seeking ongoing education. All programs are delivered virtually from the same best-in-class faculty and staff of the 150-year-old institution.

Situation

While they work within the greater Oregon State University brand, the marketing staff of the Oregon State Ecampus is responsible for all of the social media accounts for the division. With added pressure to increase online enrollment as well as represent the esteemed Ecampus Research Unit (ECRU) and Ecampus Open Educational Resources (EOER) sectors of the school, the team needed support to create and execute an encompassing social media marketing strategy. They partnered with Convince & Convert to create a clear and robust social media strategy that aligns with their content marketing goals, and allow for clear measurement to the business KPIs. 

Challenges

The Oregon State Ecampus marketing team was small but mighty, and they were often pulled in many directions. The team engaged with C&C to accelerate their strategic planning so that the Ecampus could better utilize resources to meet current and growing needs.  

Specific challenges included: 

  • Limited visibility to data as well as understanding what the important measurements should include
  • Ensuring the strategy allowed for future growth and nimbleness as needs arose 
  • Understanding how story-telling impacts customer decision making 
  • Finding the effective mix of program representation and enrollment goals towards those programs

Solution

C&C created a social media strategy for Oregon State Ecampus that encompassed research towards: 

  • Robust understanding & analysis of key audiences
  • Full metrics evaluation and new dashboard recommendation
  • Channel specific cadence and storytelling planning 
  • Social media management process efficiencies to offer greater personalization and community engagement on all channels

In addition to the master strategy, C&C created five prescriptive and detailed playbooks providing the Ecampus team the tactical operations to deploy in exactly the right order to achieve the business objectives to success. 

Results

  • Increased efficiency of Ecampus marketing staff through strategic plan and larger stakeholder buy-in 
  • Allowed for “more” to be done with “less” through prioritization and atomization efforts 
  • Created a clear metrics dashboard for the Ecampus team to show success against business metrics from social media efforts 

 

Client
Texas Exes – Alumni Association for The University of Texas
Location
Austin, Texas USA
Services Provided
Situation
Like many alumni organizations across the country, Texas Exes saw declining engagement, challenges with hitting giving goals, and in general, had a harder time getting the attention from their target audiences. It was a good time to re-connect and re-assess alumni sentiment and needs.
Challenges
Although the Texas Exes had a strong organization and following, they still faced significant challenges:
  • Generally speaking, the University of Texas at Austin has a very decentralized culture, which pervades every related organization and department.
  • Texas Exes wanted to make sure that teams used to operating independently didn’t just see this research as something for the marketing team to use in crafting giving pitches, but data that could inform and guide every area, from student outreach, to events, to fundraising and beyond.
Solution
Convince and Convert started by implementing an attitudinal survey that asked alumni how they felt about the association generally, events and benefits, as well as their feelings about their time at the University of Texas at Austin. Convince & Convert then performed a thorough analysis, developed personas, recommended strategies, and content ideas that would support the needs and desires of the alumni. One of the key findings was that the alumni’s main unmet desire was more professional interaction, including networking, mentoring and job opportunities. When COVID hit, it became clear that they had a significant opportunity not to just move events online but do so in a strategic and intentional way. Texas Exes had been in conversation with Graduway, a platform that provides a private social network with robust features, for more than a year. In six weeks, Convince & Convert helped the Texas Exes accelerate this concept, finalize their contract, and plan a launch strategy. In addition, Convince & Convert helped organize conversations beyond just Texas Exes alumni needs to include Career Services, Athletics, and a number of colleges within the university to ensure they all had some ownership in how their corner of the platform would come together.
Results
Convince & Convert crafted plans for each of their service areas to evolve to better match the needs uncovered in the survey. Texas Exes was proud to have the most successful higher ed launch Graduway has ever experienced and are using the insights gathered from this active and engaged group to develop and refine future plans for the organization and the university. Reached 8,000+ users in four months after virtual networking space rollout.

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