Developing Your Social Media Strategy
Workshop these questions as a team.
- Who is my target audience?
- e. Current students, prospective students, parents, alumni, media, faculty, staff
- Differentiate your primary and secondary audiences.
- What is my purpose on social media?
- What do you hope to achieve on social media?
- e. Increased awareness among specific audience, student prospecting or recruiting, event attendance, reputation, constituent affinity.
- This will become the foundation of your strategy.
- What resources (time, funds, technology, talents) can my department commit?
- Do you have a staff member with time to devote to social media?
- We recommend budgeting one hour per day.
- Consider not only the posting schedule, but time to monitor and respond to your audience.
- Set aside an hour a month to dive into the analytics on your channels, see what worked, and benchmark your successes.
- Is your appointed staff member trained in communications and media?
- If not, are professional development funds available?
- Please connect with the UMC communications team for training and best practices.
- Where will you source your content?
- Do you have funds to commit to a social media management platform?
- UMC uses Sprout Social, and seats are $150/user/month. Contact UMC to learn more about using Sprout.
- If you will want to run contests or advertise campaigns, what is your budget?
- What defines “success” in my social media efforts?
- What are your key performance indicators (KPIs)?
- UMC looks at channel reach, growth, engagement rate (engagements/impressions)
- What channels should your department be on?
- Consider these questions when deciding whether you should create a new social media channel:
- What platforms does your target audience spend the most time on?
- What is the strength of each platform?
- What content do you have to share, and where will it best perform?
- Is there an audience interested in this content on this platform?
- Start small and sustainable, and scale in time as you grow your audience and flesh out your strategy.
- Loyola departments and organizations interested in starting a new social media channel are encouraged to reach out to UMC. Our social media team can make strategic recommendations based on audience, content, goals, and resources.
- Crawl, walk, run.