Social Media at Questrom School of Business: Introduction & Guidelines

In the Marketing & Communications department at Questrom School of Business, communication is the epicenter of everything we do. Consistency in our messaging is extremely important as we represent the school both internally and externally. Much of this communication happens through social media. Not only does it enable us to observe relevant news happening around the world, we can share the BU Questrom story with students, alumni, fans, followers, and parents. It also allows us to listen and respond in real-time to our audiences.

At its core, social media is about community. To help facilitate more collaboration, we are sharing an overview of our strategy while offering best practices and guidelines to ensure that our message is aligned across Questrom. This document is intended to be a starting point for departmental collaboration.

Questrom School of Business has an official presence on the following platforms:

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • LinkedIn
    • Instagram
    • YouTube

Along with these platforms, we also have a website that provides ample opportunities to incorporate content in various formats in order to relay information, generate prospects or promote the school and its activities.

WHAT DOES OUR SOCIAL MEDIA AIM TO DO?

Social media is an integral arm of Questrom’s marketing and communications strategy. Our goal is to best represent what Questrom stands for, in a strategic and consistent manner. We seek inspiration from the overarching vision of the school, which is to ‘create value for the world.’ To unify our messaging, we rely on our brand proposition—Daring convention to drive real world transformation. It is the most inspiring and compelling thing we can convey about our brand. It gives focus and direction to all communications and touch points. Read more about our brand here.

Our social media aims to:

  • Represent student life on campus: We wish to build aspiration around student life at Questrom for current and prospective students. Which is why we try to post timely and engaging content about campus life. The use of the hashtag #Questromlife encourages and engages our community to share content related to their life at Questrom.
  • Create awareness about the various programs and activities that we offer: Our communication is constantly geared towards raising awareness about the different programs offered and the related experiences that a student can engage in.
  • Showcase thought leadership: Research and innovation are at the forefront of Boston University and BU Questrom’s mission. Which is why we are constantly looking to share research stories based on faculty or student research. Our goal is to strengthen the school’s reputation as a top institute focused on research. Learn more about how we can promote faculty or student research.
  • Engage with current students and alumni.
  • Celebrate successful alumni stories: Our alumni are spread across the world and are, in many ways, the reason for our success. Sharing their success stories is a great way to keep alumni connected while inspiring current and prospective students. We also use content generated for Questrom, our alumni magazine.
  • Build the School’s reputation
  • Establish Questrom as an ethical, innovative, experiential, global institution


WHO IS OUR PRIMARY AUDIENCE?

Our social media platforms have audiences across the board. Students, alumni, executives, researchers, entrepreneurship/innovation enthusiasts, and even parents comprise our audiences. One social media platform may be favored over another by a specific group of audiences and so the demographics for each platform differ. As of September 2017, here is some information that represents the audiences of our various social media platforms.

Facebook

    • 12,000+ Likes
    • 41% Women
    • 58% Men
    • Maximum post reach for age groups: 45-54, 25-34
    • Maximum age group engaged: 25-34
    • Top Countries Engaged: United States, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Bangladesh

Twitter

    • 5200+ Followers
    • 53% Women
    • 47% Men
    • Top occupation types: Professional / technical workers, health services, white-collar workers

LinkedIn

    • 41,310 Followers
    • Top job functions of page visitors: 27.8% Seniors, 14.9% Managers, 12.2% Directors, 9.7% VP
    • Top countries: United States, India, United Kingdom, China, Norway

Instagram

    • 466 Followers
    • 65% Women
    • 35% Men
    • Top age range: 18-24, 25-34
    • Top locations: Boston, New York, LA
    • Most active on: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday

YouTube

    • 697 subscribers
    • Average view duration: 2:38
    • Total views: 338,339


TYPES OF CONTENT

At Questrom, we have embraced different formats of storytelling to appeal to our new and existing audiences. Social media is all about keeping the conversation going and the features and functionalities available on different platforms allow us to share interactive content to reach different types of audiences. Below is a list of some of the types of content that we use to promote Questrom:

1. Feature articles on our website: These articles can be long-form with interviews, photographs, quotes or short rewrites linking out to published papers and articles on other platforms

2. Facebook and Twitter links, videos or photo posts (both Facebook and Twitter support native videos)

3. Instagram posts and Instagram Stories (Instagram Stories vanish in a day but are great for live events and engaging with a younger audience)

4. LinkedIn posts, links, and videos (LinkedIn does not support native videos and so we use YouTube links here)

5. We host our videos on YouTube and sometimes post them natively to Facebook and Twitter too. Video content has grown exponentially on the web and our future plans include using more video content.

Looking for assistance in promoting an event, campaign, department or simply looking to share relevant information? Reach out to us and we’ll add your piece to our content calendar.


POST FREQUENCIES

It is our goal to have a balanced frequency of posts on our social media platforms. This is why, our feeds always attempt to reflect a mix of student life, thought leadership, and brand posts. Post frequencies also vary with different platforms as each platform has its own set of algorithms that dictate how frequently posts are visible to our followers. In addition, post frequencies are also dependent on the time of day that most of our followers are online.

While on Twitter we may publish 4-5 times a day, we try to limit our Facebook posts to 1-2 per day. With Instagram and LinkedIn, we typically choose to publish based on the content on hand.


SOCIAL MEDIA GENERAL GUIDELINES

While we try our best to work with departments to share their stories on the main Questrom social media platforms, we do understand that individual persons or departments need to maintain a social media presence as well. Here are a few guidelines to help manage your networks and communicate better on social media platforms:

  1. Assess the need for having an individual social media account:
    1. Ask yourself or your department whether content related to your department could fit in under the umbrella of a larger social media account?
    2. Think about your communication strategy and goals – what would you like to share, do you have an audience for it and what would you like to achieve through social media?
    3. Do you have dedicated time and resources to curate and create content and engage on social media?
  2. Define your goals. Are you promoting a campaign, sharing news, engaging with students?
  3. Be accurate, transparent and conversational. Be sensitive about University confidentiality, and remember that anything that is shared online is public.
  4. Identify your audience. This will help you create and choose content relevant to your primary target group.
  5. Content. Think about what kind of content you primarily want to share? Photos, videos, news pieces, articles, thought leadership? How will you go about putting this content together? Set a plan of action before proceeding.
  6. Delivery. Build out your network on social media platforms, be consistent and start posting regularly. Be active and share links to your social media platform with your group of audiences (share them on your personal network, request colleagues to comment, like, share, and add links to your email signature)
  7. Measure and Evaluate. All social media platforms provide analytics and measurement tools. After a period of time, look at which content is performing well for you and think about ways in which you can creatively communicate your next piece. Measure your success against the goals you had initially set out for yourself.
  8. Newsletters: Some departments may wish to use their existing databases to send newsletters. If your department has a regular churn of content (news, photographs, research updates) then it’s great to have an email strategy. Talk to us about it and we can work on a plan that works for you.


TELL US ABOUT IT

At MarCom, we are constantly looking to share more stories about Questrom. If you have an event, piece of news, or research that could be of interest to potential students, students, faculty, alumni, or the Boston University community feel free to 5

reach out to us. If you wish to include social media as a part of a larger campaign effort or marketing strategy, tell us about it and we can work towards a plan together. Fill out our project intake form to get started. You can also learn more about the Boston University Editorial Guidelines here.


OTHER RESOURCES: