Final Copy Social Media Marketing Campaign

Social Media Marketing Plan The Office of Residence Life at James Madison University August 1, 2020- August 31, 2021

Created by Group 8 Ian Dworak, SiYao Li, Bonnie Nicholson, Ashley Rice Social Media Marketing Dr. Kelly Naletelich December 2, 2019

Table of Contents 1. Situation Analysis……………………………………………………………………………...3 A. Internal Environment…………………………………………………………………….3 B. External Environment……………………………………………………………………5 C. Social Media Audit/Social Media Presence…………………………………………..…11 D. SWOT Analysis………………………………………………………………………….17 2. Social Media Objectives and Budgeting………………………………………………………19 3. Target Audience Insights and Social Media Personas ………………………………………..22 4. Social Zones…………………………………………………………………………………...27 5. Creative Strategy………………………………………………………………………………28 A. Campaign 1……………………………………………………………………………....28 B. Campaign 2………………………………………………………………………………33 C. Campaign 3……………………………………………………………………………....37 D. Campaign 4……………………………………………………………………………....40 E. Campaign 5………………………………………………………………………………45 F. Campaign 6………………………………………………………………………………49 6. Activation Plan and Social Media Content Calendar…………………………………………52 7. Manage and Measure………………………………………………………………………….54 8. Works Cited...…………………………………………………………………………………55

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1. Situation Analysis A. Internal Environment James Madison University’s Office of Residence Life currently has many social media opportunities that exist in their overall marketing and media plan. Foremost, they have taglines that are reiterated throughout their various platforms in order to increase recall and awareness. This includes the taglines “Live Close. Live Safe. Live Supported. Live Engaged”, “You have the rest of your life to live off campus.”, and the hashtag “#DukesLIVEON.” Each of these taglines are a strong start in creating a memorable identity for the ORL social media brand, but could be further enhanced to increase engagement. Additionally, the Office of Residence Life has touched on a few other opportunities in their past campaigns such as the various Study Abroad advantages of living on campus and marketing the “On Campus Experience”. ORL has connections with other areas on campus that would also benefit from marketing these aspects on their social media platforms, such as the JMU Study Abroad accounts and the JMU official accounts. The ORL’s connections with these other teams at JMU creates opportunities for cross-promotions that could extend all parties’ reach. In order to create a more trustworthy presence, the ORL’s pages could also switch to “Business” Profiles that can then be verified by social media platforms. This would make other accounts more inclined to interact with the ORLs’. Another key part of the internal environment that the ORL will have to navigate is JMU’s overall corporate culture. James Madison University’s brand is what they promise to their students, their community, and themselves. JMU does a great job at preparing students to live purposeful lives, which is why their brand is so important to get this right. They state on their Brand Guide Webpage, “Now more than ever, it is essential that all of us dedicated to JMU

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speak with a powerful, collective voice around how Being the Change is a rallying call, and these brand guidelines express our common voice and show how to speak it.” In an effort to better match the brand, the ORL is attempting to shift their taglines to match the “Being the Change” brand. For example, “Live Close” would become “Living the Closest”. Essentially, this creates an opportunity for creating cohesive future taglines that connect with JMU’s overall identity. As long as they follow the “Doing the Thing” structure, other areas on campus can create their own hashtags or taglines that still align with the university’s brand guide. As a part of their corporate culture, JMU states that “Brands must connect with organizational mission, vision and values to be authentic and provide utility to the organization.” JMU’s Mission: We are a community committed to preparing students to be educated and enlightened citizens who lead productive and meaningful lives. JMU’s Vision: To be a national model for the engaged university, engaged with ideas and the world. JMU’s Values: Academic Quality, Community, Diversity, Excellence, Integrity, Student Focus. Everything ORL’s media accounts post or interact with should follow these guidelines. JMU also lays out ten strategic directions and themes that align with the corporate culture of the university. A few of them relate directly to the ORL, such as Engagement, Student life, and Access, Inclusion, & Diversity. Another important part of the internal analysis of the ORL, are their resources that can be directed and leveraged to social media activities. Alicia Lamb, the Social Media and Marketing Coordinator, works as a graphic designer and is in charge of pulling together content to create interesting and engaging posts. The ORL also utilizes an in-house videographer for particular events on campus. They are currently in the process of hiring a student Social Media Assistant

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that could be employed for further aid in marketing campaigns. They are working with a monetary budget of $1,500. Finally, JMU has a Media Relations and Social Media Publishing policy guide in place that the ORL social media platforms must adhere to. A brief summary of these guidelines, as they pertain to the ORL’s pages, are as follows: All media must pass through the Office of Communications, employees who have permission to communicate through media must complete formal approved training, and all media must be consistent with JMU’s strategic priorities and messages. More detailed policies and procedures can be found in this Policy 1508 on JMU’s website. B. External Environment James Madison University’s Office of Residence Life main customer is college students who attend JMU, specifically freshman and sophomores who have access to social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. As freshmen, students are required to live in university residence halls for the entirety of their first academic year at James Madison University. The ORL’s goal is to retain this group of students and to have them live on campus for longer than required. Upperclassmen students have the option to live off-campus in housing such as apartments and townhouses, but the ORL targets these students with the goal of showing them the benefits of living on campus. Whether they are a freshman or upperclassman at JMU, the parents of these students are a major customer for the ORL because they have a major role in the decision of where these students live. Another current customer group for the ORL are high school students that are interested in going to JMU. These high school students are important because the quality of on-campus housing will be one of those reasons that make or break their decision of choosing JMU as their

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final choice. Additionally, the parents of these high school students are customers because they play a major role in helping students decide which college to attend. All of these customers of ORL are users of social media, specifically platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat for the students, and Facebook for the parents. There are many competitors in this market, so we are going to narrow it down to offcampus life, apartments, and townhomes. One close competitor of the ORL is JMU’s department for off-campus life. JMU Off-Campus Life has both Facebook and Instagram accounts. However, they only have 738 followers on their Facebook account, and 300 followers on Instagram accounts which is much lower than the followers on JMU ORL’s accounts. The Facebook account of JMU Office of Residence Life has 3.88K followers, and the Instagram account of JMU Office of Residence Life has 1.66K followers. In addition, the engagements per post also have huge differences between each account. For the Facebook account, the JMU Office of Residence Lifes’ engagement per post is 30.2 with 5.5 posts per week; on the other hand, JMU off-campus life’s engagement per post is 3.1 with 4.5 posts per week. For the Instagram account, the JMU Office of Residence Lifes’ engagement per post is 66.3 with only 1.5 posts per week; on the other hand, JMU off-campus life’s engagement per post is 13.2 with 2.5 posts per week. So, even though JMU’s off-campus life department is a competitor for the ORL, they are not a strong one that they should be concerned about. In the chart on the following page, you can see how we categorized each complex in Harrisonburg into either a townhome or an apartment. Most of the apartment complex’s focus their social media efforts on Instagram and Facebook, like the ORL, but they tend to have more engagement from their followers. For example, The North 38 has 1.02K followers on their Instagram account, posting pictures relating to the life at The North 38. We used the data from

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the last 30 days data to create a report showing the engagement rate per post for their Instagram at 7.98%, which is higher than the engagement rate per post for JMU Office of Residence Life Instagram account at 4.04%. The Instagram account’s engagement total per post for The North 38 is 81.6 in the last 30 days. However, JMU Office of Residence Life Instagram account’s engagement total per post is only 43.8 in the last 30 days. The third competitor group are the townhomes in Harrisonburg which have more luxurious living standards compared to on campus life. Looking at Copper Beech Townhome for example, they have 0.87K followers for its Instagram account with mostly shows photos of what it's like to live there and give-away promotions We used the last 30 days data to show a report to see the engagement rate per post for The Copper Beech Townhome Instagram account which is 5.02%, making it higher than the engagement rate per post for JMU Office of Residence Life account at 4.04%. Copper’s Instagram account’s engagement total 10.1K with 23 posts in the last 30 days. However, JMU Office of Residence Life Instagram account’s engagement total is only 200 with 3 posts in the last 30 days. This analysis shows that Copper posted 20 more times than the ORL within the last 30 days, which was a common theme across all other townhome Instagram's, and apartments too. To keep up with their competitors, JMU Office of Residence Life needs to post more on their social media accounts. The non JMU off campus groups that we analyzed above, apartments and townhomes, pose a threat over the JMU ORL because they are not restricted by JMU policies. For example,

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North 38 and Copper Beach can host give-ways that come at a high dollar value like gift card giveaways and discounted rent, when the JMU ORL is restricted from doing so. The screenshot below shows one example of North 38 promoting a chance to win a $500 giveaway, something that the ORL could not do. This is a competitive advantage that the apartments and townhomes have over the ORL and hey will have to consider this when executing their social media strategies. In addition to these three main competitor groups, students also have the option to live in actual houses, like in the downtown area. We chose not to analyze this group because we did not see them as a threat to the ORL since there is a different process when it comes to renting a house from a private owner. In order to create a plan that will succeed in today’s social media climate, it is important to take a look at any current key trends. A major key trend in social media marketing is the use of stories, the disappearing videos or photos posted on individuals’ profiles. According to the consulting firm Block Party, stories are now growing 15 times faster than feed-based sharing. Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer showed that Stories are set to surpass feeds as the primary way people share things with their friends within the next year.

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Another major trend is the increase in the success of using Micro Influencers to promote a brand or product. According to a study by Dr. Jonah Berger (author of the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On), 82 percent of consumers were “highly likely” to follow a recommendation made by a micro-influencer. Micro Influencers are seen as more authentic and relatable, and more users care about what they have to say. They are also highly affordable, if not free. This idea could also transfer to the use of testimonials as a strong way to promote living on campus. Additionally, there has been a swift decline in organic reach and a need to spend more on paid advertising. This is largely due to the fact that younger audiences have learned how to quickly click through and swipe past different advertisements. Also, algorithms used by various social media platforms, such as Facebook, promote paid content before any unpaid posts. The key to getting past this is creating interesting and high-quality content targeted at specific focused groups, rather than a mass audience. Small amounts of money can be invested into promoting particular posts or pages toward these specific targets. The in-house videographer at the ORL will prove especially useful in generating this content. As a way to save money,

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repurposing well-performing ads can be a great way to maintain a high-quality media presence with a smaller budget. Source: Ras. Why you should not solely rely on Facebook organic reach for your business. Finally, the popularity of the social media platform TikTok has skyrocketed in the past year. According to a definition by Business Insider, TikTok acts as a social network, where users share videos covering a wide range of categories, from lip syncing to comedic skits to viral challenges. TikTok has more than 1 billion all-time downloads. In mid-September of 2019 it rose to the number one free non-gaming app in the US. Additionally, the app’s users are in the age range of many current and incoming college students.

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C. Social Media Audit/Social Media Presence The Office of Residence Life is required to follow James Madison University Identity System Standards for communication and marketing content that they create to ensure that the University is maintaining a consistent institutional image. JMU’s personality guides their tone of voice and style to authentically reflects their core values. When speaking to current students, they use an ethical, involved, intentional, curious and creative voice. They make sure to use an active voice and relate messages back to the values of engagement, impact and citizenship while also showing excitement and fun. They share content all the way from words of wisdom, staff appreciation, on campus housing information, and campus related events. Focusing on the ORL’s Facebook and Instagram social media accounts, their profile photos show the JMU logo with the Residence Life underneath, in purple. Both profile descriptions highlight the foundation of on campus living: live safe, live supported, live close, and live engaged. Following JMU photography guidelines, they post photos of students engaging and interacting to represent the energy of the Madison Experience. Dworak, Li, Nicholson, Rice

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They also show some location shots to evoke nostalgia by highlighting the beauty of the campus. They maintain the purple, gold, and white color scheme. They are straightforward with their captions and only say the most necessary information. With that being said, the information in the captions is still engaging through the use of quotes and asking questions. They maintain a balance between being approachable and fun for students, while also remaining professional. They limit the use of exclamation points and emojis and instead focus on using hashtags that include “JMU” or other specific JMU elements to enhance their posts. Specifically, they use the hashtags “#DukesLiveSafe #DukesLiveClose #DukesLiveSupported #DukesLIVEON” often to highlight the key reasons to live on campus. They further use these key points to create taglines by embracing the “doing the thing” construct”. For example, turning the point “Live Close” into “Living the Closest”. When looking on the official JMU social media directory, only Facebook and Twitter are linked, which is ironic because Instagram is one of their main platforms, but it is missing. Additionally, their website currently has their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram profiles linked, but only posts of Tweets are shown on the site. On Instagram, they portray themselves as a professional account, but they do not have a business Instagram and they need to switch to one because it shows that they are located in a different area than they really are, and they should show their followers validation. On the ORL’s Facebook “about” page, they have all of their handles listed, but only a clickable

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link to their website and Instagram, the others are not click-able. While they don’t directly promote their social media accounts in posts, they do include their handles and website URL at the bottom of their graphics. They have links to all of their social media accounts in their Twitter bio and should use that on their other accounts that are more popular, like Instagram. Lastly, even though YouTube is not a popular platform for the ORL, their YouTube channel doesn’t pop up if you search it in the YouTube search bar. This could be an issue for people who are interested in the channel but are not using a direct link. Continuing to focus on the ORL’s Facebook and Instagram accounts, about 80% of the people who follow and like these two pages are females, and only 20% are males. JMU Office of Residence Life Facebook page currently has about 3.88K followers and 3.66K likes. The majority of people who follow, like, or engage with the ORL Facebook page are between the ages of 18 to 24 or 45 to 54. These ages were expected because they correspond to the age of JMU’s incoming students, current students, and parents. In the graph below, the peaks show that the amount of people reacting to Facebook's content is highest between April to May and August to September. These are the months of the year that students receive their admission status and then once accepted, when the school year begins, so they are most likely excited about moving to JMU and interacting with the page more during these times.

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The ORL is getting people to visit their Homepage, but they are struggling to get people to continue further down their page and look specifically at posts, photos, videos, or even the about tab. When they do get fans to view content, they reach the most people and get the greatest engagement with photos and videos, reaching about 2,300 people, on average. Most followers are online each day of the week, ranging from all times of the day. They have posted 265 times since October of last year, getting 9,300 engagements. These engagements included 7.2K reactions, 828 shares, and 1.3K comments. The ORL’s Instagram only has 1.66K followers, the majority between the ages 18 to 24 and 45 to 54, similar to Facebook. They receive about 180 profile visits and actions taken on this account per week. Most people interact with their account on Tuesdays and Fridays throughout the week, this might be something to take advantage of. They have published 130 posts since October of last year, 100 less posts than their Facebook account. These posts generated 4.5K engagements, 4.4K of those being likes and 65 as comments. Video views, by themselves, have generated 11K views, and are most likely generated by the testimonial videos from previous RA’s who are speaking about “why they became an RA”, this is an area to explore further. You can see in these two graphs that, both Facebook and Instagram received the most engagements in August of last year. On August the 20th of 2019, JMU’s residence halls opened for freshmen, which is likely why there is such a large peak around this time. The ORL should

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take advantage of these peak months like April, May, September, and especially August, to promote their content and reach a larger audience. Additionally, the ORL should increase the number of posts on these platforms throughout the year, on a weekly basis, to increase their overall brand awareness.

It is also important to take a look at the conversation analysis for ORL’s accounts. This chart shows the percentages for positive, neutral, and negative posts from April 2, 2013 through today (October 31, 2019) across the ORL’s social media accounts. Although it's great that they have 0 negative posts, only 39% of their posts are positive which is simply not enough. This goes to show that the ORL has a lot of room for improvement to make their overall social media presence more positive, and not just informational because that is not going to hold the audience's attention.

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As mentioned earlier, they share content all the way from words of wisdom, staff appreciation, on campus housing information, and campus related events. But, they mostly post about events that are happening on campus, specifically in the residence halls that are loaded with informational graphics. They also focus on ways to get involved with ORL like becoming an RA oe and ORL facilities assistant. Almost all of their posts are announcements packed with information and have fairly little chances for engagement from their audience, which is most likely why neutral has the highest percentage of 61%. They share a few videos that include testimonials from RA’s which appeal to the audience's emotions. Creating more posts like these could help them generate a more positive rating overall. Majority of the people who are talking about ORL that have questions about events or are people currently affiliated with the organization on campus. Looking at the graphs to the left, when they do get mentions on Instagram, they are mostly positive, with no negative messages. On Facebook, they have a majority of neutral messages, with quite a few negative ones as well. While there aren’t many comments on their posts in general when someone does post a question about something they do respond within a timely manner. They Recently who tweeted at them because they were

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having problems with their WIFI and they directed them to the right people to contact. ORL’s most used hashtags are #jmureslife, #jmu, and #DukesLIVEON, #DukesLiveSupported, #DukesLiveEngaged are all part of their most recent posts. The ORL would benefit from more routine positive interaction with their social media audience.

D. SWOT Analysis The JMU’S ORL strengths include the strong brand presence that JMU has gained from their community of students and Alumni. As mentioned earlier, JMU does a great job at preparing students to live purposeful lives, which is why their brand lives on through Alumni. They have a strong core mission, vision, and values which incorporate the idea that, “Now more than ever, it is essential that all of us dedicated to JMU speak with a powerful, collective voice around how Being the Change is a rallying call…” These ideals make JMU and the ORL stand out as a unique, strong, and impactful university and organization. The ORL’s taglines are another strength that differentiates them from competition because they are reiterated throughout their various platforms in order to increase recall and awareness. These taglines include; “Live Close. Live Safe. Live Supported. Live Engaged”, “You have the rest of your life to live off campus.”, and the hashtag “#DukesLIVEON.” These taglines help to create a memorable identity for the ORL social media brand. With the ORL’s strengths in mind, they still have many weaknesses and room for improvement for their social media brand presence. To begin, they market themselves as a professional department, yet they do not have a validated business Instagram profile which takes away from their attempted professional persona. Additionally, because they have to abide by

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JMU guidelines, they are limited in posts that could show a more entertaining personality for their brand. Compared to their competitors, they have a much smaller marketing budget which limits their promotions. They don't take advantage of giving incentives to interact with their account like some of their competitors do successfully. Also, compared to competitors, they have a significantly lower amount of times they post each week. Lastly, the ORL does not have any analytics platform that they use to measure and analyze their metrics, failures, and successes so that they know what's working and what's not working. These are all areas that the ORL needs to make better if they want to enhance their social media brand presence. Many of the ORL’s opportunities stem from the trends that we analyzed earlier, including the use of stories as the primary way people share things with their friends within the next year. They should focus on posting stories via their social media profiles to reach a larger audience since this method is becoming the most popular. They should also take advantage of the increase in the success of using Micro Influencers to promote a brand or product. Since Micro Influencers are seen as most authentic and relatable influencer and are highly affordable, they should use Harrisonburg specific micro influencers to promote living on campus. With the increase in the need for paid advertising on social media, repurposing well-performing ads can be a great way to maintain a high-quality media presence with a smaller budget. Overall, the ORL has a great opportunity to grow their Facebook and Instagram followers and reach a larger audience with social media on the rise. But, to put the ORL over the top, they should take advantage of the new and trendy platform, Tik Tok. Overlooking the use of this platform would be a missed opportunity for them. As the number of JMU students rise along with the addition of new dorms, the ORL has a lot of room for growth if they take advantage of these opportunities!

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When executing this social media marketing campaign, it is important that the ORL is aware of the potential threats they face. These external threats are dominated by the off-campus apartments and townhouses that we outlined earlier. These places offer students more amenities and freedom than on campus facilities, which is a major plus in the student's decision making process. Also, these competitors have much larger budgets for events and promotions that they can attract students with, like discounted rent deals. Lastly, they have more followers and engagement via their social media accounts and the ORL needs to change their strategy if they want to remain competitive in this market. 2.

Social Media Objectives and Budgeting

Objective One: Increase followers on @jmureslife Instagram by 25% by using more engaging content targeted toward students, such as Instagram Stories, sweepstakes, testimonials, and competitions by August 2021 in order to increase awareness of the benefits of living on campus. S: Increase followers on @jmureslife Instagram, currently at 1,651. M: 25%, or 413 people. A: Use more engaging content targeted toward students, such as Instagram stories and microinfluencers. R: 4,668 Freshmen enrolled at JMU in the Fall, meaning we would only have to capture around 9% of the freshmen class to reach this goal. T: August 2021, assuming our campaign lasts from August 2020-2021. Objective Two: Increase engagement on @jmureslife Instagram by 25% through likes, views, and comments by using more engaging content such as Instagram stories, sweepstakes, testimonials, and competitions by August 2021 in order to increase the awareness of the benefits of living on campus.

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S: Increase total engagement on @jmureslife Instagram through likes, views, and comments. M: By 25%, or 1,125 engagements, specifically 1,100 likes and 16 comments, making total engagement for Instagram at 5,625. A: Use more engaging content targeted toward students, such as Instagram stories and microinfluencers. R: Throughout the last year, the @jmureslife posts generated 4.5K engagements, 4.4K of those being likes and 65 as comments making an increase of 25% a reasonable objective. T: By the end of our yearlong campaign, August 2020-2021. Objective Three: Increase followers on @jmureslife Facebook by 25% by using more engaging content targeted toward JMU parents, such as stories and polls, by August 2021 in order to increase awareness of the benefits of living on campus. S: Increase followers on @jmureslife Facebook, currently 3,880. M: 25%, or 970 people. A: Use more engaging content targeted towards parents, such as stories, informative posts, sweepstakes, etc. R: Current freshman + incoming freshmen parents gives us thousands of potential followers. T: August 2021, assuming our campaign lasts from August 2020-2021. Objective Four: Increase engagement on the ORL Facebook page through reactions, views, comments, and shares by 25% to 11,625 total engagements throughout the campaign year, August 2020-2021. S: Increase engagement on the ORL Facebook page through reactions, views, comments, and shares by 25%.

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M: Increase by 1,800 reactions, 575 views, 325 comments and 207 shares. A: Use more engaging content targeted towards parents, such as stories, informative posts, sweepstakes, etc. R: The page posted 265 times in the last year getting 9,300 engagements. These engagements included 7.2K reactions, 828 shares, and 1.3K comments. Each post reaches about 2,300 on average. The page currently has 3,880 followers making this a realistic goal. T: By August 2021. Objective Five: Increase the number of students that sign up to live on campus in order to fill the available beds for upperclassmen (1,979 beds) by using content that promotes incentives and activities in current dorms that will make living on campus seem essential to the college experience, by the Fall 2021 semester. S: Increase the number of students who sign up to live on campus for a second year by filling the available beds for upperclassmen. M: 1,979 students: Currently 1,857 upper class students live on campus. There are 1,979 beds available for upperclassmen. This means that about 94% of the spots for upperclassmen are currently full so our goal would need to be just a 122 student increase. This will be measured using a survey attached to each on-campus lease that asks students to check or write-in why they chose to live on campus. The ORL social media campaigns that have this as an objective will be listed as specific options. A: Use content that promotes incentives and activities in their current dorms to make the experience of living on campus more fun now. Basically, make the freshmen experience so good that they’ll be dying to stay on campus.

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R: We believe a 6% increase would be reasonable, especially considering that would only be another 122 students. Additionally, based on recent trends, the incoming freshmen classes are becoming larger and larger each year making it even more of a realistic possibility. T: Before the Fall 2021 semester. Objective Six: Create a ORL TikTok account that gains 1,000 users throughout our yearlong campaign through funny and relatable content that targets our incoming freshman audience by August 2021. S: Create a brand new ORL account on TikTok that can be used to cross-promote other platforms and create a larger sense of community within students who live on campus. M: Gain a follower base of at least 1,000 users who are members of our target audiences. A: Use content that is entertaining, funny, and relatable to students about different aspects of living on campus. This will be a more creative outlet for the ORL social media accounts that can also be integrated into other platforms to cross-promote different events and information. R: This is a new and trending platform that appeals to our target audience of current high school students/incoming freshman so 1,000 followers should be easily obtained within the year. T: By the end of our yearlong campaign in August 2021. 3. Target Audience Insights and Social Media Personas The segments we are targeting for the Office of Residence Life account are incoming JMU freshmen, current JMU freshmen, and the parents of those JMU students. This is because one of our main objectives is to increase the number of students who choose to sign up to live on campus for a second year. We want to increase engagement with them early on and influence their parents as well since they often pay for students’ housing. By promoting the campaigns to students before and during their first year, they will already be in the mindset that living on-

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campus is preferable early on. Parents are also a critical target audience because they often influence their children's’ decisions and support them financially. Incoming JMU Freshmen, or “Baby Dukes”, use social media to stay connected with their friends and family. They use platforms like Instagram and Snapchat to share videos and photos to keep others updated on their lives. More recently, TikTok has become popular as a large source of entertainment for current high school students. This targeted segment uses social media to get inspired, be validated by others, seem vulnerable and approachable, and to feed their own ego. For this persona, the most important thing would be the validation that they chose the right university and getting them excited for the upcoming year. This could be shown on social media through interactive stories and testimonials on Instagram and Snapchat, and entertaining videos on TikTok.

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Current JMU Freshmen, or “Distinguished Dukes” use social media to stay connected with their peers at school and their friends and family from home. They use platforms like Instagram and Snapchat to share videos and photos to keep others updated on their lives. They also utilize Facebook to stay involved with campus events and clubs. This targeted segment uses social media for vanity and validation from others. For this persona, the most important thing would be creating and maintaining an affinity for other students and the university itself. This could be shown on social media through interactive stories, competitions, and sweepstakes on Instagram and Snapchat. More informative content would also be welcomed on Facebook.

Incoming and current freshmen mostly live in the social community, social publishing, and social entertainment zones. College students use popular social media networks to find out information about current events, meet new friends and stay up to date on trends and activities

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happening both on and off campus (McCollum, 2017). They go online for conversation, collaboration, and community - to build relationships and create an environment for shared participation. They also publish and disseminate content, especially with the rise of microinfluencers and TikTok usage. Finally, they use social media to play, mostly for identity and frivolity. This group grew up with social media heavily influencing their lives and their social status. The 2017 Social Admissions Report, developed by Chegg, Target X, and the National Research Center for College & University Admissions (NRCCUA), found that two in five students use social media to decide which school to attend. This shows the impact social media has on students’ decisions in college. Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, shares that 76 percent of teens use Instagram, 75 percent use Snapchat, 66 percent use Facebook, and 47 percent use Twitter (Turner, 2017). Meaning these should be the platforms where our main focus lies. Finally, JMU parents, or “Duke Dads (or moms)”, use social media to stay updated and involved with their children's lives as well as post for their friends. A 2016 Pew Research Center study on demographics of mobile devices showed 88 percent of adults ages 30 to 49 and 74 percent of adults ages 50 to 64 own smartphones (Hoffman, 2017). They use platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn to stay connected with old friends and view posts that could pertain to their children. Because a lot of parents simply Google the information they need, optimized links and resources on the JMU website to any social media would prove especially beneficial. This targeted segment uses social media for their own personal utility and to acknowledge relationships with others. For this persona, the most important thing would be their curiosity about their children in college and validation from their older peers. This could be done through

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engaging, yet informative, posts and polls on Facebook and LinkedIn. Optimizing social media for Google searches would also help reach more JMU parents. JMU parents are dispersed fairly evenly throughout the social media zones because they are not too familiar with any one. JMU parents go online for conversation and community. They also publish a lot of posts and photos as content. They are more active with commerce because they are more likely to click on online banner advertisements. Finally, they also heavily use social entertainment applications and games, such as those integrated in Facebook. Another 2016 Pew study showed that Facebook is the most popular platform for adults and is used by 88 percent of adults 18 to 29, 79 percent of adults 30 to 49 and 61 percent of adults 50 to 64 (Hoffman, 2017). Social media is still relatively new for them so content needs to be simple yet engaging.

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4. Social Zones Considering our objectives, budget, and overall direct strategy and segment insights, the social community zone is our most important one for this campaign. Our objectives focus on increasing awareness and engagement via social media, with one focused on actually generated advocacy. So, we want our content to result in sharing, socializing, and conversing throughout the JMU community. JMU has a strong sense of community that is evident through “Dukes holding doors”, school spirit, football games, etc. and ORL needs to take advantage of this and recreate this community online. Specifically, this community could be built through online member online groups to facilitate conversation and collaboration, like a Facebook group for parents with kids who live on campus. Also, the ORL could create a brand mascot to help the brand stay in character, like the Duke Dog JMU mascot. It is important to have a large presence in this zone to encourage students to want to stay on campus in order to stay involved and connected and engaged, online and on campus. We also wanted to incorporate the social entertainment zone because people love to compete with others to win prizes, especially our Baby Duke and Distinguished Duke audiences. We plan to use the social entertainment zone as support with our sweepstakes and competitions. We will use our social platforms to announce these events and allow participants to post their work and cast their votes to determine winners for these competitions. We can use leaderboards to show those who leads the competition and even give out achievement badges to the winners of the competitions and sweepstakes for all to see.

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5. Creative Strategy A. Campaign 1

These would be similar for Facebook, as described below. The link below shows an example video that could be used. If you have issues opening the video, please contact us. Tran's Actual Video Recording Campaign title:

Student Stories

Objective(s) met with this campaign:

Primary Objectives Objective One: Increase followers on @jmureslife Instagram by 25% by using more engaging content targeted toward students, such as Instagram Stories, sweepstakes, testimonials, and competitions by August 2021 in order to increase awareness of the benefits of living on campus. Objective Two: Increase engagement on @jmureslife Instagram by 25% through likes, views, and comments by using more engaging content such as Instagram stories, sweepstakes, testimonials, and competitions by August

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2021 in order to increase the awareness of the benefits of living on campus. Objective Three: Increase followers on @jmureslife Facebook by 25% by using more engaging content targeted toward JMU parents, such as stories and polls, by August 2021 in order to increase awareness of the benefits of living on campus. Objective Four: Increase engagement on the ORL Facebook page through reactions, views, comments, and shares by 25% to 11,625 total engagements throughout the campaign year, August 2020-2021. Secondary Objective Objective Five: Increase the number of students that sign up to live on campus in order to fill the available beds for upperclassmen (1,979 beds) by using content that promotes incentives and activities in current dorms that will make living on campus seem essential to the college experience, by the Fall 2021 semester. What stage of the sales funnel does this campaign target (i.e., awareness, evaluation, acquisition, engagement, or advocacy)?

Evaluation, Engagement and Acquisition

When will the campaign 2-3 new testimonials a month, August 2020-2021 run (i.e., month(s), week(s), etc.)? What target audience(s) does the campaign appeal to?

Baby Duke, Distinguished Duke, and Duke Dad

Describe the overall campaign and experience:

We will take advantage of Instagram and Facebook stories by posting testimonial videos of JMU students speaking about “Why they love/loved living on campus” and “Their favorite parts about living on campus”. We will choose students of all ages and backgrounds to highlight the many benefits of living on campus including things like

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convenience engagement, and safety for all students. Rather than formally interviewing them, we will have them take selfie videos that make the content more relatable, laid back, and believable. To kick this campaign off with a bang, we would use Trang Truong, a JMU senior who lived in Weaver hall his freshman year and became an RA his sophomore year to share his favorite things about living on campus. Tran has a strong social media presence, with 2.9K followers on Instagram and 2.3K friends on Facebook, which classifies him as a micro influencer. Tran posts inspirational videos about working out, makeup, and mental motivation and really has a positive impact on the JMU community. He is the perfect student to earn initial engagement on the campaign. We would post his video on Instagram and Facebook pages stories initially, and then repost it onto the profile pages as an actual post to have a more permanent post that people can look at after the story is gone. Tran could then have the option to post on his personal social media accounts to promote the video he created and earn the ORL more engagement. Throughout the campaign we will nominate students and accept volunteers to share their own experiences and tell their story, these can be done as individuals or with groups. For example, if a group of suite-mates want to send in a video they created together, we would love that! Inspiration for this campaign:

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This campaign was inspired by the success of storytelling in marketing. Through research, we found that the ORL already has video testimonials from students who are or have been RA’s in the past. During these videos, they are dressed professionally and formally asked to respond to the question “Why did you become an RA?”. These videos generate more engagement than their other posts through comments because people are tagging each other to watch their friend who speaks in the video. Using this information, we created this campaign to build off that engagement with more relatable content that appeals to the emotions of our target audience through storytelling. As mentioned earlier, rather than formally interviewing them,

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we will have them take selfie videos that make the content more relatable, laid back, and believable. Campaign message (i.e., “Students who live on campus have once-in-a-lifetime single minded thought that memories that I (my child) should take advantage of while I you want to elicit from your (they) have the chance.” target audience(s): Theme(s)/tone of voice to use with justification:

Themes include storytelling and inspiration. The tone of voice for the videos include relatability, excitement, conversational content, and enthusiasm.

Creative appeal:

An overall emotional appeal through impactful videos that generate action. Social appeal because people will want to feel included in the fun of living on campus. Youth appeal because you only get this opportunity once-in-a-lifetime.

How will you make your audience care and what will you make them care about (i.e., emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically; hint: think about the Ted Talk by Andrew Stanton)?

We will make our audience care by appealing to their emotions through content that is inspiring and shows why living on campus is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The ORLs “why” is not about making money, but about creating a fun and safe community for JMU students to thrive. We will showcase this to get our audience to care.

Target audience(s) will find it via (i.e., what platform(s) will you use?):

We would post these videos on Instagram and Facebook pages stories initially, and then repost it onto the profile pages as actual posts to have a more permanent post that people can look at after the story is gone.

They will share and engage with the content/experience because:

They will share and engage with these videos because they know the students speaking and want to give them a shoutout or they may have a similar experience to the one told and want to make that known. The JMU network is strong and large, people will share because of the ties they have with one another. Duke Dad’s will engage with the content as well because they video may be of their child, or relate to their child in some way. Baby Duke’s will engage with the content because they are excited to experience these things once they come to JMU!

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They may not share or They may not engage with these videos because they don't engage with the know the student in the video or don’t connect to the story content/experience because: told. Or, they may not ever see the video because they do not follow the ORL Instagram and Facebook accounts and the video was not reported anywhere else. Resources required:

Students who accept the nomination/volunteer and are willing to share their stories and their personal phone cameras to create videos.

Key people, organizations, and/or influencers:

Tran Troung to begin, other JMU micro influencers, and JMU students to share their stories, and Alicia to post.

Will you use any hashtags?

We will use the hashtags ORL uses currently like: #DukesLiveSafe #DukesLiveClose #DukesLiveSupported #DukesLIVEON and #JMU. Additionally, this campaign will adopt the new hashtag of #Once-In-A-LifeTime.

Cost:

No costs for this campaign.

Metrics to measure success (make sure these metrics measure the objective(s) listed above):

For objectives one and three, increasing followers on Instagram and Facebook by 25%, we will measure the number of followers at the end of our yearlong campaign to see if we were successful or not. For objectives two and four, increasing engagement on Instagram and Facebook by 25%, we will measure likes, views, and comments on Instagram. To measure engagement on Facebook, we will use reactions, views, comments, and shares as our metrics. We can measure engagement for each video post throughout and see what is working and what isn't and adjust our plan, but we will use overall engagement metrics to measure the success at the end of August 2021. Lastly, we plan to measure our secondary objective, using a survey attached to each on-campus lease that asks students to check or write-in why they chose to live on campus. The Student Stories social media campaign will be listed specifically as an option.

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B. Campaign 2

Campaign title:

Hall Competitions

Objective(s) met with this campaign:

Primary Objectives: Objective One: Increase followers on @jmureslife Instagram by 25% by using more engaging content targeted toward students, such as Instagram Stories, sweepstakes, testimonials, and competitions by August 2021 in order to increase awareness of the benefits of living on campus. Objective Two: Increase engagement on @jmureslife Instagram by 25% through likes, views, and comments by using more engaging content such as Instagram stories, sweepstakes, testimonials, and competitions by August 2021 in order to increase the awareness of the benefits of living on campus. Secondary Objectives: Objective Five: Increase the number of students that sign up to live on campus in order to fill the available beds for upperclassmen (1,979 beds) by using content that promotes incentives and activities in current dorms that will make

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living on campus seem essential to the college experience, by the Fall 2021 semester. What stage of the sales funnel does this campaign target (i.e., awareness, evaluation, acquisition, engagement, or advocacy)?

Engagement and Acquisition

When will the campaign Three main competitions throughout the Academic year run (i.e., month(s), week(s), (August 2020 - May 2021). Specifically, the campaign will etc.)? last for one week during September with a Back to School theme, one week in January with a New Year's theme, and one week in April with a Spring theme. What target audience(s) does the campaign appeal to?

Baby Duke and Distinguished Duke

Describe the overall campaign and experience:

This campaign involves creating competitions between different on-campus living Halls. Three times an academic year, ORL will put on a different competition that aligns with the seasons or other on-campus events that will have each hall team up to compete. These competitions include decorating the common room for a specific season or event to facilitate creativity and involvement by the residents. Students can vote on their favorite hall decorations through polls on Instagram Stories that show pictures of how the halls are decorated. The winners would receive an inexpensive yet exciting incentive like pizza or campus cookies for their hall. This encourages more students to follow and engage with the ORL Instagram. Additionally, competition fosters a greater sense of community within on-campus residents, encouraging them to want to remain on-campus the next year, helping us reach our fifth objective.

Inspiration for this campaign:

In the past, the JMU Alumni Association has put on a banner contest for each Freshmen hall on campus. We want to expand on this to include recurring competitions sponsored by ORL to increase a sense of community and

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engagement with on-campus halls. Additionally, students love promotions, especially when it involves free food! Campaign message (i.e., single minded thought that you want to elicit from your target audience(s):

“JMU on-campus housing is an engaging community with frequent fun activities and events.”

Theme(s)/tone of voice to use with justification:

Exciting, competitive, funny

Creative appeal:

The creative appeal for this campaign is to foster a sense of community within those that live on-campus and the residents different halls. Competition fosters trust among teammates and will make residents’ identities as on-campus students' part of their overall social identities as well.

How will you make your audience care and what will you make them care about (i.e., emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically; hint: think about the Ted Talk by Andrew Stanton)?

The audience will care emotionally because so many of their peers will be involved and they will want to help out their “teammates” (hallmates). Additionally, the food incentives will increase the drive to participate since there is a desired reward for winning.

Target audience(s) will find it via (i.e., what platform(s) This will be heavily promoted on Instagram since that is where most of our target audiences spend their time. will you use?): Additionally, Instagram includes the “poll” feature on stories that will allow students to vote on their favorite decorations. They will share and engage with the content/experience because:

There is an enticing incentive to winning the competition. Their friends and peers will also be participating so fear of missing out will work in our favor.

They may not share or engage with the content/experience because:

The ORL Instagram account is not currently very wellknown so people who do not follow it will not be able to participate.

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Resources required:

Instagram, incentives

Key people, organizations, and/or influencers:

Room Advisors, ORL Dorm Staff, Current on-campus freshmen

Will you use any hashtags?

#DukesliveON #LiveEngaged

Cost:

Prize: Pizza or Campus Cookies per event (3 events) 25 large pizzas at $7 each with large order coupon = $175 200 traditional cookies with large order coupon = $180 At least $540

Metrics to measure success (make sure these metrics measure the objective(s) listed above):

We will measure the number of followers on the ORL Instagram page at the start of the campaign, 24 hours following each post during the campaign, and throughout the overall timeline of the campaign to see how the competition and each post affects the followers. We will also use a Hootsuite account to measure engagement with each post - likes, views, votes, and comments. We can measure engagement for each post throughout and see what is working and what isn't and adjust our plan, but we will use overall engagement metrics to measure the success at the end of August 2021. Our secondary objective is to use the positive response from this campaign to entice more students to live oncampus. This will be measured using a survey attached to each on-campus lease that asks students to check or write-in why they chose to live on campus. The Hall competition social media campaign will be listed specifically as an option to measure the success of the campaign.

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C. Campaign 3

Campaign title:

Facebook Group for Parents

Objective(s) met with this campaign:

Objective Four: Increase engagement on the ORL Facebook page through reactions, views, comments, and shares by 25% to 11,625 total engagements throughout the campaign year, August 2020-2021. Objective Five: Increase the number of students that sign up to live on campus in order to fill the available beds for upperclassmen (1,979 beds) by using content that promotes incentives and activities in current dorms that will make living on campus seem essential to the college experience, by the Fall 2021 semester.

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What stage of the sales funnel does this campaign target (i.e., awareness, evaluation, acquisition, engagement, or advocacy)?

This campaign mostly targets the advocacy part of the sales funnel because parents of students living on campus can talk to each other about their child’s experience.

When will the campaign This group will be run year-round with new parents being run (i.e., month(s), week(s), invited to join the group from posts on our Facebook page. etc.)? What target audience(s) does the campaign appeal to?

Duke Dad

Describe the overall campaign and experience:

The campaign will be promoted on our Facebook page with posts inviting parents to join the group to get more information about their child's on-campus experience. It will be a very interactive experience with parents interacting with us and other parents.

Inspiration for this campaign:

The inspiration for this came from Ian’s internship this past year where he worked in an apartment building and they had a Facebook group for people who lived there. Also, JMU students have a group Facebook page for easy communication and we wanted this same opportunity for parents.

Campaign message (i.e., The message of this campaign will be “Wow, I am getting single minded thought that great advice from other JMU parents whose situation is you want to elicit from your very similar to mine and my children.” target audience(s): Theme(s)/tone of voice to use with justification:

The tone of this campaign will be mostly serious because it can be a place where parents get their questions answered, share their experiences, and interact with ORL in a professional way.

Creative appeal:

The appeal of this campaign will focus on the building of a stronger community within the on-campus parent network.

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How will you make your audience care and what will you make them care about (i.e., emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically; hint: think about the Ted Talk by Andrew Stanton)? Target audience(s) will find it via (i.e., what platform(s) will you use?):

They will share and engage with the content/experience because:

The audience will care because they will enjoy engaging with other parents and they will feel better knowing they have a place to go with any questions. It will make them care about the sense of community around their children and the place they live.

This campaign will be run on Facebook because most of our target market is found on here more than any other platform, so it will have the most impressions with the target market. They will share and engage with the content because they will want to be active in their child’s living experience and know things that are going on in their hall and interact with hallmate and roommate parents.

They may not share or They may not share or engage with the content because engage with the they might not be active on Facebook and don’t have any content/experience because: questions because they have another child that has gone here. Resources required:

Facebook account and promotional posts for the group

Key people, organizations, and/or influencers:

Someone to monitor the group activity and answer questions.

Will you use any hashtags?

#OnCampusParents

Cost:

No costs for this campaign.

Metrics to measure success (make sure these metrics measure the objective(s) listed above):

To measure objective number three, we are going to see how many people like our Facebook page and are in the Facebook group. This will show how many people are interacting with both of our accounts. To measure objective number five, we will put a question on the application to live on campus asking the student if

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their parents are part of the group and for the guarantor/parent asking if they are a part of the group.

D. Campaign 4

Campaign title:

Dorm of the Week

Objective(s) met with this campaign:

Primary Objectives: Objective One: Increase followers on @jmureslife Instagram by 25% by using more engaging content targeted toward students, such as Instagram Stories, sweepstakes, testimonials, and competitions by August 2021 in order to increase awareness of the benefits of living on campus. Objective Two: Increase engagement on @jmureslife Instagram by 25% through likes, views, and comments by using more engaging content such as Instagram stories, sweepstakes, testimonials, and competitions by August 2021 in order to increase the awareness of the benefits of living on campus. Secondary Objective:

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Objective Five: Increase the number of students that sign up to live on campus in order to fill the available beds for upperclassmen (1,979 beds) by using content that promotes incentives and activities in current dorms that will make living on campus seem essential to the college experience, by the Fall 2021 semester. What stage of the sales funnel does this campaign target (i.e., awareness, evaluation, acquisition, engagement, or advocacy)?

Engagement and Acquisition

When will the campaign Since there are 28 dorms, we will run the campaign over 28 run (i.e., month(s), week(s), weeks starting the first week in September once the etc.)? students are back on campus through the end of November. We will not post throughout December because of Christmas break and begin again in January through April, taking advantage of the most popular months that ORL has engagement with their accounts. What target audience(s) does the campaign appeal to?

Baby Duke and Distinguished Duke

Describe the overall campaign and experience:

Each dorm would have a week dedicated to being all about them. To make things simple, we would go in alphabetical order and begin the week on Monday with a humorous Instagram post listing characteristic of the dorm as if it were a person. For Example, Weaver Hall, characteristics could include: Stays up way too late, always sets the fire alarm off by burning popcorn, loves the dessert bar from Dhall and enjoys listening to the roar of Interstate 81 as they study. Each dorms characteristic would be unique, funny, and relatable to students who live there or knows someone who did. This would generate conversation around the ORL Instagram. Additionally, the ORL should generate a poll on their story on Wednesdays for each week asking, “What is your favorite part about living in this dorm?” We will leave the answers open so that students aren't limited to choosing

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an option but can be creative and personable with their responses. Once students have submitted responses, Alicia would screenshot and repost these on the accounts story to again generate conversation amongst the responses and keep the momentum on engagement from Monday. All of these posts would be viewable for Baby Duke’s to see “insider” details of what it’s like to live in each dorm and find their perfect match which inspires them to come to JMU! Inspiration for this campaign:

This campaign is inspired by the JMU College of Business #MarketingMonday where a Marketing student is nominated each week to be featured as the student of the week. This feature includes a picture of the student along with a short bio that tells you a little about them. Although these posts are more serious, we loved the idea of a “of the week” campaign and just added a humorous spin to it instead. Rather than listing things like location, layout, and specs, we wanted to make the campaign more intriguing by giving the dorms personas.

Campaign message (i.e., “Haha, those characteristics/poll replies are spot on! Those single minded thought that are some of the reasons I love living here.” (Makes me get you want to elicit from your excited to live there!) target audience(s): Theme(s)/tone of voice to use with justification:

The theme of this campaign is comedy and a place to share stories. The campaign is not meant to be a serious but have a humorous and light-hearted tone of voice. Sometimes students are overcrowded with serious school work and content and this will be a nice refresher that makes them either reminisce and/or get excited for the future.

Creative appeal:

This campaign follows an emotional appeal to generate buzz around each dorm through laughter, nostalgia, and excitement. For Baby Dukes, this campaign appeals to their potential of what their future could entail. For Distinguished Dukes, this campaign appeals to their youth because they will want to remain living on campus while they can.

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How will you make your audience care and what will you make them care about (i.e., emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically; hint: think about the Ted Talk by Andrew Stanton)? Target audience(s) will find it via (i.e., what platform(s) will you use?):

They will share and engage with the content/experience because:

We will make our audience care by appealing to their emotions through content that covers all dorms across campus and gives them personable insights to dorm life. Again, the ORLs “why” is not about making money, but about creating a fun and safe community for JMU students to thrive. We will showcase this to get our audience to care.

Baby Duke’s and Distinguished Duke’s will find this content on the ORL’s Instagram page. The dorm personas will be posted via actual posts and the polls will be posted using stories to make responses quick and easy for users. Baby Dukes will engage with the content by liking and commenting to show others why they chose JMU and why they are excited to live in which dorm. Distinguished Dukes will engage with the dorm personas by commenting and tagging friends who can relate to the persona for the dorm they live in. They will also engage with the story polls by responding to their corresponding dorms week and replying with their favorite thing! Both target audiences will engage because they want to be involved in the funny conversations that this campaign will generate, they won’t want to be left out.

They may not share or Baby Duke’s may not engage with the content because they engage with the don’t follow the ORLs Instagram and no one tags them in content/experience because: the content, so they never see it. Distinguished Duke’s may not engage with the content for the same reason as the Baby Duke’s. Also, they may only engage with the content during the week of the dorm where they live, and no others. Resources required:

A website like Canva to generate cute dorm persona graphics

Key people, organizations, and/or influencers:

Alicia to screenshot and post responses to polls

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Will you use any hashtags?

We will use the hashtag #DormOfTheWeek. We will use a hashtag incorporating the dorms name and area of the campus that it is located. For example, for Weaver: #Weaver #TheVillage

Cost:

This campaign will not cost anything.

Metrics to measure success (make sure these metrics measure the objective(s) listed above):

To measure the success of Objective one, increasing followers on Instagram by 25%, we will measure the number of followers at the end of our yearlong campaign to see if we were successful or not. To measure the success of Objective two, increasing engagement on Instagram by 25%, we will measure likes and comments on Instagram. Additionally, we could keep track of the poll responses as another metric to see if this is a successful way the ORL could generate engagement in the future. Lastly, we plan to measure our secondary objective, using a survey attached to each on-campus lease that asks students to check or writein why they chose to live on campus. The Hall of the Week social media campaign will be listed specifically as an option.

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E. Campaign 5

Campaign title:

Sweepstakes

Objective(s) met with this campaign:

Objective One: Increase followers on @jmureslife Instagram by 25% by using more engaging content targeted toward students, such as Instagram Stories, sweepstakes, testimonials, and competitions by August 2021 in order to increase awareness of the benefits of living on campus. Objective Two: Increase engagement on @jmureslife Instagram by 25% through likes, views, and comments by using more engaging content such as Instagram stories, sweepstakes, testimonials, and competitions by August 2021 in order to increase the awareness of the benefits of living on campus. Objective Three: Increase followers on @jmureslife Facebook by 25% by using more engaging content targeted toward JMU parents, such as stories and polls, by August 2021 in order to increase awareness of the benefits of living on campus. Objective Four:

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Increase engagement on the ORL Facebook page through reactions, views, comments, and shares by 25% to 11,625 total engagements throughout the campaign year, August 2020-2021. What stage of the sales funnel does this campaign target (i.e., awareness, evaluation, acquisition, engagement, or advocacy)?

Engagement

When will the campaign A sweepstakes competition will run for a week every other run (i.e., month(s), week(s), month beginning August 2020 and ending in August 2021. etc.)? What target audience(s) does the campaign appeal to?

Baby Dukes, Distinguished Dukes, Duke Dad

Describe the overall campaign and experience:

This campaign involves creating a sweepstakes that relates to the particular month in which it is taking place. In these sweepstakes, the ORL Instagram and Facebook accounts will post an image promoting a particular prize that aligns with the season. For example, in August 2020 the sweepstakes will promote Game Day Gear to get students prepared for the upcoming football season. The prize will be a $50 gift card to the JMU Bookstore. The way students and parents will enter will be by (1) Following the ORL Instagram page, (2) Liking/Following the ORL Facebook page, and (3) Commenting and tagging friends on either the Instagram or Facebook posts. Each comment/tagged friend counts as one entry and participants can comment as many times as they wish. This will last for one full week and the winner will be announced on both platforms. This will occur once every other month throughout the year.

Inspiration for this campaign:

Many popular social media accounts conduct these campaigns in order to get a large amount of people to follow and engage with content. Specifically, Brickhouse, a restaurant and bar with a location in Harrisonburg, holds a

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sweepstakes for a free pizza every week. As a result, they sometimes get 100s of comments, all for a $10 pizza. Campaign message (i.e., “It’s important to follow and engage with the JMU ORL single minded thought that social media accounts so I don’t miss any important content you want to elicit from your or free prizes!” target audience(s): Theme(s)/tone of voice to use with justification:

Exciting, school-spirited

Creative appeal:

This appeal is more rational since most people have nothing to lose by following or commenting on a social media post, but a lot to potentially gain.

How will you make your audience care and what will you make them care about (i.e., emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically; hint: think about the Ted Talk by Andrew Stanton)?

Target audience(s) will find it via (i.e., what platform(s) will you use?):

They will share and engage with the content/experience because:

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ORL will need to heavily emphasize how exciting the prize for the sweepstakes is by relating it to the students’ and parents’ as much as possible. For example, the first gift card for the bookstore will need to advertise how important it is to have a lot of JMU gear for the extremely popular football games that are coming up in the fall. Most people will already be wanting to purchase some kind of JMU attire, so getting it for free is a really enticing incentive.

The posts on Instagram will be targeted toward the incoming and current JMU freshmen. The posts on Facebook will target the parents of these students. That way, the content will more closely align with the typical users on each platform. Free money and prizes are an extremely enticing incentive, especially when the risk is so small, and the reward is so great. There is little work involved for the user to get a significant prize.

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They may not share or Because the ORL social media accounts aren’t currently engage with the super popular, it will be important to spread the word content/experience because: heavily in the first month so that users are aware of the sweepstakes. Resources required:

Instagram, Facebook, Funds for the prizes

Key people, organizations, and/or influencers:

Alicia to make the posts, different JMU-related locations for gift cards or prizes, the students and parents to spread the word.

Will you use any hashtags?

#DukesliveON #DukesLiveEngaged #DukeLliveSupported

Cost:

Prizes: Bookstore Voucher, Starbucks Gift Card, Dunkin Gift Card, Chick-Fil-A Gift Card, other gift cards or prizes that are accessible to on-campus students. Each prize will be worth $50 with seven sweepstakes in total, meaning the total cost will be $350.

Metrics to measure success (make sure these metrics measure the objective(s) listed above):

We will measure the number of followers on the ORL Facebook and Instagram pages at the start of the campaign, 24 hours following each post during the campaign, and throughout the overall timeline of the campaign to see how the sweepstakes and each post affects the followers. We will also use a Hootsuite account to measure engagement with each post - reactions, shares, likes, views, and comments. We can measure engagement for each post throughout and see what is working and what isn't and adjust our plan, but we will use these overall engagement metrics to measure the success at the end of August 2021.

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F. Campaign 6

Campaign title:

TikTok

Objective(s) met with this campaign:

Objective Six: Create an ORL TikTok account that gains 1,000 users throughout our yearlong campaign through funny and relatable content that targets our incoming freshman audience.

What stage of the sales funnel does this campaign target (i.e., awareness, evaluation, acquisition, engagement, or advocacy)?

Awareness

When will the campaign Three or four times per week depending on the follower's run (i.e., month(s), week(s), reactions, all year long. At the beginning, we will post etc.)? every day to get more followers to follow the account.

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What target audience(s) does the campaign appeal to?

Baby Dukes and Distinguished Dukes

Describe the overall campaign and experience:

This campaign involves the funny videos about the JMU dorms that not only can introduce to high school students who are interested in JMU what the JMU’s on-campus life look like in a visual way, but also can catch more attention from current JMU students to change their mind to live oncampus. We could have short videos that showcase students in their natural “dorm life” habitat. We could also use the JMU Duke Dog mascot to be the face of our TikTok account. We could even have Duke Dog recreate some of the most popular TikToks throughout different dorm locations on campus. These videos would be funny and give JMU ORL a presence on a new social media platform.

Inspiration for this campaign:

People are becoming more and more “lazy” in that they would rather learn through visual ways, like videos, rather than reading about something, hence using TikTok. In addition, TikTok is becoming more and more famous in young generations so this is the perfect platform to get their attention.

Campaign message (i.e., “Know more about JMU on-campus life through TikTok! single minded thought that So much fun that you won’t want to miss it!” you want to elicit from your target audience(s): Theme(s)/tone of voice to use with justification:

The theme of this campaign is funny and trendy by jumping on the trend of TikTok. The tone of voice includes being humorous and light hearted to appeal to our younger target audiences.

Creative appeal:

This campaign follows an emotional appeal that will get people to laugh during the videos and also a social appeal because the audience will want to share these videos to their parents and friends to spark conversations.

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How will you make your audience care and what will you make them care about (i.e., emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically; hint: think about the Ted Talk by Andrew Stanton)?

Target audience(s) will find it via (i.e., what platform(s) will you use?): They will share and engage with the content/experience because:

The audience will care because they want to know what college life looks like at JMU before they commit to a decision. In addition, they may want to show their parents so that they are at ease about them growing up by showing them a glimpse of what life would look life by themselves. Although these videos will be funny, they will make the audience care by appealing to their emotions of laughter and happiness. The videos will show that JMU is fun and will keep the audience wanting to come back and stay current with the videos posted.

Via the TikTok app where we will upload the videos and people can share, like, and comment on our content. They will share and engage with this TikTok account because they think a video is funny to share with friends to give each other a laugh. On the other hand, they might share to their parents to show them what the JMU dorm life is all about.

They may not share or They will not share and engage with this TikTok video engage with the because they don't have a TikTok account. In addition, content/experience because: they will not share it because they might think it is a boring video and will just skip it. Resources required:

TikTok app, Duke Dog Mascot, students willing to feature in videos

Key people, organizations, and/or influencers:

Someone knows how to make a TikTok video, and someone can create scenarios in a funny way to introduce the life of on-campus, Alicia to regulate

Will you use any hashtags?

We will use the hashtags like #DormLife, #JMUTikTok, #FunnyCollegeLife.

Cost:

This campaign will not cost anything.

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Metrics to measure success (make sure these metrics measure the objective(s) listed above):

6.

To measure the success of this objective, we will measure followers. Goal is to gain 1,000 users throughout the year, meaning on average around 90 users every month increase.

Activation Plan and Social Media Content Calendar To implement this plan successfully, the Social Media team will need to create all content

in advance and start the campaign year with posts ready to go. We recommend that the ORL uses Hootsuite as their social media management tool to make sure that all campaigns are run according to the content calendar. This is a great way to ensure execution of the campaign and maximize the success rate for the ORL to meet their objectives. Additionally, Hootsuite provides analytical feedback that the ORL can use throughout the year to understand what is working and what’s not and adjust their plan accordingly. These analytical tools will also show the success of the overall campaign at the end of the year. Alicia Lamb, the Social Media and Marketing Coordinator, and the potential Social Media Assistant that ORL is planning to hire will be in charge of posting all of the content and purchasing the respective prizes. The campaign will last for a year in total, beginning in August 2020 and ending in August 2021. The testimonials, parents’ Facebook group, and TikTok will last throughout the year with regular posts. The Hall competitions will occur three times a year in September, January, and April to regularly instill a sense of community within on-campus residents and create an enticing reward for future residents. The sweepstakes will take place every other month so that users will want to stay following and engaged with the ORL accounts so that they do not miss any free prizes. The Dorm of the Week campaign will run every week beginning in September and ending in April. There will be a break in posting during the month of December since this month consists of finals and winter break. Dworak, Li, Nicholson, Rice

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The overall budget for the yearly marketing campaign was $1,500. Foremost, ORL should plan to spend $29.99 month for a Hootsuite Professional account which would amount to $360 for the year that this plan is scheduled to run. This is key in measuring and comparing the engagement metrics on social media accounts. Additionally, the Hall Competition campaign will require at least $540.00. We came to this number after calculating that each JMU Hall would require either 25 large pizzas from Dominos or 200 traditional Campus Cookies, depending on the prize that the Hall chooses. With large order coupons, 25 large pizzas at $7.00 each would amount to $175.00 and 200 traditional cookies would amount to $180.00. Assuming each hall chooses the more expensive option, ORL would need $540 to ensure that either option is accessible for all three of the hall competitions. Finally, the sweepstakes for require $350 to allow for a $50 gift card or prize for each of the seven months that the sweepstakes take place. This adds up to $1,250 total spending, leaving a cushion of $250 for any unforeseen costs. The client’s overall long-term objective is to get students to sign leases to live on-campus for a second year. As a means to this end, the client wishes to increase their reach and engagement on their social media platforms, specifically their Facebook and Instagram profiles. As a result, we chose to focus heavily on these two platforms since the target audiences most frequently use these and there is already a significant following base to grow upon. We included a TikTok campaign to try and capture more of the Baby Duke target audience since research is showing that current high schoolers are using this platform more and more frequently. In order to ensure that the plan is consistent, many of the campaigns will cross-promote on different platforms and will always include ORL’s core hashtags (#DukesLIVEON, etc.) They will also be required to follow JMU’s style guidelines to promote a consistent look and tone across platforms.

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7. Manage and Measure We will assess the effectiveness of our social media campaign in many different ways depending on which platform we are posting our social content on. For Instagram, we will assess our effectiveness on the number of likes, views, and comments that we get for each post that we make as well as the number of followers that we gain during the time period we are running our campaign. For Facebook, we will be doing the same thing, but we will also look at the number of shares that our posts get too. During our social media campaign, we will assess effectiveness on TikTok by keeping track of our followers and trying to reach our goal of about 90 new followers a month or 1,000 during the campaign. We will also assess which campaigns had the most impact on students who signed to live on campus by sending them a survey to complete with their lease. We will use the money allocated in our budget to purchase Hootsuite to collect this data and help plan out our posts. We will also put a question on our application to live on campus asking if they follow our accounts or if their parents do and are a part of our Facebook group.

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JMU’s Office of Residence Life must abide by the policies and procedures as well as the and style guide that is provided to them by the university. Our voice must be professional and appropriate to the audience that we are targeting. Our client should be aware that we are using testimonials from JMU students that live on campus and that what they say is an opinion and not to be viewed as fact. They should also be aware that when we give out our JMU Bookstore gift cards, or other companies’ gift cards or prizes, we are not directly affiliated with those companies. Our client should also be aware that the people and pictures in our videos our posts were taken with the permission of the people in them.

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Works Cited About the Author When not playing around with words. (2017, August 22). Everything Social Marketers Need to Know About Micro-Influencers. Retrieved from https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-marketers-micro-influencers/. Competitor Analysis for Digital Marketers: Rival IQ. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://app.rivaliq.com/analyze/instagram#. Defining Brand. (2019, June 5). Retrieved from https://www.jmu.edu/identity/defining-brand/index.shtml. Emily, & Hootsuite. (2019, May 27). Top 5 Social Media Trends in 2019 (And How Brands Should Adapt). Retrieved from https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-trends/. Hoffman, C. (2017, November 15). Social media apps have changed the way parents, college students keep in touch. Retrieved from https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/higher_education/social-media-apps-havechanged-the-way-parents-college-students/article_7a95c74c-b047-11e7-a81dfb73ba20a253.html. JMU - Office of Residence Life. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/jmureslife/. JMU - Office of Residence Life. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/jmureslife/. Like, Love, Delete: Social Media's Influence on College Choice. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nacacnet.org/news--publications/journal-of-college-admission/social-medias -influence-on-college-choice/. McCollum, C. (2017, November 29). Cabrini University Student Media. Retrieved from

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https://www.theloquitur.com/top-social-media-apps-for-college-students/. Media Relations and Social Media Publishing. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.jmu.edu/JMUpolicy/policies/1508.shtml. Office of Residence Life: First Year Housing. (2019, October 18). Retrieved from https://www.jmu.edu/orl/housing/first-year.shtml. Our Brand. (2019, June 5). Retrieved from https://www.jmu.edu/identity/our-brand/index.shtml. Ras, J.-P. (2019, October 30). Why you should not solely rely on Facebook organic reach for your business. Retrieved from https://rasdigitalmarketing.com/why-you-should-not-solely-rely-on-facebook-organic-rea ch-for-your-business.

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