Case Study

Social Media Marketing & Profile Management

Background

• California State University, Monterey Bay is among the top Universities in the US offering wide range of academic programs to students and working professionals.

• A new Online Executive MBA program targeting working professionals was planned to be launched.

• They needed more online visibility for their program and enrollments for their program for which they had approached Innoweght™ Corporation - Incubating Innovation™

• 84ideas partnered with Innoweght™ Corporation - Incubating Innovation™ to set up the Social Media presence for the university and engage professionals interested in pursuing their Online EMBA program.

The Program

Following were the unique features of the planned Online EMBAprogram:

• Enrolment without the need of a GMAT score

• All applicants to have at least 7 years of work experience with at least 3 years of this experience in a management role

• In the summer before the second year of the program, a two week get together and classes would be held on the Monterey Bay for all the students in one batch

• CSU, Monterey Bay is a regional school and were targeting small business owners in the local area and local government executives.

• An online program was considered appropriate for this target audience, as they could not take full time off from work to attend classes.

Target Audience

Demographics

• Age groups of above 25• US residents especially small business owners and local government

executives in the Bay area.

Psychographics

• Accord importance to the quality of the course work• Give consideration to the brand of the University• Confer significance to the course fees

• Spreading awareness of the new program

• Web branding of the Program

• Increase interaction between the prospects and the students

Deliverables

• 84ideas had undertaken research to understand the presence and behaviour of the program’s target audience on the web.

• It was understood that the best way to convince the target audience group was to encourage their engagement and interaction with the alumni and current students and create word of mouth publicity about the program

• A survey with current students showed that most of them hang out on Facebook

• Research also revealed that a large section of the target audience were users of Linkedin

• Applicants also visited social college comparison sites like http://collegeprowler.com/, http://www.theu.com/, http://www.yollege.com/ to get help in taking the decision regarding which college/course to attend

Step 1 – Research and findings

Step 2- Strategy formulation

• Presence and branding of the University on Facebook by using Facebook page and on Linkedin by forming a University group

• Students/Alumni become fans of the University Facebook page to promote its brand image

• Contacts in fans’ Facebook network become fans of the University’s Facebook page

• Updates about the program on the University page to promote interest in the course

• Create an EMBA course specific group and invite fans to join this group.• On Linkedin – create a course specific group where professors invite their

contacts to join the group

Step 3- Implementation

• Identified the right name for the group name so that it was easy to find and would pop up at the top of the list when prospects searched for the group

• Created a Facebook group that provided details about the program

• Faculty of the course invited students to join the group

• Initiated a discussion thread on what students expected from an EMBA program to involve them with the program

• Set up a tracking mechanism to track the number of clicks on the EMBA website link

Step 4- Engagement

Step 5 - MeasurementConversationsConversations

ClicksClicks

ReachReach

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