Social Media Tips for

International Education

A Quick & Easy Guide to Developing your Social

Media Presence

Fall 2012

2 Let GoMedia Help You GoSocial

With the expanding influence of social

media in education and travel, today's

organizations must master new

marketing tools and strategies. They

must consistently launch innovative

and engaging content to keep today's

savvy world travelers engaged

around the clock, 24/7. This is a huge

and often overwhelming challenge for

those unfamiliar with effective

strategies of social media integration.

GoSocial, the premiere social media

solution service for international

education and travel, powered by

GoAbroad.com, will promote your

brand, increase your traffic, and grow

your organization. GoSocial is a cost-

effective, expertly managed solution

that assists international education

and travel organizations in

maximizing the impact of social

media, generating brand recognition,

and increasing followers and potential

participants.

As an international education

organization, GoSocial is committed

to helping you realize the importance

of basic social media channels,

optimizing each platform, and

promoting your organization with an

online presence.

GoSocial has several levels of service to fit the needs of your company. Each level includes optimization of your social media channels, a dedicated community manager, and exclusive literature from GoMedia.

Table of Contents

The Importance of Content in Social Media 3

Managing Facebook: The Essentials 4

Managing Twitter: To Tweet or Not To Tweet 6 Glossary of Social Media Terms 8

Frequently Asked Questions 9

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The Importance of Content in Social Media +

Before we explore the best practices for managing

your social media presence, it is important to fully

understand the importance of content in social

media.

The types of content your organization uses to

promote your brand on social networking sites such

as Facebook and Twitter directly affect the success of

your social media presence. Good content is

necessary in order to attract new fans, as well as

engage and retain your followers.

Engagement with your community through social

media is what drives popularity on your pages. For

example, Facebook’s algorithms are set to show top

posts in newsfeeds based on interaction. Facebook

tracks what pages an individual interacts with

frequently, and then those pages become common in

their newsfeed, allowing for optimum interaction.

Freshness of content also plays a role in the success

of your organization’s social media presence.

Google recently updated its ranking algorithm to

provide more up-to-date results based on varying

degrees of freshness. Content that is found to be

relevant or “fresh” will post higher in Google search

results, which will help market your organization

more successfully. Optimizing your website for

search engines is an effective way to market your

organization; however, understanding the most

effective way to use SEO to market your organization

through social media content can be invaluable.

So how do you use social media content to take

advantage of these benefits? First, use existing

marketing data and your social media analytics to

understand who your audience is. It is important to

remember that although you might target a certain

market with your traditional marketing efforts, your

social media audience may not always fit into the

same categories or demographics.

Once you have an idea of who your audience is,

you can more effectively create and collect content

for your social media channels that will encourage

engagement and interaction. More often that not,

your audience will be younger; therefore, the best

content tends to be trending, relevant, and

oftentimes a bit edgy due to the fact that social

media channels aren’t as conservative as some

types of traditional media. Conveniently, if you are

finding the most relevant content that your

audience is interested in, the SEO benefits will

come naturally.

For more advice on content, see the content tips at

the end of each platform section.

Photo Courtesy of peteoshea on Flickr.

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Managing Facebook: The Essentials

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At this point, Facebook is a necessity, so if

you don’t have a business page, get one

set up (or we can do it for you)! Once you

have a page set up, it’s time to develop

some skill sets to manage and monitor the

page in order to fully embrace its

potential.

Set up a Google Reader and add RSS

feeds that are relevant to your

organization. RSS Feeds pull information

from various websites that are most often

in the form of a blog. By adding RSS feeds

to Google Reader, you can monitor

hundreds of blogs, news articles,

academic journals, and more, all through

one interface. A simple Google search

will yield a variety of content sources

related to international experiences. This

will be a valuable resource for you when

looking for content to post on Facebook.

Use a tool like Hyper Alerts to keep track

of your Facebook activity. Hyper Alerts is

an online application that will send you a

daily aggregate email of all your

Facebook activity, including posts and

comments (Note that it doesn’t include

“likes”).

Photo courtesy of bengsoon on Flickr.

5 Let GoMedia Help You GoSocial

Consistently monitor your Facebook

Insights. Insights are Facebook’s

analytics, which offer in depth

information about your page. This

handy application tracks items such

as where your “likes” are coming

from and the demographics of your

fans. Insights can even track

engagement on each and every post

that you publish on your Facebook

Page. These analytics are extremely

helpful in understanding your

audience and brainstorming content.

Be creative with your profile picture,

cover photo, and top applications. It

is important to make your Facebook

Timeline appear professional. Your

profile picture and

cover photo represent

your brand; therefore,

it is beneficial to fill

those spaces with branded photos.

Finally, your top applications, or the

“tabs” that appear alongside your

profile photo can also be customized

(aside from “Photos”). Choosing

what to feature here and what image

to use is different for each

What type of content should you post to Facebook?

Arguably the most important factor

when promoting your brand on

Facebook is choosing what type of

content you should post. A rule of

thumb is to post about your

organization’s marketing initiatives

20% of the time, and post about

things related to your organization’s industry the other 80% of the time.

Examples of general content:

• Articles and Blog Posts

• Open Questions

• Photo of the week feature

Managing Facebook: The Essentials

Tips & Tricks • Allow posts by others and

enable the messaging function on your page.

• Add all links to your other social media channels on your “Info” tab or install apps.

• Turn off all email notifications

from Facebook so your inbox doesn’t get flooded with them.

• Make sure everything is

always up-to-date!

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advantage of Twitter features like

ReTweeting, Mentions, Lists, Direct

Messages, etc.

Connect your Twitter and Facebook

accounts. By connecting your accounts,

you can choose to automatically have all

of your Facebook posts published on your

Twitter account. This is very convenient

because you don’t have to worry about

posting content twice. Additionally, it

helps provide content for Twitter, which

requires more posting in a day than

Facebook.

Once you are on Facebook, make sure

you create a Twitter account next. As the

number 2 social network, it too is

essential. Here are some tips fro utilizing

Twitter.

Use a dashboard tool to help you manage

your Twitter account. There is more to

Twitter then meets the eye, and the

easiest way to keep track of it all is

through a dashboard. A dashboard like

HootSuite or TweetDeck is a tool that

allows you to manage your Twitter

account through one comprehensive

interface. This way you can really take

To Tweet or Not to Tweet Managing Twitter:

+ Photo courtesy of Shht! on Flickr.

7 Let GoMedia Help You GoSocial

or Mention, or Direct Message them.

Maintain an organic following. Once

you get a foundation of followers you

will want to make sure that you take

steps to ensure that they are real

people who might engage with your

brand. You can do this by using tools

like TwitCleaner or JustUnfollow that

help you identify and unfollow

irrelevant or stagnant Twitter

accounts.

users put a “#” before a word or

phrase in order to tag their tweet.

You can then search, by hashtag or

keyword and find all of those tweets.

An example might be to search for

#studyabroad. This functionality

helps you find users that might be

interested in you. Engage your

audience by following them (in

hopes that they follow you back),

interact with them through a ReTweet

Use lists to keep an eye on

competitors. Twitter allows you to

add users to lists, which means you

can track their tweets without

actually “following” them. This is a

great way to watch what your

competitors are doing on Twitter

without publicly following them.

Find potential followers using

hashtags or keyword searches. A

hashtag is a Twitter feature in which

Managing Twitter: To Tweet or Not to Tweet

have conversations with people

without pushing them to your

website. This way you can create

relationships and gain truly engaged followers.

Examples of general content:

• #FollowFriday tweets

• Fun Facts

What type of content should you post to Twitter?

Like Facebook, it is important to try

not to make all of your Twitter

content about your organization. You

should share interesting articles,

blogs, etc. that you think your

followers might like. You should

Tips & Tricks

• Follow those who ReTweet and mention you. They are your most engaged followers.

• Engage in Twitter

activities like #FollowFriday; it shows that you know what’s going on and can gain you followers in return!

• Follow Twitter etiquette. Thank your followers for their engagement.

9 Let GoMedia Help You GoSocial

Glossary of Social Media Terms Dashboard: A program or software that utilizes

multiple social media portals such as Facebook and

Twitter on one platform, like TweetDeck and

HootSuite.

Direct Message (DM): A Direct Message or DM is a

message that you can send directly to another Twitter

user. This is the only type of private message you can

send on Twitter. In order to DM someone, they must

be following you on Twitter.

FollowFriday Tweets: Every Friday, users

recommend people to follow who are interesting.

Somewhere in the Tweet is “#FF” or

“#FollowFriday.”

Google Reader - Google Reader is an RSS reader

that allows you to aggregate various blogs and sites

and collect updates to new content in one location.

When you login the latest content from multiple blogs

will be in one stream so you don't have to navigate to

each site individually.

Hashtag: Twitter uses the number symbol (#) to tag

within tweets; this helps aggregate conversations for

a topic.

HootSuite - HootSuite is a social media management

system that helps brands streamline campaigns

across social networks such as Twitter, Facebook,

LinkedIn, and Google+ Pages. Teams can

collaboratively monitor, engage, and measure the

results of social campaigns from one secure, web-

based dashboard.

Hyper Alerts: An online service that provides

email alerts for posts and comments on a Facebook

page.

Insights: Facebook’s statistics/analytics for page

administrators.

Top Applications (On Facebook): A page/tab on a

Facebook Page that utilizes a third-party application

or Facebook application to provide content, links,

discussions, etc.

‘Like’ on Facebook: An application associated

with Facebook to create positive feedback to a

page and allows a connection between pages to be

made.

Mention: A Twitter update that has a username in

the body (@username).

ReTweet (RT): When someone posts, or tweets a

post another user posted (RT @username: Hello

world!).

RSS Feed (Really Simple Syndication): A format for

sharing regularly updated content on the web. You

can subscribe to RSS feeds in applications like

Google Reader.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Improving a

website’s visibility on the Internet through editing a

pages content to be fresh and engaging, as well as

other tactics.

Twitter Lists: A list any user can create publically

or privately. Lists generate streams that

incorporate a specific group of Twitter users.

9 Let GoMedia Help You GoSocial

Frequently Asked Questions How do I know when and how often to post to Facebook?

Usually you want to pay attention to when you are getting

the most engagement and post then. It is encouraged to

post between 1 and 5 times a day, depending on how

many fans you have.

Does Facebook really have rules about running contests and promotions?

Yes! Facebook’s Promotion Guidelines do stipulate that

contests must be run through Facebook Applications.

Many companies overlook these guidelines and run the

risk of having their page taken down by Facebook.

How many people can I follow on Twitter?

Twitter stipulates that every account can follow 2,000 users

total. Once you’ve followed 2,000 users, there are limits to

the number of additional users you can follow. This

number is different for each account and is based on your

ratio of followers to following. This means that in order to

follow more people you should make sure that you have

more followers than you are following (a lower ratio).

How often should I tweet?

Generally, Twitter requires more interaction than

Facebook might. It is recommended that you tweet

between 5-20 times per day.

What packages does GoSocial offer for social media management?

GoSocial offers standard and comprehensive social

media management packages, as well as add-ons and

consulting. Currently, we offer management of the

following channels: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube,

Flickr, Pinterest, Google+, and WordPress Blogs. To

learn more about these packages and pricing, please

contact us, or visit GoMedia.GoAbroad.com/GoSocial

today!

GoMedia/GoSocial 324 E Oak Street, Fort Collins, CO 80524

Phone: 1-720-570-1702 x4024

Email: Kayla.Patterson@GoAbroad.com

GoMedia.GoAbroad.com