General conference registration

Conference introductions and opening remarks

Finding the Right Track: How Close Are You to A Strategy?

According to recent polls, 100 percent of universities have a social media presence of some sort. However, the strongest results (increased applications, improved alumni relations, higher giving levels) are realized only when an institution deploys a comprehensive strategy. This session will help you understand the components of strategic thinking for social media, then give you time to conduct a gap analysis to determine where your own efforts may need to improve. The results of this analysis will serve as the foundation for your participation in the rest of the program.

Afternoon break

Social Media Analytics and Tracking

You can track any number of social media metrics - everything from traffic and conversation numbers to "friend" or "like" numbers and site-referenced click-throughs or forwards. However, which metrics are the most meaningful? What should your institution be focusing on to meet your primary goals? This session will help you answer these questions and put metrics behind your social media resources.

Staffing Social Media and Required Skill Sets

Now that higher education has moved beyond skepticism about the effectiveness of social media, you'll have to tackle how to effectively staff social media efforts and recognize the skill sets you should be looking for. This session will help with staffing and skill set questions, and will also help you develop skills in training others at your institution on how to effectively manage their own pages and social media presence, including when and how to tell colleagues not to engage in social media.

Networking reception (included in registration)

Continental breakfast (included in registration)

Developing a Content Strategy: Making Sure Your Message Sticks

Social media works best when your voice is consistent and your content is authentic, interactive, and meaningful. This means you need to know how to create a personality through your social media, seed content, respond to users appropriately and quickly, and drive users deeper into your website based on interest or affinity. This session will guide you through thinking about how your social media content works together with your websites, email strategies, collateral, and other communications. Additionally, we'll include time for you to begin drafting some content for future use.

Morning break

Breakout Session 1: Social Media to Enhance Enrollment Management

Potential applicants are visiting your admissions site all the time, but do you know how to drive them to your application page using social media? Or how to increase their likelihood of enrollment? This session will help you develop a strategy for improving admissions results and identify techniques for staying engaged with your applicants throughout the admissions cycle, thereby upping the likelihood they'll enroll.

Breakout Session 2: Make Your Ask Stronger: Social Media and Solicitation

Transactional giving - especially annual, athletics, and class-based fundraising - is particularly well-situated to be augmented by social media tools. This session will help you maximize social media tools to get the most out of your ask, whether it's online, through a mobile device, an in an emailed video or QR-coded postcard.

Lunch (included in registration; both groups together)

Breakout Session 3: Working Session: Social Media to Increase Applications and Improve Yield Results

In the first breakout session, you looked at potential strategies for enhancing your enrollment management operation. Now, you'll have a chance to revisit what you've learned and to immediately apply your newly gained knowledge to your own social media tools.

Breakout Session 4: Social Media to Improve Alumni Events, Including Reunion

From alumni clubs to homecoming to reunions, your advancement team manages large numbers of events for each demographic of your alumni base. Social media provides a tool for augmenting these efforts. This session will help you use your social media presence to make the most of your alumni relations efforts.

Afternoon break

Developing an Effective Social Media Policy

As institutions enter the social media space or expand their usage to new platforms, they need to develop a workable and equitable policy that addresses legal, privacy, and branding issues. This session will help you avoid policy pitfalls and minimize your institution's risk level as you further enter the social media space.

Responding to Challenges on Social Media

Unfortunately, bad news will occasionally come up and need to be dealt with. Are you prepared to handle everything from a negative post on your Facebook page to an alarming tweet to a campus-wide crisis? Do you know when to abandon process and get posting? Or when to ignore a Negative Nelly? This session will address these issues through real-life examples, and help you set a plan for challenges large and small.

Continental breakfast (included in registration)

Sharing Best Practices: Examples of Social Media Success

Think of this session as your opportunity to crowd-source effective social media campaigns, intriguing social media personalities, and proven social media initiatives. We'll begin by offering some of our favorite concrete examples of social media brilliance, and then we'll open the floor for you to present what you've done, or what you've admired from afar.

Break and hotel check-out

Tying it All Together: Developing the Outline for Your Strategy

You've learned how to craft a careful policy, seed content, improve your practice area, structure appropriately, and measure correctly. Now it's time to put it all together. This session will help you prioritize your efforts and fill the gaps you identifying at the start of the event. Following a brief review of the key takeaways, you will begin to design a strategy outline appropriate for your institution.