Blog Recap:
The Power of Data-Driven Narratives
Noelle believes that data and stories go hand in hand. With a background that spans sports broadcasting to a doctorate in quantitative marketing, she knows the ropes of turning raw data into compelling narratives. She uses tools like Looker for data visualization, allowing her team to translate mundane Instagram clicks into inspiring stories that resonate with their audience. One of her top recommendations? The book “Smart Brevity” to sharpen your communication skills.
The Main Campus Account as Grand Central Station
Ever thought about how one social media account can fuel others? Think “Grand Central Station”—CU Boulder’s main account serves as the central hub, helping to steer followers to more niche accounts, whether it be the College of Engineering or the snowboarding club. A thoughtful avatar strategy ensures consistent branding, making transitions between accounts feel seamless and connected.
The ROI Dilemma
A big chunk of our conversation also revolved around the ever-tricky question of ROI (Return on Investment). Shiro, our host, admitted to struggling with showing ROI from broad content like podcasts. Noelle’s advice? Always revisit past data and be open to adjusting strategies. In fact, she accepts both growth and decline in metrics as opportunities for learning.
Social Media Metrics: CU’s Win with Coach Prime
The numbers don’t lie, especially when Coach Prime entered the scene. CU Boulder saw a whopping 242% increase in impressions and a 41% spike in followers on Instagram between the announcement and the team’s first game. It’s a prime example (pun intended) of how influential figures can boost your social media metrics significantly.
Overcoming Job Misconceptions
One of the recurring themes was how often people underestimate the complexity and importance of digital marketing roles. It’s not just about flashy posts—there’s a lot of strategic planning and data analysis behind the scenes. And despite the hard work, Noelle loves the creative and cyclical nature of higher education, where every new semester brings fresh opportunities to innovate.
To wrap it up, the episode was a treasure trove of insights on using your main campus account to drive traffic to specialized accounts while keeping your strategy data-driven and your storytelling compelling. Don’t forget to follow the podcast for more episodes packed with actionable advice for higher ed marketers!
Read the transcription
Shiro [00:00:16]:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the higher ed demand gen podcast hosted by concept 3 d. If you like our content, please follow and subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple and Google. My name is Shiro Hattori, and I’ll be your host today. And I’m very, very excited for today’s topic. We’re gonna be talking about Coach Prime’s impact on social media, and also how to use a main social account to direct traffic to other colleges on campus. For the topic, I have none other than doctor Noelle Siebert joining us today. She is the director of social media at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Shiro [00:00:52]:
And I am also a Buff alum. And so I’m super excited to talk about this today. Noelle, welcome to the show.
Noelle Seybert [00:00:59]:
Awesome. Well, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Shiro [00:01:02]:
It’s great to have you. I even threw on my bus shirt today. Right?
Noelle Seybert [00:01:06]:
It’s looking good. It’s looking good. We’re we’re twins here.
Shiro [00:01:09]:
Awesome. Alright. I do ask all my guests this as an icebreaker. Can you please tell me what you love about higher ed?
Noelle Seybert [00:01:16]:
Yeah. It’s hard to pick just one. I’ve been in it now for almost 15 years, if not a little bit more. I kinda lose track at this point. But the one the one thing that I do truly love about this industry that just sets it apart from everything else is the cyclical nature of it. And so while some people might think that that breeds monotony or boredom, I truly I’m super competitive with myself and with the work that I do. So with every fall, we get to try you know, we know new students are coming in in football and sports and all that. So what did we do well last year? What didn’t we do well last year? Let’s try it again.
Noelle Seybert [00:01:49]:
Let’s try something different. Let’s push the envelope. And every year, you just get to build on foundations that you’ve left. I can’t really think of so many many other industries that allow for that kind of strategy planning and and event based along with all these other cool things that just kind of popcorn up throughout the year. So you get to keep trying things. You get to keep testing things, and I love testing. We’ll talk about that. And there’s a lot of different things that can come uniquely to higher ed is something that just keeps me here and keeps me wanting to work within, this industry.
Shiro [00:02:19]:
That’s fantastic. And I just heard 2 things on my end that makes it in my opinion, makes a really good marketer, which is you like data. Right? So you like looking back and seeing what worked. And number 2, you like being creative. You like trying new things and leaving room for testing. So that’s fantastic. Can you tell me a little bit more about your role and your background as director of social media?
Noelle Seybert [00:02:39]:
Yeah. So my role is really it’s I love my job, obviously. Like, I’ve I’ve now been in it. I’m in my 6th year here at CU. And so I have we have a unique setup at the University of Colorado. And so I have the opportunity to work with a small team that does all the organic outbound social media. So everything you see on what we call the main channels, which is atcu boulder, I get to lead that strategy of what goes out, how we engage, the different platforms, trying to find the different audiences and and what they’re responding to. As you mentioned, analytics, you know, I’m happiest in the spreadsheet, so I get to look at all the different pieces of data and then work with my, like, funny, punny staff members who can help me with that creative side.
Noelle Seybert [00:03:21]:
And then I can say what why it did well or didn’t do well. And then we have a listening team, which is great. So I get to work with them every day on all the various things that are happening, whether it be on your traditional social media, like you think of Facebook, x, Instagram. They get to dive even deeper into all of the different areas of social listening, and then I have a paid counterpart as well. And so those three teams really make up all that goes out on the main social media channels and across the, across the campus. And so working with them and then working with all the different schools and colleges, athletics, departments, student clubs, we really consider main channels. So the at c boulder channels, Grand Central Station. So I get to be kind of the conductor of what goes out and when and really just trafficking and information coming in and information going out.
Shiro [00:04:12]:
That’s fantastic. And I know if you’re a marketer listening to this, I’m sure you’ve heard of the hub and spoke model, but you treat the c at CU Boulder main Grand Central Station account as your hub. And you have a lot of the other outline, accounts as the as the spokes. But can you tell us a little bit more about how you your, like, vision and how you organize your social channels?
Noelle Seybert [00:04:36]:
Yeah. So we I mean, we’re the well, before here’s a caveat. Before coach Prime got here, we were the largest accounts on campus. Now football has, like, taken that and run. So, when you think about main accounts, whether it’s the main athletics, main campus, main, you know, arts and sciences, school of engineering, whatever that might be, we’re looking at a lot of those. And and school students that are either looking, you know, prospective students or current students, alumni, more often than not, they’ll find the main channel first. They’ll just search for University of Colorado, University of Colorado Boulder, and they’ll they’ll come up we’ll come up first. That’s our name, it’s our handle, it’s everywhere.
Noelle Seybert [00:05:12]:
And so with that, you know, they come and see us, and I’d love to make sure that we really do represent the entire campus. It’s not just football. It’s not just our engineering, awesome things coming out of engineering. We have, you know, all of these different schools and colleges. And so what we try to do when we’re doing that strategy planning in terms of outbound content is make sure we’ve got a an even distribution across the pages of of or across the campus of the different schools and colleges that we’re talking about and making sure that we’re giving as much as we can equal representation to them. And so when people come to us first and they see it right now is a great example. New students move in in a month, and so we’re really starting to ramp up, like, follow these accounts. You know? Here’s how you can find your information.
Noelle Seybert [00:05:57]:
If you’re a lead student or or school business student or if you’re an arts and sciences major, go there. And so that then they can go find their constituent base and be like, oh, okay. This is the information that actually I need to see all the time. And so we help facilitate that. Just you saw us first, and then we push them out to where hopefully, meets their messaging and and their needs when it comes to social.
Shiro [00:06:21]:
That’s amazing. Yeah. I know a lot of, you know, like, similar to CU Boulder, a lot of colleges have, you know, they’re in individual score college of accounts, and they always are trying to find a great way to connect all the dots. I went to a presentation at Hyatt web, maybe it was AMA, AMA in Chicago, or like they were trying to deal with exactly this, which is right. Like how do we create one central account, but make sure the brand, the image, the message is synonymous between all the different accounts. And so it’s fantastic that you’re you’re able to connect the dots here.
Noelle Seybert [00:06:56]:
Yeah. One of the ways we did that too in terms of that spoke it, haven’t spoke model, and I did it at a previous institution too, was come up with an avatar strategy. And so when which is your profile photo, the little one. So avatar or profile photo, they’re synonymous to everyone. And so for us, for the main account, you’ll just see the c lock up in black and it says Boulder. And then for the schools and colleges, it says, you know, college engineering or, you know, arts and sciences or leads business. So aesthetically, when you’re just scrolling, right, because we all just kind of doom scroll, people are able to have that immediate brand recognition as well. So it gives them a little bit more of a boost when people are searching and looking for things.
Noelle Seybert [00:07:35]:
And so that was when we implemented that, I I believe, like, right before the pandemic or right as that was happening. I mean, it was like right in there early in my tenure here at CU, we did that. And I think that’s really helped with that hub and spoke model.
Shiro [00:07:49]:
That’s fantastic. And, and, and going back to like, you know, making sure that the content is relevant for the seasonality, Are you pushing a lot of content towards, like, prospective students that are gonna be, you know, moving in and, and going to welcome week in the next month?
Noelle Seybert [00:08:04]:
Yeah. That’s funny. You you said that right before I hopped on this call with you, I was planning out our August content and looking at last August. So we go back to that cyclical nature. Okay? So here’s all the things that we publish for new buffs and incoming buffs and new buff parents and all of that. I mean, there’s quite a few audiences that you try to reach on welcome week. It’s not just the student. You know, there’s so many audiences, and so we have to look at all of those different accounts, all of our different platforms, and figure out, okay.
Noelle Seybert [00:08:31]:
So who but new buffs need to print their parking pass because, you don’t wanna get a ticket your first day on campus. And so where would we put that? You know, most likely, we wouldn’t put that over on LinkedIn, but we’ll put it on Instagram story. And so I went back and looked at last year’s data, figured out what the number 1 through 10, new Buff content was, And that for sure is getting a spot in August September, and then we’ll fill in from there, all the new stuff that’s coming through. And so we’re able to look back historically and make data driven decisions, and that just makes my little data analytics brain explode. And so and my leadership loves it too. Because they’re like, oh, okay. Why are you doing that? I’m like, oh, it was the 5th most clicked thing last year. Oh, k.
Noelle Seybert [00:09:12]:
Keep doing that.
Shiro [00:09:13]:
Yeah. It’s not arts and just arts and crafts here. We have data. We know it works, and we make iterations. Right? That’s fantastic.
Noelle Seybert [00:09:20]:
I mean, gut gut instincts, like, work. You know, gut instincts are great. Right? But you shouldn’t only rely on those. And so that’s the thing I tell students who are wanting to get into social media. I love that you’re punny and funny and creative, but you also need to be able to explain why engagement rate we measured it this way instead of that way. You know? And and why is that important? And so that’s that’s what I’ve driven home really on our team is that data is really important, but we can also have some fun in things like reels we can’t measure besides, you know, follower count or frequency. You know, high frequency on a reel is great because it means they’ve rewatched it. High frequency on an ad, not so great.
Noelle Seybert [00:09:57]:
So we’re able to look back and forth between those.
Shiro [00:10:00]:
That’s great. And I know you just went through this exercise and and hopefully you remember, but do you remember which content did do really well last year for social during this period, like, right before move in day?
Noelle Seybert [00:10:13]:
So, the biggest the number 1, and it was number 1 all last year, not just during move in, was the campus impacts to our Friday night football game. Far and away was the number one piece of content, which if you would have told me that, it would have resonated with a small group, but not well over 6,000 clicks. And so it was just like, wow. Like, okay. That one came in number 1 across across the board all of last fiscal year. And then when it came to actual new buff content, the printing the parking passes, which is why that one’s fresh top of mind. So for move in, we wanna make sure the parents print their correct parking pass and how to do it. And then just what move in day, like that schedule and block parties and neighborhood, you know, finding buffs that, resonate, you know, you have similar interests, that type of content really came to the top time and time again.
Shiro [00:11:06]:
That’s amazing. Do you happen to know, like, if you use, like, a map or anything and showcase the map for, like, parking locations for students at all?
Noelle Seybert [00:11:14]:
I can tell you looking at August, I was just doing it right before this call. We will tell people to bookmark that campus map. It’s interactive. It’s really great. Every other day for, like, 10 days. So on Instagram, we have a 170,000 followers, and on average, we’re getting 8 to 12000 people watching a story. So there’s still room for people who didn’t see it in that expiry content, and so we keep that in mind.
Shiro [00:11:38]:
That’s great. That’s good to know. And you just basically post on your, like, your main social profile about those those notifications, whether it’s the printing, the parking pass, or, the the map that you use, the interactive map that you use?
Noelle Seybert [00:11:50]:
Yeah. So it will go on our channels. We’ll create toolkits for our campus partners. And so, hey. You know, here’s here’s all the different links of things we’ve already published if you just wanna amplify it, or here’s information if you wanna publish it to your audience, your specific audience. A lot of times, you know, what an engineering student needs versus a music student, there’s a there’s a foundation that’s very similar. But then once you get into the weeds of what they need and how they need it and where they’re even going, I mean, they’re completely opposite sides of campus. And so we’re we can provide that information to our campus partners so then they can post it on their own schedule, or we always tag them.
Noelle Seybert [00:12:27]:
Instagram stories, we are doing those Invisitags where you just, like, add mentions, and there’s, like, 15 people tagged. So if they wanna amplify it, great, and off it goes. And then we get the click tracking, which we love. And then, otherwise, we just see it. They tag us in things, and it’s just one big we point to them. They point to us throughout for the next 2 months.
Shiro [00:12:47]:
That’s great. And, yeah, if you in VisiTag, like, it doesn’t it doesn’t show up to, like, boldly on the on the actual story. But it also, like, sends a notification to all the other college accounts and so they can easily repost. And, like, it just makes things really flow fast and makes reposting easier.
Noelle Seybert [00:13:03]:
Yeah. For sure. And being able to do those Inviso tags are great because aesthetically, you know, students don’t wanna see that. And so it allows it. The the only downside, you know, quite a big downside is when it comes to our Grand Central Station, people don’t see that. Right? They don’t see how they can click to then go find it. So we intentionally do efforts around putting a real tag in there. Like, social media day at the end of June, we did one for all of our different schools and colleges.
Noelle Seybert [00:13:31]:
And some colleges said they gained 300 people. And so it was just one big testament to pushing people to where they need to go to find information that’s relevant to them, and it worked.
Shiro [00:13:41]:
That’s great. So when if you wanna repost from a college of to them, visit tag. If you wanna direct traffic, make sure to tag them and have it visible is what I’m hearing. Yeah.
Noelle Seybert [00:13:50]:
That’s a great playbook. Yes.
Shiro [00:13:52]:
Okay. That’s awesome. Well, I know we talked a little bit about audiences here, as a social media manager, right, that manages content in different channels. How do you look at the different channels that you own? You mentioned X, you mentioned Facebook, Instagram, right? Like, do you just post the same content and write slightly different copy? Or do you like switch up the content entirely depending on the channel?
Noelle Seybert [00:14:16]:
Yeah. So we’re our big four that, at c Boulder is LinkedIn, x, Facebook, and Instagram. So those are our big ones. We do Instagram threads, stories, reels, all of that as well. So kind of those subsections of them. And we look at each of each of those big four as, you know, completely separate audiences. Yes. The the main affinity is CU and CU Boulder, hopefully.
Noelle Seybert [00:14:40]:
You know, that’s why they’re following us. But when we look at Instagram versus LinkedIn, that content that does really well on Instagram could potentially fall very flat on LinkedIn and vice versa. And so we look at the different audiences. So Facebook is primarily our student, young alumni and prospective student. And so that’s what we’re looking for over there. You know, that’s 18 to 24 ish range. We have people on either side too. Right? But that’s really what we’re looking at.
Noelle Seybert [00:15:07]:
And so we that is that audience. Facebook is gonna be more of the Buff parents or more of the older alumni, maybe people who didn’t even come to see you but have an affinity some way or another. LinkedIn is our alumni base, our community partners in Boulder and the state of Colorado, more of the, kind of the business side of the house, more of the professional. I hate to say we are unprofessional in the others, but you get what I’m saying. And then x is just kind of a grab bag as it is just as it is these days. And so we post quite a bit of things over there that potentially don’t get a post on all the others. And so looking at those 4 audiences and at those 4 platforms, I really break it down to we have 1 to maybe 2 at most posts per day on those platforms because we don’t wanna overload those algorithms. And so what one thing that can do really well on Facebook that probably won’t do super well on LinkedIn, That gives us an opportunity to oh, but this piece of research content that’s a little heavier, a little in the weeds will potentially do really well on LinkedIn.
Noelle Seybert [00:16:10]:
We can look at the previous data based on the topic and then post it over there where on Facebook, they’re getting campus photos or nostalgia. And so both both platforms are important and get that information out there, especially with our key pillars of content. And then all 4 of them is that nice marketing mix to really get that drumbeat of what’s happening here, what, you know, what do you miss, what what do you wish was here, all of those different things all into 1. And so while sometimes we do post the exact same content, the caption will be different. And so to to cater to that specific audience.
Shiro [00:16:45]:
That’s fantastic. And I actually just remembered based on this conversation about channels, like, you, you made a conscious decision not to be in one channel. And I want this to sort of be a message to like the other higher ed institutions that you don’t have to do it all. And my, my theory in higher ed in, in marketing is like, if you can’t do a great job at it, like, don’t do it at all. Right. And so you’ve decided not to be on Tik TOK consciously. Right. And so I don’t know if you wanna just give us a one sentence thing.
Shiro [00:17:16]:
Yeah. So
Noelle Seybert [00:17:17]:
We are not on TikTok, and and that’s intentional. And so we do run ads over there. And so for our prospective students and our recruitment efforts, there there are paid ads that happen over there. But to your point, you know, you can do a lot of things kinda well, you know, maybe, and spread yourself really thin, or you can really focus on areas that you know will have a return on investment. You you know you can get that engagement. And so not to say we won’t expand to others. There are conversations around Blue Sky, Mastodon, and all of those different ones, but it’s that same piece of do we have the bandwidth to be able to do this? Is our audience over there? And I know for 1, I won’t be doing the the silly TikTok dances. And so until I can find someone else to do that consistently and wants to be the face of that, which if any students listening and they wanna do that, you know, hit me up because I’ve got some ideas.
Noelle Seybert [00:18:05]:
And so we can we just won’t be over there for now and and that that marketing value, I know it’s changed recently and you can add links and all of that in your organic content. You didn’t use to be able to do that. So for me, it was really hard to measure the you know, was the juice worth the squeeze? And I couldn’t figure that out. And so we just intentionally haven’t been on there yet.
Shiro [00:18:24]:
Yep. Yeah. And I I love this topic because in marketing, there’s always shiny object syndrome. But it’s there’s gonna be a new AI tool coming out tomorrow. Right? A new channel being developed the next half year, but you gotta really figure out what works and also be realistic about what you have bandwidth for because no, you don’t wanna put crappy content or crappy marketing channels out there. And so if you don’t think you can do good jobs, don’t do it right. So now I I I I really appreciate that you’ve made this decision. So I I just thought it was a good point to make for all the other social people out there.
Noelle Seybert [00:18:57]:
Yeah. And to that point too, we you know, I I’m, like, vehemently against TikTok, just given bandwidth. But we recently joined BeReal. And so, you know, what does that look like, and how do we do that? I can’t really measure that, but we aren’t putting in links in there. It’s really just a way for students to we can engage with students on a different level in meeting them where they are. And so we’re really still at the beginning stages of that as an official account and figuring it out and be real events. We did one for commencement and learned a lot. So now as we’re moving into welcome week and fall welcome and football and all of that fun stuff, we’ll see how they can potentially fit into our strategy there too.
Shiro [00:19:32]:
Yeah. And and speaking about content in different channels, not every school has the opportunity to, like, have a coach prime come in and explore X absolutely explode the media in terms of, you know, awareness and conversations going around him and in the CU Boulder football team. But like, how do you actually determine the balance of content about what you post? Because now, like, CU Boulder wasn’t a you know, it was a football school, but it wasn’t, like, the main channel that we would always talk about just because they weren’t super strong. But now that you have this, how do you figure out the blend of content, on your channels?
Noelle Seybert [00:20:10]:
Yeah. You know, I mentioned I was in my going into my 6th year, so this is my 3rd football coach. It’s been quite a journey. And then all of a sudden, this journey just, like, the prime effect was real. I mean, I it was overnight, just the attention that was put on to us, which is terrifying, but then it was also again, I mentioned I was competitive. I’m like, alright. Let’s go. Like, how can we still make sure that the main accounts of what we consider ourselves the main account, like the academic side of the house? We can’t ignore football, but we’re definitely not athletics.
Noelle Seybert [00:20:42]:
And so how can we use that together to our advantage? And so thinking about coach Prime and all the attention that we were getting last fall in all of the different events, you know, good, bad, or otherwise, the attention was quite the spectrum. And so how did we use that to our advantage? Well, I got to look at, like, that hub and spoke model. So how can we take content from schools that may or may not you think would be a good fit during football season or or a tie to it? And one example is music, like the College of Music. So how does where is music and football really fit in that like social Venn diagram? Like what is that in the middle? So you’ve got the College of Music and you’ve got code prime and football and athletics. Well, where do they meet? And so right in the middle, obviously, the marching band. Right? And so what we did around homecoming is that we made this, piece following a couple seniors who had been through 3 football coaches already. And what does playing in the band and then the marching band in the prime era, how does that feel? How is it different? This and that. That was a perfect example.
Noelle Seybert [00:21:44]:
College of engineering, you know, engineering and football, like, where does that intersect? Well, we had space day. We had, like, a space game, and we gave out right before the what is that called? Eclipse. So we gave out eclipse glasses. We had an astronaut on the field, chip Astro Chip was there. And so we that was a great way for us to be able to be, like, look at all these other things in space. Like, did you know we have x y z astronauts that, you know, have attended CU? And so for that week leading up to space camp the space game, we were able to talk about a school that otherwise people might not be able to see how that would that would fit in together. And so we can look at every single school and make kind of a a fit within that. The Rocky Mountain showdown for those in Colorado know that that’s the University of Colorado versus Colorado State.
Noelle Seybert [00:22:31]:
It’s a big in state rivalry. And this year, we worked with Colorado State University, and we did a whole week of content of how we were rivals on the field, but partners in innovation. And so then leading up to that week, we did a lot of things about quantum that we’ve done together, health that we’ve done together, various different topics that we’ve either had researchers work together, or, hey, they worked on this and we worked on this. Isn’t that cool? You know, we don’t we don’t have to be rivals all the time on the field. Great. But we work together for the state of Colorado, and so that’s a big that was a big effort for us to be able to work with them. It also bled nicely into our fan conduct campaign. And so it was like, hey, we’re rivals, but, like, let’s be nice to each other.
Noelle Seybert [00:23:15]:
So it was just a nice way to not be, like, scoldy, but, hey. Like, we’re we’re partners in a lot of different things except on the football field. And so it just allowed us to really look at all the different areas of content around this giant university and make things fit within that center area of a Venn diagram.
Shiro [00:23:34]:
Yeah. I I love this this, visual that you’ve created to help merge different social accounts together. I called it the social content Venn diagram, but, like, where do the pieces intersect over each other? And that’s fantastic. This actually brought up a memory of when I was a student at CU, the the snowboarding club. The CU snowboarding club does, like, on during their halftime show, they set up this, like, skateboard rail and you can, like, jam session it during the halftime show and it got televised and stuff. And, like, that’s the intersection of the snowboard club and the CU Boulder football team. Right? And so, like, that’s a great content piece for their club. So, like, I was like, okay.
Shiro [00:24:17]:
I I see where, like, things can blend together. I love your music example, right, with this the college music. So that was that was great.
Noelle Seybert [00:24:25]:
It’s always fun to try to find those nuggets too. You know, like, where how how is this work? Because we are 1 we’re 1 big house of brands, but we are house of brands. And so how do we all fit in together? And that the the competitive side of me really enjoys that.
Shiro [00:24:39]:
I like that. How house of brands. I’m currently watching the game of Thrones house of dragons. So it plays well nicely into my life.
Noelle Seybert [00:24:48]:
It’s not quite that violent, but
Shiro [00:24:50]:
Yeah. I know. Sorry. It’s it’s I just like the word house of, I guess. Okay. No. This is fantastic. So there’s there’s a lot of things going on at CU.
Shiro [00:24:58]:
Right? And so, like Yeah. Is is content just overflowing and you’re really everyday having to pick, like, alright. This post is good for Instagram. This one’s good for LinkedIn. And you’re just having to, like, pick and choose out of the hundreds of things going on, or are you are you choosing to also, like, actively search content yourself? Like, hey. We haven’t had enough of the College of Engineering, like, this month. We need to find some nuggets from there. Like, how what is your content process like?
Noelle Seybert [00:25:25]:
Yeah. And that that’s also seasonal and cyclical because in the summer, everybody, like right? After May 9th, it was just ghost town around campus. And so a lot it slows way down, and we call it the summer slump. And so we are desperate for content. You know? Hey. What’s going on? What kind of camps are coming? What’s going on here? What beautiful photos can we get that we typically can’t because there’s people everywhere? And so we look at it that way. Come fall, it becomes much more of a strategic approach of, like, oh, we can’t do too much of all of this information because we for example, you know, too much move in content because we aren’t only student based. We have all of these other people that follow us, and so we don’t wanna tire, you know, Shira, like, for you.
Noelle Seybert [00:26:09]:
You wouldn’t wanna only see move in information for 2 months from your alma mater because that wouldn’t make any sense. And so, like, yeah, I’ve been there, done that. We’re good. And so we have to make sure we’re balancing that. So the big the biggest place that we find content is CU Boulder Today, which is our, daily newsletter that goes out. And so that has various different audiences. We’ve got students. We’ve got faculty and staff.
Noelle Seybert [00:26:31]:
We have new buffs. We have grad buffs. All different types of content there. So we look at oftentimes what’s performed well on email for them or, conversely, what hasn’t, but needs attention. So then we’ll find a space for it to see, hey. Maybe the social side of the house can get that content out there that it needs to. And then I also just rely back on that hub and spoke. It doesn’t only go down.
Noelle Seybert [00:26:53]:
You know, I rely on a lot of people bringing things to my attention. So I always tell people that my outlook is a work hazard, and so it just teams me. And so that anything, any information that comes or events or cool things coming up, you know, please try to give me 10 days notice if you can. And it’s we understand things come up and you can’t do that, but then we can build it in to our different platforms. And or I follow a lot of them or I guess, and I follow a lot of them personally. And so then on LinkedIn, I’ll see specific colleges or schools or some of our deans posting things, and then I can log in to CU and amplify from there. And so it’s really just kind of a cacophony of content. You know? It’s just everywhere all the time, and it’s really being able to sift through that and find, you know, not the shiny object that we talked about.
Noelle Seybert [00:27:42]:
Just like there’s platform shiny objects, there’s content shiny objects. For me, that’s Chip the buffalo. I love him, but we can’t always post about him. And so we can’t always have photos of him, and so I really need to balance that out and take a lot of my personal biases out, and that’s where the data really
Shiro [00:27:57]:
helps. Thank you. Yeah. And Chip the buffalo, can you explain who Chip the buffalo is to that topic?
Noelle Seybert [00:28:01]:
Oh, yeah. I love talking to alums because I don’t have to explain it. Chip the buffalo is our costume mascot. And so when you see him around, he’s got this big nose. He’s got a yellow face. And then we have Ralphie the buffalo, and she’s our live mascot. So she runs at football games, and then Chip just creates mayhem wherever he goes. And if you look at one of our recent Instagram reels, him and our new chancellor met, and it was the most wholesome thing.
Noelle Seybert [00:28:24]:
I loved working on that video. I loved editing it. It was just if you need a wholesome side of the Internet, go check that
Shiro [00:28:31]:
out. That’s great. Well, thank you. I mean, I can just talk about this forever, but, I’ll I’ll move us on to our next topic, which is really, like, I think super, super important to marketing and especially higher ed marketing. So here’s my assumption, right? Everyone uses social. My dad uses Facebook. He’s a boomer. You know, gen alpha is using, I don’t even know, like a blend of TikTok and Snapchat and maybe be real.
Shiro [00:28:56]:
But everyone’s on social and it creates this, this thinking that I think everyone tends to devalue it or underestimate the difficulty of of running it right. And that naturally just devalues social media positions and maybe, like, how much how much, ROI social media actually delivers for higher end institutions. And so as a director of social, how do you track and measure and, you know, show the value of social media to your execs and to your to your leadership?
Noelle Seybert [00:29:30]:
Yeah. Any social media manager who’s worked in it for 6 months to however long feels this question deeply in their soul. And so it’s very much the you know? Well, you know, I have this. Just post this. Just do this. And it’s it’s not a bulletin board. Like, it’s it’s it’s a little harder than that. And I don’t just write tweets, right, or x posts, whatever they’re called now.
Noelle Seybert [00:29:52]:
And so it it you it’s hard how do I say this? It’s hard to show that value and not take it personally a lot of times. And so we, you know, we got into this industry knowing that there’s value in there. Some of us like myself, I was the young one, and they said, hey. Go run this new thing called Twitter. And I did, and somehow I made it a career, and 15 years later, here we are. But then others that are getting into it now and marketing students really do see that value in social media that in that community management, community engagement, meeting people where they are. And so the biggest way at previous institutions and especially here at CU, being as large as CU is, showing the data and really learning how to tell the story of that is has been the key to my success in terms of how to get social seats at the table and and showing that without, again, taking that personal level. And that’s very that’s very much easier said than done.
Noelle Seybert [00:30:49]:
But my undergrad is in sports broadcasting, and then I have a doctorate in quantitative marketing. So when you put those 2 together, I like to think that I can tell this story a little bit easier. I can look at all this data and and give it a narrative and not just have, you know, my leadership’s eyes glass over when they’re like, what is all of these percentages? And so it’s using tools like Looker to come up with better ways and more aesthetic ways to show off the data. All of that all of those Instagram, story clicks that we get through on on those UTM codes. What does that mean? Why is that important? And so it’s give it’s providing a narrative rather than just, like, here’s some data, you know, check it out. But it’s also being succinct. One of my favorite books is smart smart brevity, one of my favorite leadership books. And so really taking that to heart.
Noelle Seybert [00:31:35]:
You know? This is why you need to know it, and here’s what it is. Here’s what it was compared to last year. And so it’s showing either growth or decline and and owning the decline. You know? Sometimes we’re so scared to show something didn’t work when honestly, you can learn the most in things that didn’t work if you care to dig into it and to learn why.
Shiro [00:31:54]:
Smart brevity. I gotta check out this book. Because, yeah, I mean, as a marketer myself, I really struggle. Right? Especially if if I’m not generating leads and my content is is is like this podcast. Right? It’s it’s more broad, broad audience. It’s more brand awareness. I call it getting people into my orbit, for concept 3 d, but, like, that’s what I’m doing. Right? And how I can’t just share like, Hey, this post got 10,000 impressions.
Shiro [00:32:18]:
What does that mean is, is the hardest part of the story. Did you get 10,000 students to register for a class? The clear ROI is there, but like saying that, well, no, 10,000 people saw my piece of content. It’s really, it’s a lot harder to tell that narrative. But, if you tied to a story, like you said, And explain all the things that you, you do, it is easier to, to talk about ROI. And I just going back to that very first point about how you are actually like looking back to past year’s data and trying to like, all right, this worked last year. Let’s, let’s do this again. This didn’t work. Let’s change this day’s post out, like telling leadership that you’re going through all this process to to make posts.
Shiro [00:32:59]:
No. You’re not just, like, taking the first thing that comes in that’s you today and posting about that. It, I think, just shows that there’s a lot more to getting to that one post that’s public than meets the eye.
Noelle Seybert [00:33:11]:
Yeah. I think that’s the thing that people when they’re like, that’s a job when I tell them what I do. And yes. And it’s like, how much do you wanna fight that or or, you know, try to try to explain some people. You’re just like, I’m never gonna win you over. Others, it’s you know, I do have a fun job, and I have a lot of fun access at CU. And here’s you know? Okay. Yeah.
Noelle Seybert [00:33:30]:
I did. I went and filmed this big chip video with with the chancellor. You know? Well, what what was the goal, the objective? Like, what is that? Well, he’s new. So we introduced him and that’s this and that. And then we also filmed a bunch of other things that we can roll out later. And so we can have a little bit of fun and then layer in, you know, in that joyful content, really good information to get out and get in front of people. And that algorithm loves constantly being fed. And so we’re able to work in with that and all of the different pieces that come around with that.
Shiro [00:33:59]:
That’s great. Are you able to share any, like, results? I’m I’m just curious from, like, before and after, like, last year with coach prime, joining the CU team. I know that their account exploded, but, how did the academics you Boulder?
Noelle Seybert [00:34:17]:
Yeah. Their account went absolutely bonkers, and so that was really fun to watch. But, so me being me, I created the prime effect on the CU Boulder channels. I just wanted to see the differences, and so I started pretty small. You know, how many followers since we hired coach Prime to the spring game? You know? What did that look like, and how did that impact us? What did the growth look like? I was absolutely blown away, and then I started doing it like game over game and impressions and followers and all of that. So, looking at we’ll focus on Instagram. So from when we announced the hiring of Coach Prime on 12/3, 2022 to the spring game, which is our scrimmage that happens in April. And so from 12/3 2022 to April 22, 2023, we saw a 242% increase in impressions on Instagram alone.
Noelle Seybert [00:35:15]:
And so it was unbelievable to see that kind of growth. And when it comes to follower count from when we announced the hiring of Coach Prime on December 3, 2022 to our first game, which was September 16th 23, we saw an almost 41% increase in Instagram followers. And so it was just like, oh, okay. You know, here’s all of the attention. This is this is insane. And so that was to our first game. And then when we look to our final game, so, again, from December 3, 2022 to our final game in, November of 2023, we saw a 28% increase in followers just on Instagram. And so for us, we took that and ran.
Noelle Seybert [00:36:02]:
You know, how how can we use this? And that’s where that social Venn diagram came into play. And so when I look week over week, and so then oh, okay. So we did you know, we gained, just 1 week over the other, you know, 3% increase in in followers. Really might not seem like a lot, but the higher numbers that you have, it it’s harder to get more followers. Right? So it’s a it’s a games it’s it’s a numbers game. And so looking at all of that is it was just so much fun. And so if we’re only looking this one was my favorite too because hiring up coach Prime, we saw a huge increase, but then it kinda goes down. So if we only look at 1st game to last game, that’s it.
Noelle Seybert [00:36:42]:
We saw a 22% increase on Instagram followers. We saw an 8% increase on Facebook. On Twitter slash x, we saw 4%, and on LinkedIn, we saw 6%. And so all of our channels went up. Now can I attribute all of this to Prime? No. But it definitely didn’t hurt.
Shiro [00:37:02]:
Yeah. And, like, just just thinking about, like, if I was in leadership, just you, like, reporting on this data is is so valuable. Like, hey. This is what worked. This extra attention from athletics worked in our favor this time. Sure. And so just the fact that you’re creating these, reports and and getting super detailed and interested in the data, just I think is such a good way to measure and showcase the ROI that I think social media often gets devalued on. And so, you know, it’s it’s great that you you are keeping track of all this information.
Noelle Seybert [00:37:35]:
Yeah. I mean, when you put a a journalist in a role that also is a data person, hopefully, that person can tell a good story with the data and not just confuse people. There are many times I get called beautiful mind, though. Like, oh, no. I’ll back it up a little bit. That’s a little you’re you’re, oh, you’re confusing me because I get so excited. And as you can probably tell. So I have to really temper.
Noelle Seybert [00:37:56]:
Okay. Hold on. Be you know, they don’t talk in regressions. That’s not their language. It’s my language. So how can I make that make sense to others? And like I mentioned, that’s what I tell students when they’re wanting to get into social media, be sure that you can talk about data and you can talk about it eloquently and succinctly so you can get your point across and not confuse people. Because a lot of times, if if people are talking about data and they kinda word salad it, I don’t think they actually know what they’re talking about. Being able to explain it really quick and at general terms is is a skill that anyone in social really should should hone in on.
Shiro [00:38:30]:
Well, thank you so much. There you have it. That’s doctor Knowles Siebert. Where where can our listeners and followers connect with you to see what good work you’re doing?
Noelle Seybert [00:38:42]:
Yeah. So personally, you can find me on LinkedIn, one of my favorite channels. So, just Noelle Siebert. I’m the only one. And so I do not have pink hair in my photo, but I do have a shirt on, so you can find that one. And then if you wanna follow c Boulder at all, on all the channels, it’s just at c Boulder. And so you can find all of our different how we’re handling all the different platforms and the fun stuff that’s coming up. And we’ve got our first game in just over a month, So we’re strapping in and getting ready for new students and the new the new school year and the new football season.
Shiro [00:39:15]:
Oh, this has been really amazing. I I can’t wait to connect with you again to see, you know, what year 2 looks like with coach prime, but also just, like, look at at all the different things you’re doing.
Noelle Seybert [00:39:25]:
Right. Yeah. We’ve got coach prime. We’ve got the big twelve. We’re joining we’ve joined the big twelve, so that’ll be different. A new chancellor. What’s next for CU social is gonna be interesting. It’s gonna be a fun year.
Noelle Seybert [00:39:35]:
I’m excited.
Shiro [00:39:36]:
That’s great. Well, thank you so much again for joining the show, and thanks for audience for tuning in.
Noelle Seybert [00:39:41]:
Thanks for having me.
