Andrew’s LinkedIn

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Shiro Hatori
Okay, hello, everyone. My name is Shiro and I will be your host today. And I’m really excited to cover today’s topic. I haven’t covered it in a while. But I know within higher ed and especially higher ed marketing, it’s always a top tier and top engaged topic. So today we’re going to be covering how focusing on the current student in your social media strategy can help really increase involvement in prospective students with alumni and with the community and really help the Venn diagram of all other audiences that you want to serve. And so I’m really excited for this topic. As our guest to speak on this, we have Andrew Castle, He is the senior sat Senior Social strategist at Middlebury College. Welcome to the podcast. Andrew.

Andrew Cassel
Thank you so much. It is an honor and a delight to be here. I’m really excited to talk about some of the things that we’ve learned and what we’ve experimented with successfully.

Shiro Hatori
Love it. Thank you. And as an icebreaker, I always ask Andrew, what do you love about higher ed.

Andrew Cassel
There’s two things I love about higher ed one is move in day. And when is commencement moving day, when you see families who are releasing their loved one, their most valuable resource their children out into the world to start this journey, whatever it’s going to be taking them to delight, the hope, the varying levels of fear and uncertainty about what is going to be happening in the future. I love that day. Because it really epitomizes the potential of why we want to work so hard to get students onto our campuses into our classrooms, whether those are in person, brick and mortar classrooms, or online classrooms. Because we really believe that higher ed is an opportunity to make lives better. So moving day is one of my favorite things, that commencement is the other because on that day, everybody again comes together leadership, faculty, students, the community, their friends, and families all show up to celebrate whatever they’ve accomplished whatever certificate or a graduation diploma that they’re getting, when they move on to the next step. So it’s those moments of change that really fuel my love of this work, the beginning, anything is possible. And the end, anything is even more possible. Now that I have this degree.

Shiro Hatori
No, I know we didn’t actually previously talk about this. But I love this topic around Movement Day and commencement day. It in terms of you know, social media strategy, how do you also like tackle both these very important days without throughout this calendar year?

Andrew Cassel
It’s practice is the way to get really like, there’s so much going on. There’s such energetic days, you feel like there’s no way that you can capture everything. And so it’s knowing, seeing what’s worked the year past, and then really iterating that and keeping that and going that focus. Same thing with commencement, so many things going on there. There is also a risk in these days, because we as higher ed communicators experience it every year in the academic cycle. So there’s always this temptation, what can we do differently this year? What can we do this year to make it special. And that’s a real risk, because you’re getting in the way of what you know works, because you want to make it a novelty for yourself. The thing that I keep in mind that I work with my teams to keep in mind is that on these days, it’s a new experience for the people that we’re talking about. Those first year students on moving date, this is a day unlike any other day on there, like we don’t need to make it special. It’s special enough for them already. Same with commencement. This, these people have never experienced this before. So it is knowing what works, getting the pictures, pictures, pictures out there, and getting out of the way to have them celebrate their day, in the last little part about both moving day. And commencement is for tactical, wise and strategy wise for the goal of telling the story of what it’s like to come here to encourage other students to come here is that user generated content, what are they sharing their stories about what they’re seeing what they’re doing, how are they tagging the school, and then repurposing that into your own Instagram story on your tick tock story, or getting permission to download those pictures and share them across whatever platform, maybe the place that you’re focusing on? So it’s celebrating those and keeping the idea that um, these days, it’s special for them. Just do your job. tell good stories. Don’t try to make it fancy. Just really Signal Boost their experience. I love that.

Shiro Hatori
And I’m curious, do you also use social as a way to communicate like, information about both those days as well, like maybe it’s like, hey, like we have a kind of thinking moving day, maybe there’s a moving day concert where students, you know, can get engaged and meet new folks on campus. You know, things like that what rate you’re communicating information, maybe it’s the location of graduation, when it comes to specific schools that are using social in a way to communicate to current students to parents to any, any other stakeholders as well.

Andrew Cassel
Absolutely. And as the platform’s have evolved over the past five, seven years, now you conclude like, you can put a link sticker in your Instagram story. So it’s always great to post a picture, this is happening, here’s a link where you can get more information where you can watch the live stream of commencement, where you can get a schedule of orientation events, and then you can split that content as well. One post is for students, this is what you’re going to be doing. Meanwhile, parents or caregivers or family members, whoever may be bringing the students accompanying them, they’re, I hesitate to say families, it’s not always family. Now there’s, you know, different different constructs of the support system that you bring with you. So there’s information for them as well. And you can split up that content, provide the links, and say, Are you the person who’s transporting this first year student here, here’s the things that you can do. If you’re a student here, here’s what your schedule is going to be like. So I absolutely use these platforms to communicate to audiences on those days, and they get great engagement. The Bitly link clicks are always through the roof. For those days, outliers statistic,

Shiro Hatori
you answered my question before you it’s like you read my mind. I was gonna ask like, you know, how’s that? How’s the engagement on those days, but it sounds like, you know, that’s a great way to measure what you’re where you’re strategizing and posting is actually resonate with your audiences. If you’re getting this click. So that’s really good to see in here. Awesome. Well, let’s, let’s jump back in a little bit more to our topic here. And you know, we talked a lot about your social media strategy and how that’s shifted over the last three years, the pandemic, and also just, you know, social media is moving lightning fast. So, I’d love for you to tell us a little bit more about, you know, what, what social media was like in 2019, and where it’s at today, and on the topic around of focusing really on the the current student body and the current student story.

Andrew Cassel
It sounds it’s so odd to feel like 2019 was a completely different universe in social media, but it was like it really really was compared to now. So when I came in, I started my work, I worked at a large public school in Alaska for a long, long time before I moved to Vermont, to move to Middlebury. So as I moved to Middlebury in December of 2019, I was super excited to explore a new community to tell the stories of private liberal arts college, that’s just four years long commit very, very focused time. So I was eyes wide open, ears wide open to listen to what the community was telling me to what they wanted out of their social media channels, and how they could use these platforms to celebrate all the things that are happening at Middlebury College. Then, few months after I started, of course, the COVID pandemic just completely changed when we think of his work, and higher ed, and all of those things. And we were thrown into almost constant crisis communications, just letting people know, okay, we’re shutting down campus sending people home, here’s the information that you need. It was just pure, pure information about what we’re going to do. And then are we going to come back in the fall, then announcements about what the fall protocols are going to be like, and then also leading into the summer of 2020, with so much social disruption and considerations about what higher ed is and higher ed’s role in systemic racism and this the systems of oppression in the United States and that reckoning for while I work in one of these things that’s been so key for upholding these ideas, there was a lot to think about a lot of change throughout that summer. And then students were as school was beginning. In the fall of 2021. It was, what do these students need? What are they saying they would like? And one of the things that we heard so much from students and their people, their support structures, where they are missing out on this experience of walking out of a classroom, seeing someone that you met at a party the weekend before, going to a coffee shop, getting a coffee, seeing a poster on the wall for an event that night, going to that event that night, and then just casually along the way, developing this friendship that could last for decades into the future. So we don’t have that we’re wearing masks, were all remote in our classrooms or not even on campus in the fall, this big disruption of what a community usually gets at a college campus to meet each other. So looking at what the audiences were saying, what our communities were saying, we want to find ways to connect. So well, we have these tools that are built to connect networks, social networking tools. So we said, Okay, this is what they want. They want to know how let’s just do give that to them. When we hadn’t, we didn’t have strategic documents about doing this, we didn’t have experience doing it, we just said, this is what they need. And this is what we can provide at this time, sort of there were no rules, because this is all new. And what’s it going to be like? So we really leaned into using the story aspect of platforms, that 24 hour cycle, here’s things that are happening tomorrow and the next day, and really embracing these student voices that were creating these contents about the events that they were having, and producing and bringing to campus, rather than gatekeeping them and being like, Oh, that’s a flyer, that’s a poorly designed Canva post, I would never share that we got out of our way of gatekeeping our platforms, and really uplifted these voices that previously might not have been showcased in that way. And what we found over the months leading into the fall of 2021, spring of 2022, into the summer of 2022, and into the fall of 2022, focusing on what students were saying to each other, sharing that into our platforms, signal boosting that celebrating that that making that a key element of it. We saw those audience demographics rise, current students aged between 18 and 24. On our platforms, those audiences rose by 135 percentage points over those 18 months. Students are the demographic of 13 to 17. It’s hard to track those. But there are a couple platforms that can do that, we saw that engagement percentage rise almost a full percent, from below 5%, to almost a full 6% of our Instagram followers were of the ages 13 to 17. Over the time that we had this strategy of uplifting and focusing on students, current students. So we’re going to talk about what we’re doing here. And then we also saw alumni, young alumni, graduates demographics go down. That did not concern us, because they have their own place. They have their advancement, and there is an alum networks out there for them. So saying that, okay, we’re going to really focus on our current students, the prospective students went along for the ride, we were so excited to see that growth. And to see this strategy, which started out of a need to support our community turned into successful content marketing and awareness raising for prospective students. Like whoa, there’s no going back. Now, this really works. And we’re gonna stick with it. So it was listening, changing tactics, adopting a strategy that will get people to connect, and then watching the audience numbers grow has been so rewarding since then. So we haven’t looked back. We stick with that, and has been great, great success. And I’ve heard more and more from current students with their organizations. Can you post this? Can you let people know about this, we would love for you to let them which was not happening before. But once they saw that we were a voice for them, not just sharing beautiful pictures. But sharing the day to day events was really rewarding. And when I talked to some of the people on my team about why this may be when we’re starting to analyze some of this data, why would prospective students follow more if we’re leaning more into storytelling using flyers and event information, and I firmly believe that it’s because unlike a view book, or a website, or a webinar that says we have great events, you could see what events were happening all of the little things, a lecture and appearance from a faculty member, a fun thing a student organization was doing a club for first generation students. So it wasn’t just this idea of we have things to do. A prospective student could see day to day, what they would be doing if they chose this place to embrace the opportunity. That is what I think really resonated.

Shiro Hatori
And when you mean see, like what an example of like, maybe you said a club for first generation students like a video of one of the meetings, or like a picture from one of the meetings. Is that what you mean by that? And

Andrew Cassel
yes, and so there’s two parts of that. One is I tried to share we’re doing this event. And then after the event, look, we did the event. So if you’re following along, you’ll say oh, we have this And then here are the people that went, That’s the huge storytelling, content marketing. Do I see myself at this place? Are they showing me images of people who are like me there? So you’re absolutely right. It’s following those student organizations and sharing that student generated content into our story. They look, these are the people that here, this is what they’re doing. This is what you will be able to do when you come here. And the other part, because you mentioned the Venn diagram, part of it, that was another thing that we found really exciting, was because it’s this thing, it has one of those clever higher ed rhymes town gown, you know, the communities that support brick and mortar schools, sometimes they don’t know what’s happening in these buildings. So by sharing these event information into the stories, community members can see oh, that’s what’s going on in there. Sometimes, current students and the people who care about them their support structures, you know, a student is busy doing their schoolwork, they’re living the day to day life, they’re not always posting other places where the people who care about them see all the time. But if they’re following the school, then we get to share those pictures into our story in our storytelling, I cannot describe how many messages I’ve seen from parents, thank you so much for showing me this. It really helps me know what the person I care about most in the world is doing. And I really, really appreciate that. So for developing the broad community of the school as well, it’s been great for all of those things with that strategic and tactical focus of what’s happening on the day to day lives of students.

Shiro Hatori
But yeah, I think we were talking about, you know, all these net outcomes that we weren’t expecting from us focusing really on the students, right, and creating content for the students, which has helped connect even parents to understanding what their kids or their students might be up to. And so I thought that was really interesting.

Andrew Cassel
The COVID, the pet, the pandemic disruptions, really helped sort of clear the field for whatever was possible. You know, the things that the the best practices didn’t know, we’d never practiced these things before. Going with the status quo of content that had worked in the past, wasn’t going to work. Because we didn’t have the the events, the things that have the academic calendar was so off, even breaks in regular breaks of the semester, where we didn’t send people home, everybody stayed. And so there was so many things that were how do we do anything now that it could was really relying on? What ideas do you have? How can we listen to what our audiences want, and then serve them? Listen, first focus on what they wanted to see. And then it was only months later that we could take a step back and be like, Wow, this actually achieves some of these goals. So it was a great lesson for us of when you say, I don’t worry about what we’ve done before, what do we need to do now? It can really change things for the better.

Shiro Hatori
Love it and one thought I had before is, you know, really focusing on a student, you said, you’re getting a lot more interactions, right? Like, can you see more of this? Or can you post about this, it sounds like you’re really interacting with the student body more through social channels, which maybe didn’t happen as much as before? That’s an assumption I’m making. But do you think that this is also a tool to digitally build more community? At a campus, even as a whole, like in maybe this is very far stretch, and I don’t know how you would actually measure this, but like, you know, whenever I think building community, that helps support, you know, whoever’s involved with it right to tag along for longer is to stick around for longer because you meet other people, right? It’s building community, you feel more belonging in a place for yourself and trying to get to is like, you know, the business outcome that do you think that like, in Edinburgh, you’re also helping to retain more students and help those students persist throughout their education as well?

Andrew Cassel
I think, yes, is the short answer. And the longer answer is, if you’re in a student organization, and no one knows about you, but you guys love it, and then you share but suddenly you see it on the institutional channels. There you are, and you can you know, maybe people are being interested in recruiting suddenly you feel representation matters. And the more variety of student organizations that you can represent on your official channels, feels like oh my gosh, they see me. They share about me, what I’m doing is important. My connection with this place has strengthened so without a doubt, sharing student voices, uplifting these clubs and organizations that could be very, very soon specific niche organizations does make them feel like, Oh, this is a place that I belong. I’m not just here writing it out. But this is a part of me. And then after I leave from here, I can give back, I’ll stay here longer. Because this they know me here. I’m getting to know people. So I do believe that it can help with retention, and then giving back and support from that and development afterwards. How do you measure that air? That is the great question. How do you measure community? Is it by followers? Is it by requests to post things? Is it by retention rates? If retention rates go up? I’m pretty sure the registrar’s are going to come to the Social Media Manager be like, Wow, thank you so much for posting about that club. No doubt. That’s why we increased retention. There’s that’s that’s one of the real difficulties of social communications is how do we tie it to these real world outcomes? And all we can do is track it through web traffic engagement comments that we get back, and then really being able to analyze that in a way like how are we contributing to the success?

Shiro Hatori
Right? Knowing I was just like, you know, how can we measure that, you know, maybe there’s data from 2019, around like how many engagements, your postcard and how many messages direct messages you got. And you can compare that maybe to today, and you can effectively say, we got this much more. And so effectively, we’ve we’ve increased our engagement with the current student body, however many X our big fat percentage, which was one thought I had as well.

Andrew Cassel
And as part of that, if you’re thinking about adjusting your strategy to do more of this kind of thing, set up those goals. At the beginning, we had the goal of we wanted people to know what was going on. And we felt that we can achieve that by sharing some of these events. But the goal if the goal is we want to increase prospective student audiences that are this demographic ages 13 to 17. By 1%, that is definitely a thing that you can track and give us some time, you know, give it the months that it takes to do to really analyze the strategy, don’t give up on it too soon. But we’ve found great, great success with that. So setting those goals, as always very important, before you embark on a change of strategy.

Shiro Hatori
I love that I’m actually happy to move slightly into this topic around what I call ROI, right, but return on investment, like how do you communicate this type of information to your managers or to your executive to the board, you know, to go to them and say, Hey, like we saw a 1% increase in prospective students, you know, and so, like, how do you how do you come to the board or to your managers with this type of information,

Andrew Cassel
the return on investment is a strange thing to talk about when it comes to the overarching social media job. Because one of the things that has a conversation has ever had with peers and friends and mentors, is you can’t get a return on an investment unless you’ve made an investment. And so each image will post this is a this we could talk about this a lot is is there an investment in just making a post and there’s always that thought that well, you investing your time into doing the post. But one of the things that I’ve come to understand and sort of think about from the point of view of just me making the post is that’s the job that I’m doing. That’s the return on investment for the people that are paying my salary, I’m doing the thing, they are investing in me, that is the return on investment. If I was spending money on an Instagram post, and I was spending $500 on it, then I would be more interested in measuring, is this selling tickets? Is this getting people to apply? Like now I really want that return on investment. So because you’re making an investment with money. So I think of it as how can I talk about the job that I am doing on a day to day basis to the leaders that I work with the team members that I work with, that might not do social as much as I do. That is how I say a return on investment. So I do a weekly report. So I sort of choose something a highlight from that week. It’s either a question that somebody’s asked on Reddit. It’s interesting data that I’ve gotten from our measuring tool, it’s, you know, following maybe there’s an ongoing issue that I’m following that throughout the week to see what people are saying about brand management and brand awareness. So I pick one of these key things from each week. And then I write a little email that goes through a bunch of people. And in there I outline hey, here’s the thing. Here’s what I see. Here’s my analysis of the thing. And then here what here is how it’s going wanting to change or influence what we’re doing next. So it’s providing these updates and this insight this window into my world that really demonstrates the return on the investment of hiring me hiring this position. And it’s more than just me as person, it’s just the position that I’m in right now. And whoever is lucky enough to get this position next, you know, all this sort of stuff. So it is having a full time person doing social media communications is an investment. What is the return on that investment that they’re making my position, you get someone who can look at what’s going on to say, hey, you know, Yik, Yak was really blown up this week, people were talking about how much they liked this event on Yik Yak, I’m going these places because you don’t have to, because you can trust that I’m gonna be there, I’m gonna see the things that are important. And then returning that information to you. That is really the ROI measurement of my day to day job, individual campaigns, paid stuff that has a very, very different return on investment and the more literal meaning of it. So that is, are you getting the clicks, the engagement, the money that people are paying out there? I

Shiro Hatori
love it. And I think this segues perfectly into our next topic around, you know, the channel that might be a little less talked about in higher ed, especially in social media marketing. So LinkedIn. Right, we talked about LinkedIn. Our previous discussion was, like, you said that LinkedIn is actually your biggest following account. And it’s one of your most active accounts. And I thought that was interesting that you’re investing so much time into it. Because my perception is LinkedIn isn’t a tool until after college, right? It’s when you’re building your career, you’re building your profile, because it’s really a career advancement tool. In a say it’s becoming more of a social tool. But you know, I’ll tell you, I’ll let you speak to it. That was my assumption. But I know you’re investing more time into LinkedIn now.

Andrew Cassel
I am. So when I first started tracking the metrics of the platforms, they hand me the keys to these Middlebury platforms, like, here you go, run with it, do this do do your thing. And just like Angela Bassett, I was going to do the thing. And what was that going to be like? And so I was the first metrics I got was, let’s look at the the follower accounts of all the platforms that we have access to what’s out there, from YouTube, to Pinterest, all those things like which one, and then Wow, we had over 37,000 people that were following on LinkedIn, which was above Instagram, which was I think, at that time, about 15, or 16 17,000. I was very lucky to get an Instagram that had over 10,000 followers when I was I was like, wow, that’s a lot to think about. But LinkedIn was the most just pure follower account that really grabbed my attention. And so I started sharing content there to say, Okay, there’s people here, you know, you go where your audiences are, that’s one of the tenants of sort of digital marketing, go where they are, if there’s 1000s of them here. What can we do with them. So started sharing content there. And the engagement on that content was significantly more than on traditional platforms that have similar content, like Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram is a different sort of thing in itself. But LinkedIn, I saw this people really were welcoming content from there. So it’s like, okay, let’s spend some really some time here, really looking and seeing what could work on this platform. Again, this is all the time when rules are out the window. Because we’re all remote. We have these platforms, what can we do to help build community on LinkedIn? So the more that I shared there, the more I got back. And I found that algorithm of LinkedIn really supports a cadence of more content than other platforms did, because it took it and split it up for people who were engaging with it. So that was great. Then I was like, Okay, I see people are liking the content. Who are these people? Let’s look at some of this audience. What are they? And LinkedIn gives you the chance to click on the people and see their profile. And I was surprised to see more than I imagined that these were people who are saying they are seniors in high school, or first year students, people who are about to start at Middlebury there’s their careers like wow, okay, this is not I just I’m 35 Looking for my next job. This is I’m 18 already thinking about what I look like online to prospective employers. So what I saw from that was this huge knowledge and understanding of how these tools work for people who are in the classes of 2025 2026 2027 2020, that these younger generation Z people, these now up and coming generation Alpha people, they’re so aware that this is the tool to use to show off how I can be as a professional, no matter and I was, this is, today, I was reading these stories about how just today now admissions counselors are like get published in a professional peer reviewed journal. Like that is going to be a differentiator for you as a student to be a published in a journal. Like that is not something that ever any counselor would have ever said to me as I was in high school, get into peer reviewed journal. No, it was, you know, get some good grades that do well on the SATs. But with those with the test optional, now more of the thing that people are moving away from LinkedIn profiles becoming more important to show off the work that you’ve done your extracurricular work, the community work that you’ve done as a high schooler, to really put a name for yourself out there and become this living document. That’s not me with my friends on Instagram, because you’re gonna lock that down to be private. It’s not me on Facebook, I’m probably not even on Facebook, like other people have in the past, but LinkedIn, I can present myself in a new way. So your apps, I shared the same sort of Who are these audiences for this content? Wow. Those are people that we want. Those are prospective students who are starting to present themselves in shape themselves and learn about the school. This LinkedIn now becomes very, very important and powerful content marketing for recruiting and enrolling, and then admissions and getting people to deposit and to come, because it’s a chance to show what happens next. As a higher ed marketer, I’m always struggling, like, what is our product? What am I selling? It’s not a shoe, I’m not marketing bottled water, I’m not marketing, a t shirt, you know, what am I marketing? What is the thing that I’m really what is the call to action, really get people to do. And higher education is all about opportunity, it could be the opportunity to go to a concert, it could be the opportunity to go to a lecture from an author, it could be the opportunity to get a job that is going to provide support for yourself and your family. And that opportunity is what higher ed really is marketing that is our product. So the LinkedIn part was a way to showcase this product opportunity in a way that it was like, these are the places you can go to work. If you come here, you can be a doctor, you can be a working poet, you can be a playwright, you can be a field researcher on the front lines of the climate crisis, you can be in the world of finance, using high finance to make the world a better place and to affect social change. You can be a potter, you know, whatever it is that you want to do all these opportunities, because look at all of these graduates and the things that they’re doing. LinkedIn is a way that brings all of that together and tells that story in a really exciting way and provides the users themselves the power of LinkedIn, to connect with the people that they’re interested in. Hey, I saw you on LinkedIn.

Shiro Hatori
I love that. And are you sharing the same types of stories, these student focused stories on LinkedIn as well, maybe it’s going back to the start of a conversation. Maybe it’s a conversation or interview with a student at commencement day who just finished their their education and Middlebury like is that the type of content you’re sharing out on LinkedIn as well.

Andrew Cassel
LinkedIn is definitely about the students successes. And the opportunities, like the big events that are coming as well and making an event on LinkedIn for those things, or sharing the image of the person who’s presenting. Here’s this faculty member, they’re doing this hip hop symposium, here’s all the people that you’ll be able to meet at the hip hop symposium. So it does keep that focus on this for you here, right now. And that if you’re a prospective student, you’re seeing oh, we’re talking to people who are here. That’s what I’m going to get. If you’re a graduate, like, Oh, look at that stuff that’s happening there. Now, I loved my time there. I didn’t I wish they had had that when I was there. That’s the thing I really, really like to see is people saying, oh, man, I wish they had had that when I was there. That shows a prospective student who sees that same content. Oh, they’re evolving and changing the things that they’re doing. And that’s one of the risks of higher ed. Is it just gets stuck doing the same thing over and over and over again. But it’s a changing community. It’s a changing culture. And we are changing along with it.

Shiro Hatori
I love that. It’s that’s amazing. And thank you so much for all the all the knowledge sharing all the stories you told today. I think it’s really helpful. LinkedIn, it’s good to know that LinkedIn has been more helpful as well. I was wondering where some of our listeners could connect with you and your

Andrew Cassel
LinkedIn is a great place to connect with me. I’ve also my Mastodon instance is the place that I also share some stuff on there and that’s home. I’m at home dot social mastodon. Maybe not everybody’s on Mastodon, but I have come to really love that social network. But LinkedIn is definitely by far the place to connect with me. I share a bunch of stuff there and talk about all the things that I’m thinking about and exploring.

Shiro Hatori
Amazing. Well, thanks again for joining us today. Hopefully it’s not last and thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. We have another exciting episode of next week as well. So stay tuned in.

Andrew Cassel
Thank you very much!