One of the scariest aspects of launching a Snapchat channel can be finding the time to generate new posts. With other social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter, it’s easy to schedule content in advance through management systems like Sprinklr or Hootsuite, but Snapchat presents a challenge for marketers since the most effective posts come in the form of live stories.
I work in Boston University’s Office of Admissions, and we officially launched our Snapchat channel, applytobu, just over a year ago on May 6, 2016. We started advertising it right before Commencement and posted during the ceremony. After that, we tried to keep the content fresh by posting shots of campus but quickly learned that we couldn’t be everywhere at once. And unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of material to share since most of our students were gone for the summer. Not everyone was away though…
Approaching Those Who Know Snapchat Best
Each summer, our office hires about 20 students to work as Admissions Ambassadors at our reception center, the starting location of campus tours. At the beginning of their training, I’ll meet with them to provide an overview of our social media efforts, and in 2016, I noticed there was a lot of enthusiasm around Snapchat. I asked if anyone might be interested in doing what we called a Terrier Takeover, meaning students could have full rein of our account for the day. This was in May and by the end of the week, I had volunteers to host weekly takeovers through mid-July.
Feeling like I was on to something, I also approached some of our School and College marketing specialists who had students on campus working as Orientation Advisors. After just a few short weeks, I had enough volunteers to keep our channel fresh with new content throughout the summer.
Trust Your Students… But Give Them Some Guidelines
At this point, you might be getting nervous. That’s a lot of trust we’re putting in our students. The good news is that our volunteers see hosting as a privilege so I can’t say I’ve been overly worried about relinquishing control. In the entire year that we’ve featured Terrier Takeovers, I’ve only taken down two posts. That’s a pretty good track record when you consider the fact that we’ve had over 80 takeovers.
Still, it’s always a smart idea to provide an outline on what should be covered. Essentially, I’ll explain that our hosts should provide a real life look at their experience while also promoting BU and Boston. I usually ask students to start by introducing themselves and close by signing off. From there, I offer some tips on what they should cover. For our Admissions Ambassadors, I might tell them to Snap when they’re leading a tour. Or if it’s an engineering student, I would suggest getting some footage inside a lab. Overall, I want our students to have fun so I try to let them be creative. That being said, I do remind them that we have high school students AND parents following so they need to be mindful. Anything they wouldn’t want their own parents or future employers to see should not be posted.
I also give students some guidelines for working on social media. These include:
- Be professional.
- Nothing is really private on social media.
- If you’re not sure how to reply, ask.
- Be thoughtful when it comes to using BU acronyms. A lot of our audience is made up of prospective students so they might not know, for example, that CAS means our College of Arts & Sciences.
- If you’re posting a video with sound, listen to it before posting — you never know what the background might pick up.
- If you’re putting text on your photos, double-check it for typos and errors.
- Our main audience is made up of prospective freshmen and transfer students. Keep that in mind when posting.
- Check out some of our past takeovers on YouTube for inspiration.
- Lastly, have fun!
Finally, I provide the password right before a takeover and change it after. Again, it’s not that we don’t trust our students. This is just a good practice for protecting your account. It’s possible that students could forget they’re logged in after their takeover is complete. This prevents them from accidentally sharing anything they didn’t mean to.
Putting Our Plan Into Motion
Emily Kausch (CAS’17) graciously hosted our first takeover on June 8, 2016. Since then, we’ve had no shortage of student interest when it comes to takeovers. Our hosts have included Orientation advisors, students studying abroad, sorority sisters, theater majors, and athletes while our coverage has included events like Commencement, the Beanpot, Open House, and the New England Patriots victory parade. One of our students, Adrienne Novak (Questrom’19), enjoyed her takeover so much that she became our Snapchat intern. I think students will always be more familiar with Snapchat than our staff — namely because they live and breathe the app everyday — so I think it’s great to utilize their help when possible.
I’m sometimes asked if it’s hard to find students to host, and it’s not as challenging as you might think. Now, we’re even getting requests for takeovers. College students like Snapchat and use it regularly so volunteering for a takeover doesn’t feel like a hassle to them.
I am also fortunate to have a number of coworkers who are very familiar with Snapchat and were up for hosting takeovers as well. Fall for most of our team in Admissions means travel season, so my colleagues posted on the road from places as varied as California and Amsterdam. One of my favorite moments from our staff was when our Senior Assistant Director, Liam McCartney, hosted a Q&A session in a cab ride between Rio de Janeiro school visits.
In total, more than 60 members of the BU community hosted takeovers for us last year and — added bonus — our marketing team no longer needed to be everywhere at once.
Promoting Your Channel
It isn’t enough to just have great content; you’ll need to promote your Snapchat account, too. Here are some ideas that have helped us build our audience over the last year:
- Cross-promote your Snapchat feed on your other social media channels. We advertise every takeover with a tweet and Instagram post highlighting some of the content.
- Create a hashtag to tie your Snapchat takeovers together and make them more easily searchable. We use #TerrierTakeover.
- Include a link to your Snapchat profile in emails. Bonus points if you’re able to tie a takeover to the content of an email.
- If you have a large captive audience, make the most of it. Our Admissions reception center sees hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. By promoting our channel during presentations and placing table cards with our QR code in the lobby, we’ve gained hundreds of more followers.
- Save your best snaps and repurpose the content. Terrier Takeovers don’t have to go away in 24 hours. Here’s one example from Jamey Miller (COM’20), a member of BU On Broadway, that we shared on our YouTube channel:
In Summary…
If you’re still hesitant about whether or not you should join Snapchat, I would suggest looking at where your target audience concentrates their social media usage. If you work in Admissions, you’ll probably find that being on Snapchat is a necessity. It’s currently our fastest growing platform; in just over a year, we have more than 4,000 followers. And of those followers, about 2/3 of them view all of our posts. How’s that for great engagement? Our latest snaps average around 2400 views, and if you compare that to other social media channels, Snapchat is number one when it comes to viewership.
But if you don’t believe me, you can always look at other data. According to the 2016 Noel-Levitz E-Expectations Report, which is a great resource for anyone working in admissions marketing, Snapchat leads in students’ regular daily use and is expected to see growth in its use as a college search resource as more institutions utilize the platform.
I think part of the reason our channel has been successful is because prospective students crave authenticity. And we’ve tried to give them just that. There’s nothing more exciting than hearing that a potential future Terrier had a conversation with one of our ambassadors via Snapchat. That means it’s working!
This post originally appeared on the BU Social Media blog.