“Everyone tries to create that Oreo moment when the lights went out at the Superbowl and the Oreo ad went up a few minutes later,” Director of Digital Marketing and Social Media Brad Lowrey said. “We want to be to be the Oreo of higher education, where other colleges are saying ‘I see what you did there, we need to do what they’re doing.’”
In the past year, Lowrey and his team have begun to make that happen. From 122,000 “total connections” — likes, followers, subscribers, etc. — in 2014 to 295,000 now, Hillsdale social media accounts have grown tremendously in a year.
Put in perspective of rankings, this means Hillsdale social media has jumped from the bottom 10 to the top 10 on both the Top 100 Liberal Arts College Rankings and a list of all private and public schools in Michigan. The long-term goal, according to Lowrey, is to make Hillsdale the most well-known classical liberal arts school in the world.
The social media team has worked to achieve this through defining the message of each of the accounts — Hillsdale’s main campus, online courses, and Imprimis — enhancing the story to present a realistic view of Hillsdale’s mission, and increasing the amount of content generated.
In the past, the three brands of Hillsdale advertised the same material. Now, however, a different student focuses on each of the brands in order to appeal to the appropriate audience.
“For Hillsdale Main, we talk about our students, our professors, and we tell their unique stories,” Social Media Coordinator Hannah Strickland said. “Something that has been really fun that we’ve done recently is highlighting Bon Appetit and the staff there. They’re all very passionate about what they do; they’re phenomenal chefs and they create dishes and have fun with it.”
Imprimis social media focuses on the speeches of the latest issue, while online courses attempts to facilitate conversation through discussion boards and controversial Facebook posts.
“We try to do things that are a little more edgy to start the conversation,” student marketing department worker Randy Keefe said. “One that got a lot of attention was ‘Were we founded on a Christian Nation?’ Everyone loves Dr. Arnn. Hannah was telling me that if there is a picture of Dr. Arnn with a picture on the post, it will automatically have a better response.”
In addition to creating content, Keefe is also responsible for monitoring comments several times a day and watching the online classes to produce more content. He and the other two student workers, all of whom joined the team this year, have aided in expanding the amount of content and therefore the audience.
The social platforms post an average of nearly 150 times per week, in comparison to a total of 22 tweets in 2014. There have been far more than 50 pictures of campus, and the blog is on track to have published 130 posts spotlighting profiles, students, and other parts of campus by the end of the year.
Some of the breakthrough videos have included The Freshman Pledge, The Good, The True, The Beautiful, and America the Beautiful. Combined, these three videos have almost doubled the number of total views on the YouTube channel. Lowrey believes these are a way to communicate Hillsdale’s mission and environment while evoking emotions, particularly of Hillsdale alumni.
“You have these big schools with lots of students and they’re not telling good stories,” Lowrey said. “They rest on just the fact that they’re huge and everybody should know about them. Hillsdale has a giant audience, and it’s just a matter of us connecting with them.”
