Social Media in a Mobile Context

Joel Pattison is associate director for creative services at William & Mary.

Social media and mobile—both are popular topics for anyone involved in web communications. While it's easy to find opinions on both subjects, there seems to be less commentary about their intersection and overlap. Social media and mobile are closely related, but it takes guidance and planning to make them work together in harmony. How do you engage using social media on the mobile platform? I'll give you some insights from our efforts at William & Mary.

Some social media, like Foursquare, are inherently tied to mobile devices. William & Mary embraced Foursquare from an early date—the college opened an account in September 2010. To facilitate interaction with our Foursquare community, we created and consolidated check-ins for campus venues and added photographs to our most popular check-in spots. We worked with the campus bookstore, computer store and coffee shops to offer specials and discounts to anyone who checked in using Foursquare. And with the cooperation of undergraduate admission, we borrowed interesting facts from our campus tour for prospective students and placed tips in the relevant buildings. Foursquare is just one piece in the rapidly expanding geo-location space—Michael Stoner recently blogged about the use of SCNVGR for admission events.

But what about social media platforms that aren't directly tied to mobile devices? At William & Mary, we pursued several strategies for promoting social media interaction with mobile users. Our most successful method was promoting campus-wide events—and associated hash tags, photographs and Facebook commentary—through a button on our mobile website. During homecoming this year, we placed a special event button on our mobile site for the two weeks surrounding homecoming weekend. The button served as a mobile aggregator for tweets, pictures, Facebook posts, videos and blog entries related to homecoming. We also provided buttons on our mobile site for commencement and orientation. We know from observation and analytics that these social media event buttons are some of the most popular content on our mobile site, despite being available only for short periods of time.

Cross promotion between social media and mobile works both ways—social media channels can also be used to build momentum for mobile websites and mobile applications. In early 2011, William & Mary released a game that allowed students and alumni to dress up the school mascot in different outfits. Users could save their creations and post them to Facebook, thus generating social media buzz around the newly released app.

Social media and mobile devices should work hand-in-hand, but it doesn't always happen automatically. With a mix of careful planning and experimentation, you can leverage mobile devices to expand your social media footprint.

SCVNGR Treks Augment Admission Events

Michael Stoner is the president of mStoner (mStoner.com), a marketing firm that works with education institutions.

Soon, prospective students staring at their mobile phones on your campus may not be texting their BFFs, but participating in a game that's designed to introduce them to the college—and increase their interest in applying to and attending your institution.

Early adopters in admission offices across the country are experimenting with SCVNGR, a mobile gaming platform, for a variety of admissions-related purposes. Their experience suggest that teens—and parents—enjoy a challenge while they're visiting campus and participating in other activities.

SCVNGR is used by more than 400 colleges and universities around the United States, museums like the Smithsonian, art galleries and businesses like Dunkin’ Donuts. Participants in a SCVNGR trek take part in challenges (e.g. take a picture of the library clock and upload the image), earning points for each challenge. SCVNGR can be played on any mobile device via text message or by using a free iPhone or Android app.

A trek consists of a number of linked challenges. Participants can play casually by taking part in a couple of challenges or they can play more seriously, competing with each other to accumulate points, often in order to win prizes.

Colleges and universities develop SCVNGR treks for many purposes, including alumni engagement. Given the teen penchant for video games, it’s unsurprising that admissions offices are looking closely at it. Here are some ways in which admission offices are using SCVNGR.

Complementing In-Person Events

Both Clarkson University and Penn State University created SCVNGR treks to give attendees at admissions events something to do that's less structured than the typical agenda.

“At Clarkson, our goal was to teach participants things that they wouldn’t hear on a campus tour or learn throughout the rest of the day.” said Jessica McPherson, a staff member in marketing and external relations. “We had approximately 600 students and their families on campus for a jam-packed day of events. Knowing the schedule, we decided that if we were going to have a SCVNGR trek on such a busy day, it would have to coincide with event locations and stay quite simple." The trek had five challenges in three different buildings.

At least 60 people participated. "We thought that was great! We even had parents playing. We were surprised that so many participants played via text message instead of with the app." McPherson added, "People loved the prizes and the idea that they learned something that others might not know."

[Learn more about SCVNGR Treks at Clarkson and see SCVNGR's case study about the Clarkson trek.]

Penn State developed a series of treks to supplement its summer visit event. Jenna Spinelle, an admissions counselor, explained, "Penn State undergraduate admissions used SCVNGR for 'Spend a Summer Day.' We bring almost 10,000 students and families to our University Park campus over six days in July and August to learn more about what Penn State has to offer. Our trek included challenges at some of our landmark locations around campus (the Nittany Lion Shrine, University Creamery) and other areas that we wanted to highlight (e.g. campus computer store, information fair with student organizations). Several hundred people participated over the course of six days, representing about 10 percent of total attendees."

[Spinelle wrote about the university’s experience in “Spending a Summer Day with SCVNGR.”]

Augmenting (or Replacing) In-Person Tours

At Dartmouth College, SCVNGR treks are being used to augment in-person campus tours. The admissions office at Dartmouth created seven SCVNGR treks, highlighting different aspects of campus life so that visitors have something to do when campus tours aren't operating.

In a post on the Wired Campus blog, Josh Keller observed that Dartmouth tours simply can't accommodate the more than 20,000 campus visitors each year. Using SCVNGR, Dartmouth develops treks around special-interests like sustainability in addition to highlighting campus landmarks like the library.

Additionally, John Beck Jr., senior assistant director of admissions at Dartmouth, noted, "Many low-income teens are more likely to access the Internet over their phones than high-income teens, so we’re not shutting out a part of our population by socioeconomic means.”

Other institutions, like the University of California Santa Barbara, offer links to SCVNGR right from their campus tours website.

Keys to Success: Swag, Marketing & Mobile Access

Both McPherson and Spinelle commented on the importance of awarding prizes for playing SCVNGR. Clarkson University erected a booth in the student center to distribute prizes to players, handing out a variety of Clarkson items such as Frisbees, coffee mugs, bumper stickers and pen sets. Penn State gave a small prize to anyone who stopped by its social media table and showed that they had completed at least one challenge. Each day, it picked one person from the competitors to receive a gift bag of Penn State and SCVNGR t-shirts, water bottles, sunglasses and other swag.

Advance publicity and on-site help with how to use SCVNGR boost participation rates. Penn State started promoting its trek a few weeks before the actual visit day using Facebook, Twitter and an email reminder that went to students who’d registered. Both Penn State and Clarkson produced small flyers explaining the trek and how to participate.

But on-site, in-person promotion could help too. McPherson notes, "We missed an opportunity to educate potential participants on SCVNGR. The accepted students had between one and two hours of downtime depending on when they arrived and registered on campus. Having a table set up next to the registration table would have been ideal to fill that void in activities and to teach students and families about SCVNGR."

Both Penn State and Clarkson plan to expand their use of SCVNGR next year. For those who are thinking about initiating a SCVNGR trek, McPherson advises, "Have some goals in mind, both for the outcome of the trek (were people glad they played?) and for the trek itself (what should a participant get out of playing?). Starting out, qualitative goals are equally as important as quantitative. We tried to get a lot of feedback so that we can continue to improve our treks and challenges."

She also noted one particular issue faced by her rural campus—not all mobile phones work in Potsdam, N.Y. "We did not anticipate that we would have a lot of students who were unable to receive mobile coverage and therefore unable to use their phones at all." Resourceful Clarkson students saved the day for users who wanted to play SCVNGR but did not have cell phone service, writing the challenges down and posting the answers for them. "The people they helped were especially grateful and we learned a valuable lesson—next time we will print out a few challenge sheets in case this happens again."

Taking the Geosocial Leap

Matthew Herek currently serves as the assistant director of young alumni in the office of alumni relations and development at Northwestern University.

When Foursquare debuted at South By Southwest in 2009, the concept of "checking-in" at different venues was a novel one. A close circle of friends could keep tabs on each other via an app. My own experience was that people were hot and cold on the concept. Either you thought it was fun and worthwhile or you thought it was a gigantic hassle and an invasion of your privacy.

As often seems to be the case with new apps, colleges and universities began toying with the idea of using geosocial apps like Foursquare on their campuses. At Northwestern, we had a long conversation about its potential, but could never quite find a solid reason to use it for alumni engagement, other than that "all the cool kids seem to be doing it." In a world of limited resources and time, that was not the best argument.

So we waited in the tall grass, curating our Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn spaces while keeping an eye on the growth of geosocial with Facebook Places, Gowalla and SCVNGR. It was SCVNGR that got my attention at the CASE Social Media & Community conference earlier this year. The app combined two of my favorite things, social media and a healthy sense of competition. SCVNGR allows you to set up a directed, asynchronous scavenger hunt (or trek) through several places or events. As a participant in the conference, I took part in a SCVNGR trek throughout our three days in San Francisco.

SCVNGR resonated with me as a tool with strong potential for alumni engagement for these reasons:

1. It does not require a person to build a network of friends and followers to participate. A person can download the app, participate in the trek and never log on again until the next trek.
2. There is an actual competition involved. Social gaming is huge (just check the latest valuation of Zynga, creator of Farmville and Words With Friends, if you don’t believe me). By injecting a competition factor into the app, a purpose is created for the user.
3. The treks can be asynchronous. There is no need for everyone to start together at point A and move en masse to point B. SCVNGR allows for fluid entry and exit points.

Given the low barrier to entry, we made the decision to use SCVNGR during our annual senior week, which our office co-sponsors with the division of student affairs.

We announced, in advance, that the winner of the SCVNGR trek would receive an Ipad2 as a way to increase participation.

The trek was designed to cover approximately 10 of the senior week events. Each event had 1-3 challenges. Some examples:

1. Get your picture taken with the president of the alumni association.
2. What was one thing you learned at Last Lecture? (Last Lecture is an event where a professor, selected by the students, addresses them at a local bar.)
3. Find the assistant director of young alumni and get the secret password! (I am the assistant director. This gave me a chance to meet some of the constituents for whom I am responsible.)

Approximately 75 students took part in different aspects of the SCVNGR trek. I was impressed, considering this was our first use of the software. I give a lot of credit to the staff at SCVNGR who are incredibly helpful when it comes to designing treks. They recently launched a microsite for higher education institutions that use the app.

As with any new endeavor, I did learn a few lessons that will inform our future use of SCVNGR:

1. A smaller trek will have a better chance of gaining traction. I built 23 challenges spread over 10 events. Many of our students choose to attend 1-5 events during senior week. Those that did not attend a lot of the events did not enter the trek because they did not think they would have a chance at winning it. A better plan would have been to have a higher number of challenges at fewer events with higher attendance.
2. Find an effective way to market the trek. Having a prize certainly helped us, but I think there was confusion as to why we were asking people to use the app. Students need to hear from their peers why it can be a fun thing to do. Those who participated enjoyed doing so, but many just didn’t get it.
3. Take the same amount of time planning a trek as you would any alumni event. Yes, it’s asynchronous, but you are still putting your organization's name on it. We decided a little late in the game to pilot this with senior week. The first meeting you have about a SCVNGR trek should not involve a computer, it should involve a pen and paper to design an effective trek.

Going forward we have two specific ideas for using SCVNGR:

1. Utilize it at our reunion activities for graduates of the last decade to encourage alumni to generate photos and connect with one other.
2. Develop treks in cities with large alumni populations that point out the "places you need to know" as a new graduate living in a particular city.

If you use geosocial apps or are thinking about it, what other potential uses can you think of?