Social Media Marketing Plan The Breeze
Team 11 MKTG 410 Due 12/03/18
Situation Analysis
Looking internally, one of the best opportunities presented to The Breeze is the utilization of JMU students as a resource. The newspaper and its media are student-run which capitalizes on a large sector of the target market. The stakeholders want to hear the students’ voices because that is who is largely going to be consuming their written content. We can’t think of a better position to be in to produce content for students than by having the students write it themselves. It is beneficial that the brand has established social media accounts since the main component of The Breeze’s current marketing plan is to advertise their own content. Social media platforms are a wonderful way to accomplish this while reaching a wide audience.
The culture at The Breeze is special because it is a student organization. Students are the heart of the newspaper and because of this, there is an annual turnover. All students are unique and bring different sets of skills so every year The Breeze is different. The various ages of students bring varying perspectives. One position, the editor-in-chief is hired by a Faculty Media Board. Publication decisions are made by the students with some faculty guidance but the social media is left to the student staff. A team environment exists with Duke's patriotism and high motivations to serve the JMU community because the staff is almost entirely stakeholders.. The culture doesn’t negate decentralized social media norms but currently doesn’t highlight user power. The Breeze looks to produce and publish for users.
The most significant resource for the brand is its staff. The Breeze is mostly student-run so the personnel that runs social media are accustomed to the platforms. The budget for social media promotions is around $10,000. Students that work at The Breeze all have smartphones so they will be able to run these accounts remotely. The team has suitable media materials as well
as a talented media production team to enhance stories and posts. The Breeze has photography and videography resources that allow for great visual content.
The organization is decently prepared for a social media strategy. The Breeze has a detailed media kit in place. One internal struggle is that the organization has multiple social media accounts along with the main account. The policies and procedures follow those of the newspaper and other publication policies. The roles for each social media account are not strictly defined.
The current customers of The Breeze are JMU Students, Alumni, and Faculty. These three groups all use social media. JMU students and Faculty are the customer groups that are local and can grab the paper copy of The Breeze but tend to check social media for news so they are savvy with using social media platforms already. JMU Alumni are usually not as local and are not available to grab paper copies. Therefore, connecting through The Breeze’s social media is a valid opportunity.
The Breeze’s competitors are other news reporters in the Shenandoah Valley including Daily News Record, Nuevas Racies, WHSV, WMRA, and WSVA. However, The Breeze is the only publisher that focuses on James Madison University. The other reporting stations have at least one form of social media. The only other station besides The Breeze that has social media activities across Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube is WHSV. They are just as active on Instagram but have more of a following and activity on Twitter than The Breeze. We consider WHSV to be The Breeze’s main competitor.
To get a better idea of the major trends in the external environment that could have an effect on The Breeze and their social media marketing, we conducted a PESTEL analysis.
Changes in laws and regulations could affect The Breeze’s social media at any time and they must make sure they are up to date with any changes. They also must adhere to the policies and standards of JMU whenever their post involves JMU in any way. There has been a steady decline in revenue from printed newspapers as well as print ads, and newspaper companies can no longer rely on these revenue streams (Barthel). The Breeze currently depends most on their advertising, more so digital than print, and university funding for revenue. According to a survey from the Reuters Institute, consumers are getting significantly more news online, including on social media, and brands must now develop an online and social media identity to keep up with this continuing trend (Dunn). Younger consumers also have an expectation that news should be delivered to them instantly, which goes along with having a strong digital and social media presence. With the majority of The Breeze’s readers being under age 35, staying ahead of these digital trends is key. Younger generations prefer that much more of their content be visual, whether a picture, video, or infographic, than traditional text based content. Consumers are much more environmentally conscious today and expect the same from brands they follow. As a newspaper company, The Breeze must make sure that they are producing are wasting as few resources as they can. They also must keep up with the many environmental changes happening on JMU’s campus. Social media sites have become more heavily scrutinized by the government and many legal issues have been debated as high up as The Supreme Court. The Breeze should be sure they are up to date on any changes to one of their social media sites, failing to do so could result in them facing legal consequences. With more brands using user-generated content, it is also important for The Breeze to ensure that any content they post that they don’t own, is properly copyrighted and credited for.
Across platforms, Facebook has the greatest amount of audience engagement with a total of 335 comments in the past 4 months. What we noticed is that there is a high amount of
engagement with certain posts that seem to trigger a response, and other posts there is a comment or two tagging a friend or no comments at all. The posts that created the most buzz were an opinion piece on class attendance, a political piece about Donald Trump and JMU being named the number one most recommended university.
The nature and sentiment of comments were consistent among each individual post, either multiple positive or multiple negative comments, with little to no variance within the thread. Some key quotes include, “Why is everything The Breeze posts an opinion article lately?” and a question from a reader, “The Breeze: will this be posted online too?” about a special issue, both of which had no response from the Breeze staff.
Twitter had 43 replies in the past 4 months. We saw the most engagement in tweets related to JMU sports that were retweeted from The Breeze Sports account as well as humorous content. We found it interesting that the JMU Health Center and JMU Libraries account will interact with each other on Twitter. Several replies stated that the viewer enjoyed the factual reports on things happening with the Harrisonburg Police Department and issues with off-campus apartment complexes.
Instagram had the lowest engagement with only 12 comments on posts in the past 4 months. Also, none of which had any response from The Breeze. A JMU student photographer even inquired via an Instagram comment about a potential story about a JMU wedding to which she received no response.
as announcements of special issues. The same article is typically posted multiple times. They also post photo collections from recent events such as football games and freshman move in. Recently The Breeze has been sharing their “Top Photos of the Week” based on viewer votes on Twitter. Twitter posts are majorly comprised of shared articles as well as photo collections with more humorous posts also mixed in. The Breeze main Twitter account will retweet the other Breeze accounts such as Breeze Culture, Breeze Sports, Breeze News etc.
The Breeze provides no feedback to their viewers. In our four-month-long sentiment analysis, we did not see one response to The Breeze even when direct questions were asked. Therefore, the average response time would be zero.
Looking at The Breeze’s Daily Total Reach and Engagement there are two specific callouts for a spike in both sets of data. Looking at the dates the two spikes happen in October and September, which is when homecoming and FROG week happen respectively. This shows that during major JMU events viewers are more likely to interact with The Breeze’s content. (See Appendix 2)
The Breeze’s greatest strength is the fact that they are the main source of JMU related news and are the only student newspaper. This also shows on their social media as they have a strong following on Facebook, as well as on their various Instagram accounts. Their audience also really wants to engage with The Breeze as is commenting across platforms.
Although the Breeze is definitely a strong platform they certainly have weaknesses to overcome. Despite The Breeze’s large targeted audience, there is room for more improvement with how well they engage with them. They don’t reply to engagement which is discouraging for users. As the main news source for students, they could be more consistent with responding
to their followers and also creating more discussion within the online community. Many of their posts do not entice readers as much as they could as many are repetitive or are just a copied link to a story on their website.
The Breeze has an opportunity to take advantage of their position as the prominent news source among JMU students, and one way they can help achieve this is by becoming more active and engaging in their social media presence. The Breeze could also use their platform to better become the voice of JMU students. They also consistently have a talented media team whose visual excellence could be better showcased on their social media. Digital content such as videos and images, tend to draw more engagement than typical posts. They could also create a page on the iPhone News App, which is where some students and other younger generations consume their news.
The Breeze has only a few sources of revenue, and most of it is not from newspaper sales, which is declining locally and nationally. They rely on ad sales and donations for a great deal of their revenue and if they lose funds from either source they would be very limited financially. The Breeze also hires students for many of their roles, failing to hire and train new students after turnover could be critical for their business.
Social Media Objectives and Budgeting
Clear goals have been set that will improve The Breeze’s social media presence through the utilization of the three themes and content plans (detailed further in the plan). The first objective is to double daily average engagement on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. On Facebook this would be measured by the number of daily engaged users, or the number of users who interact with a post per day. On Twitter it would be measured by the post engagement rate,
or how often a post is interacted with by users. Another is to develop loyal fans which can be measured in the number of account followings. The ideal result is a doubling of these numbers. A third objective is to increase traffic to BreezeJMU.org which will be measured in page views, our goal would be to increase this number from 2.2 million in 2017, to 4 million by 2019. Lastly, this plan should increase international readerships through students, alumni, and staff. The success of this goal will be measured in the number of interactions and impressions between The Breeze and international students, as well as through a sentiment survey done at the beginning and end of the campaign. Any measurable improvement in this area would be significant as they currently are very disconnected with the international community. Learning how international students view The Breeze and their content through the surveys will help The Breeze make their content more appealing to this demographic.
Target Audience Insights and Social Media Personas
We conducted three on-campus interviews with students of various ages, genders, and interests at JMU. Our first interview was with three girls that are members of Phi Alpha Delta, a Pre-Law Fraternity here at JMU and are a freshman, sophomore, and junior. They had all heard of The Breeze but only one had actually read it and it was for a class. They said they only ever read Breeze articles when their friends share them and never directly from The Breeze accounts. To get their news one stated that she reads the New York Times on the app. They are looking for humor on social media as opposed to current events. They like content to be relatable. They would like to see The Breeze take on controversy with a mixture of lighter content. Finally, they don’t want The Breeze to be afraid to call out JMU and be edgier with their opinions with JMU.
had never read it. They stay current on news from Twitter and for JMU news specifically rely on email. One subject stated that she reads real news on the Washington Post on her laptop as well as Twitter. They said that if there was a Breeze app they would definitely use it. They thought it was interesting that the JMU twitter account never retweets any of The Breeze content and felt as though that would get them to read it more since many people follow the JMU twitter but not The Breeze. They said they want to see JMU controversy and won’t follow an account until they see something that they like from them.
The final group we interviewed was three sophomore boys. They were all rushing the business Fraternity Phi Sigma Epsilon. Only one of them followed The Breeze on Twitter and one on Instagram. They like social media for humor and use it to see what their friends are up to. They get their news from Twitter. None of them knew where they could get a hard copy of The Breeze and said that if they knew where to get them they would pick them up. They don’t like it when accounts “clog their feed” and think content should be appropriate for the platform that it is presented on.
We did eight interviews with international students from China, and there were five people that knew about The Breeze. Some knew about The Breeze because when we were in a study group there were some classes that required them to read it. They also told us that they prefer to get information from social media on their cell phones rather than a newspaper, and they definitely won’t read The Breeze in newspaper format because it’s a waste of time. If The Breeze promoted their YouTube content more frequently on social media they would enjoy that. They get news about JMU mainly from the JMU CSSA (Chinese Students and Scholars
and the dukes email. They said they won’t follow The Breeze unless they have some information that can help them, or content that relates to their interests. They also want to know more about campus events. Once they follow The Breeze they hope that if they have a question, The Breeze would answer them within 24 hours.
First hand data was collected to gain insight on one of the segments targeted by The Breeze’s social media, JMU students. The survey was posted on personal profiles and in organization group chats to gather opinions on social media and following news sources. Some of the major insights are listed below from the 89 total respondents.
The top social media application used daily was Snapchat, with Instagram and Facebook close behind respectively. The platform individuals said they’re most likely to follow The Breeze on for news updates was Facebook and Twitter as a runner-up. When asked what content
students would want to see posted by The Breeze, the most popular answer was “JMU Related News.” The second highest content choice was “JMU Related Culture and Opinion.” Facebook had the majority responses for social media platform used the most for news updates. Users were asked which platform they turn to the most for pop culture content because The Breeze often features pieces related to pop culture. The most common platform for pop culture content was Instagram. The next question asked individuals to choose which option they’d prefer. The two options were: “Follow a link on social media to read an external article for information or read information within the posts on the social media platform (not following a link to read more).” The choice users picked the most was to read content within the post itself with a high 68% choosing this option over the external link option. This was helpful because almost every post on their social media includes a copied link.
The Breeze’s social media will target JMU students, ages varying in the late teens to middle twenties. Another segment the social experiences will attract is JMU alumni, middle aged individuals that attended JMU as their alma mater or further degree. The last segment is the surrounding Harrisonburg community. Local individuals, businesses, and other stakeholders of current events in the city of Harrisonburg.
The targeted users engage mostly in social communities. The three targeted segments use social media apps to connect and stay updated with their relationships. They turn to their profiles to enhance these relationships on the same platforms included in this social media plan such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Some of the target audience also hovers in the social
publishing zone.
As mentioned above, the targeted users engage the most in their social communities. This is because JMU students and alumni interact with other users on their posts. Users post updates or visual media that tells their followers something about them or what they’re doing. Similarly, users show their listening by commenting and liking. While the younger segment of current students seem to post more frequently then the older alumni, both segments turn to their applications for information on their peers, coworkers, friends, and family. Majority of the targeted users log into social media more than once a day and use multiple platforms. The most savvy is the youngest segment of JMU students who have been familiar with social media for numerous years.
Relationships seem to the be the number one priority of our target audience. It was found that these users log in to stay connected. Social media provides a community for them that connects one another regardless of distance, time zone, or free time. Reciprocating engagement
is important to these segments as they post and seek support from their audiences. This is because of their location in the social communities.
Three social media personas were created to display the three targeted segments’ use of social media. The first persona is a sophomore JMU student, Kelly. Kelly checks her social media applications first thing in the morning and then periodically between classes throughout the day. Kelly uses Facebook to connect with friends and family from other states. She seeks relatable posts that she can tag her friends in. She enjoys support from her followers in terms of likes and comments on her posts. Kelly uses social media to see updates from brands and to find humorous content to share with her friends as well as to stay up to date with her university for school spirit. Social media frustrates Kelly when the brands she follows post too much. Her favorite platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter (Appendix 1).
Tim Smith is the 35 year old JMU Alumni persona. He’s settled into his life after JMU however turns to social media to stay connected with old college friends, family, and coworkers. He is a member of the JMU Class of 2005 Facebook group. Tim engages with followers by liking and commenting on posts that he’s interested in but does not post frequently himself. He seeks currents events from reliable sources and likes to see exciting news posted while being skeptical of credibility. He is frustrated by fake news and brands not posting their content across all platforms. Tim checks social media during his free time but spends longer periods catching up with it during his lunch break and after dinner once he’s home for the evening. His favorite platforms are Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (Appendix 1).
Cindy Marchand is a mother and neighbor in the Harrisonburg community. Her family lives a couple miles from JMU and enjoys going to home sports games and other university
events. She uses Facebook to connect with old college friends, family, and coworkers. She is a member of the Harrisonburg Neighbors Facebook group and enjoys the communication and networking within the group. She seeks JMU sports updates on Twitter and enjoys sharing recipes and life stories on Facebook with friends. Cindy shares posts frequently. She logs into her social media applications once she’s free after sending her kids off to school. She has notifications turned on for when her favorite brands and accounts post, so she doesn’t miss anything. Cindy wants to be informed about the events and people in her town. She uses social media to support local businesses, update followers about her family life, and keep up her JMU school spirit. Cindy gets frustrated on social media when brands don’t post enough or don’t answer her engagement with them. Her favorite platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram (Appendix 1).
Social Zones
Taking into consideration our objectives, budget and target segments we believe that social community and social publishing are the most appropriate zones to be utilized in our strategy. Our objectives focus on engagement, loyalty, and traffic, all of which we believe coordinate well to these two zones. Social community focuses on collaboration and conversation within a community. We would like The Breeze readers, whether students, alumni, or faculty and staff, to have the feeling that their individual social identities are contributing to a larger purpose. Viewers are also more likely to stay loyal and committed to consuming Breeze content if they feel involved and included in The Breeze community. The social publishing zone will also be utilized to stay true to The Breeze’s current identity of producing and distributing both informative and entertaining content for their readers.
Social community platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram will continue to be utilized on a daily basis to keep constant conversation between The Breeze and their readers. Social publishing will also be utilized in the form of The Breeze’s home website as well as their weekly email newsletter to distribute content. As a news source we believe it is important for The Breeze to be active in both social zones on a daily basis to maintain their important relationship with their readers.
Experience Strategies Centered And Themes
The Breeze is in an incredibly unique position as it is the school newspaper. There is simply nothing else like it on campus. Student written content makes it relatable to students while the professional quality of the work makes it appealing to faculty and staff alike. Their variety of content appeals to every walk of life across campus from opinion pieces on
controversial subjects, to reporting on off campus scandals and reviewing music albums. The Breeze is in a position to create a mass community feeling and sense of inclusion in the JMU family. JMU prides itself on the “feeling” of campus, and that we hold doors for each other, and we think The Breeze has the capability to emulate this.
Our target audience is JMU students, faculty and staff, and alumni. We want them to not only consume Breeze content but to religiously follow their social media accounts and engage with the content as well. Students already talk about articles from The Breeze or topics that The Breeze writes about. However, they typically just share it on their own Facebook pages, and we desire a result involving more direct engagement with The Breeze social media. Our target audience is already used to interacting on social media with their friends and accounts that they follow, but we want them to engage with The Breeze in a way that makes them feel as though it
is an open conversation in an inclusive community environment. Consumers are so much more likely to interact with brands as well as continue that relationship when the feel as though it is not a one-sided conversation.
The Breeze can utilize their audience as their own advocates on social media in several capacities. Breeze writers can act as their own brand ambassadors, promoting their own written content on their social media accounts and utilizing their own networks. They would be willing to share their own content because it is something for them to be proud of as well as promoting The Breeze brand. Leaders of organizations are also in a great position to be advocates. When articles are written about, or involving an organization, that organizations leadership should be advocating for the content as well as encouraging the rest of the organization's members to do the same. Take a sorority for example, if everyone shared the article, that’s 200 more networks of potential readership.
Leaders of organizations with content written about them should be promoting the content and encouraging other members of the organization to do so and The Breeze should begin that conversation with them. For instance, when they write an article or share photos about the football, soccer or basketball team, the team should be sharing to their own networks as representatives of the team and members of the student body as a whole. They would be willing to share the messages with others because its positive publicity for their own team/organization. The more that The Breeze audience engages with content, the more relevant the content will become. It’s a win-win situation. The Breeze creates better relationships with its audience and the audience gets content that is tailored to their wants and needs as readers. The Breeze wants to produce content that their audience wants to read, so by interacting and engaging in a
human way with The Breeze they will be able to advocate for what they want to see, making it more likely that The Breeze will follow through and produce that desired content.
Feeling Of the JMU Community
The first theme compiled for The Breeze’s social media strategy is to highlight and emphasize the feeling of the JMU community. The Breeze is the official newspaper for the university and the target audience is all JMU stakeholders. The target audience enjoys
recognizing commonalities and communities on social media so these social experiences will capitalize on that habit.
Campus Takeover
At the beginning of the school year, specifically in September, The Breeze should focus on brand awareness to help reach the goal of increasing followers. The Breeze should take advantage of it’s campus presence and have some of it’s student staff network on campus. The staff would set up in the Commons area with a marketing table of giveaways and flyers with all the social media accounts. The staff will interact with students and ask for the passersby to “like” or follow a Breeze account before receiving a giveaway (such as Popsockets and Koozies). While the staff markets in person, social posts will advertise that the staff is on campus. A Facebook post should indicate followers to stop by for giveaways, an Instagram story provides a visual of the staff’s campus takeover, and a tweet can disclose the event as well (See Appendix 3). A campus takeover increases The Breeze’s followers because students initially like the page for a freebie and just being on campus engaging with the target audience increases brand awareness. Users that view the story and live feed on The Breeze’s accounts will be able to recognize The Breeze’s familiarity and commonplaces as students. This “they’re like me” feeling
will help increase the loyal followers that are generated by the freebies. This social experience’s success can be tracked through total number of followers and likes on the accounts as well as the addition of new followers after the campaign starts. The current like total and follower base should be noted before the campus takeover so the increase can be measured. The campus takeover will occur once a week in September. The Breeze should order 500 Popsockets and 1,000 Koozies for a total cost of $1,500.
Braggin’ About the Burg
A second social experience to embellish the feeling of the JMU community is the use of posts on The Breeze’s social media to spotlight local deals of Harrisonburg. Many restaurants and shops have different daily deals and a large portion of The Breeze’s target audience either lives in the area or enjoys the local spots. These posts will feature a “teaser text” that entices the user to click a link to the article that features the details of the deal on The Breeze’s website. These posts will work towards the objective of increasing web page views. The posts will be on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (See Appendix 3). Featuring businesses in the area is a way for the newspaper to balance it’s audience’s want for local and relevant news to them as well
national stories. The hashtag, “#bragginbouththeburg” will be utilized on the posts and promoted for users to use themselves. More traffic to The Breeze’s website will be tracked through site views and site traffic. For further insight The Breeze can track where the users click on the website after following the social posts. Hopefully users will stay on the website and click around after reading the article. This experience will be promoted through January to June. The deals and spotlights of businesses will be posted twice a month. There is no cost for this
Distinguished Dukes
The third social experience will be a campaign where students submit a video to The Breeze’s email “[email protected]” saying why they are proud to be a Duke. This is a great way for students, faculty and staff to express themselves and show their school spirit. We plan on having submissions throughout the month of February. During the beginning of March we will have the video editor at The Breeze create a montage of the clips which will be posted on James Madison’s birthday, March 16th. We will measure the campaign by the amount of
followers and engagement The Breeze receives after March 16th. The Breeze Looks Back: User Generated Content
A final social experience to deliver the collectiveness of the JMU community reached by The Breeze is a user-generated campaign that summarizes the past year. In April, posts on Facebook and Twitter will advertise to followers to help The Breeze create a story that
summarizes the past year. Followers would be encouraged to post any photos or stories about the past school year that they want included in a summary styled piece written by The Breeze. The Breeze’s accounts will notify followers with posts to use the hashtag “#BreezeLooksBack” with content they want to be featured. This drives user participation not only in creating a piece for The Breeze but also increasing brand awareness. As explained earlier the target audiences enjoy posting in their communities so they will utilize the opportunity to communicate with The
Breeze. This social experience helps increase daily engagement as the hashtags are promoted and users post to The Breeze while also eventually driving traffic to The Breeze’s website. The campaign will last one week, with the initial post asking for content posted on a Monday and ending the following. Once the week of availability is up, users will anxiously wait to see the
article that they helped contribute to. The published final piece will be posted to social media the day before spring commencement in April. The Breeze can post links to the article on their profiles. The users will feel nostalgic and excited to submit their personal memories with the possibility of the school newspaper using them. There is no cost for this experience.
Guess The Football Score
Every Friday before a home JMU Football game, The Breeze could get their followers excited by giving them the chance to guess the final score of the game, and win gift cards to the JMU Bookstore. The goal of this experience would be to get followers excited about the game, give The Breeze a chance to interact with their followers, and to help followers and members of the JMU community better see a connection between The Breeze and JMU. The Breeze can easily measure the number of submissions they get, the number of interactions, and any changes to their total followers to judge the success of this experience.
Reader Centricity
The second theme is to give readers the content they want by letting their voice be heard. We want our target audience to be more engaged and be able to connect with The Breeze. This theme targets students, faculty, and alumni. We wanted our targeted audience to not only feel more involved but also have more relevant content be shared with them.
Facebook and Twitter Content Polls
One way we plan to do this is to have Facebook and Twitter polls for our target audience to vote on a list of topics for posts they want to see. We expect that we will have more responses on Facebook’s platform from the results of our Buzzfeed Project. However, we still thought it was important to include Twitter, because The Breeze is prevalent on Twitter as well. This idea
will help meet our goal of doubling average engagement on Facebook and Twitter, as well as developing more loyal fans, which will be measured in amount of followers. We want our readers to feel involved with The Breeze by letting their voice be heard. We will have a different poll of topics every other Monday. We will run this post from the beginning of October to the end of November. This campaign will not cost us anything, since it is free to use both Facebook and Twitter polls.
Open Communication
Our second idea is to advertise open communication between The Breeze and it’s readers. Once a month, for the entire year we will have the opportunity for readers to submit any topic they’d want The Breeze to cover via posting on their social media page with the hashtag #BreezeMediaSubmission. These posts can range from just simple text postings to photos of something they think is interesting, or a video saying what they to see from The Breeze. We wanted to keep this idea broad to give readers the freedom to think of whatever they’d like. We are encouraging our target audience to feel creative and involved. At the end of each month we’d have The Breeze select a winner based on which posting has the most likes. The winner would have their idea incorporated into The Breeze, a recognition to the submitter, as well as a 25$ gift card to the bookstore. This idea will boost our engagement and number of fans, which we will again measure in followers.
Writing Contest
Our third idea is to have a writing contest for our readers to participate in. The theme of the contest is What We Like or Missed About JMU. We wanted to keep it open for all of our target audiences so we decided to make it a contest and give out two cash prizes of $250 to the
winner as well as have their article featured in the next publishing. The postings will be posted through a submission page on The Breeze’s website. We can assume that adding an option to submit through the website will cost a small sum of money. We estimated this to be $200, based on a 2 hour job at a price of $100 an hour. We also plan for The Breeze to promote this contest on their social media pages and email newsletters. There will also be word of mouth promoting this contest. This idea will increase traffic to The Breeze’s website, which we will measure in page views and click through rates. The writing contest will begin in the first week of June with submissions due by the third week of July. The winners will be announced the last week of July. From this experience we want the audience to feel encouraged to express their writing abilities. Relevant Reliable Go To News
Our third theme surrounding The Breeze is Relevant Reliable Go-To News. We want The Breeze to be perceived as more than just what people see being shared on their Facebook
timeline. We want The Breeze to become what our audience thinks to check when they want to know what is going on at JMU. We know that the quality of The Breeze’s coverage of events and much of their content is currently considered worth this credit by their audience.
The Final Draft Subscription Challenge
Many college students as well as young professionals subscribe to news blast emails such as the Morning Brew or theSkimm to receive their news integrated with their daily life already. The Breeze’s twice weekly email subscription called, The Final Draft, is a perfect opportunity for readers to see JMU news come straight to their inbox. Our goal for this social experience is to increase subscriptions to The Final Draft by 15%.
subscribing to The Final Draft, users would be entered into a raffle to win a $150 Duke Club donation on their behalf which yields football priority tickets, football season parking and Men’s basketball season parking. The raffle would be promoted through Facebook, Instagram stories as well as Twitter to encourage followers to enter the raffle by subscribing. Post copy would
include Breeze photos of the football team and information on the upcoming season and showing the incentive of the “Duke” level Duke Club donation. (See Appendix 5) The promotional period would be for the month of August, with the winner being drawn a week before the first home game (August 31st) since the first home game is scheduled for Sept 7th. This would give the winner enough time to make plans to utilize their benefits as a Duke Club member. Having the promotional period during the summer would also be beneficial because users would already be subscribed to receive the Final Draft right as the school year begins, especially for incoming freshman to be informed as students as early as possible. We want this social experience to create the feeling of excitement for the JMU Football season and show The Breeze’s support for JMU sports as well as showing that The Breeze is a great source of information surrounding JMU football. The Breeze will continue to reap the benefits of this experience as they see the valuable content of the Final Draft in their inbox, driving them to visit The Breeze website for more information, ultimately giving the ideal perception of The Breeze as a great JMU news source. The success of this experience will be measured in the number of Final Draft subscribers during the promotional period. The cost that this experience would incur is the $150 donation to the Duke Club.
The Final Draft Scavenger Hunt
open their emails from The Breeze. One of the biggest struggles of email marketing is unopened emails, so our hope is that with this experience users will feel excited to keep opening and reading Breeze content in their inbox as their JMU news source. The scavenger hunt would consist of a series of questions at the end of each email, which at the end of the experience, the first letter of each answer would spell out something JMU related such as “D-Hall” “Quad Cat” or “Village”. (See Appendix 5) Our recommendation is that the word be between 5 and 8 letters long, since that will coordinate to how many emails will be sent. The first 5 users to email the managing editor email [email protected] will receive JMU swag as a prize. The
scavenger hunt will be promoted for one week through social media and in the e-newsletter that week. The emails will be sent with the clues for 3 weeks and the winner’s announced in the e-newsletter following the last clue for a total time of one month. The success of this campaign will be measured in the number email opens as well as total final answer submissions. The cost that will be incurred by The Breeze for this experience will be approximately $100 if each prize costs $20.
Native Buzzfeed content “5 Reasons You Should Read The Breeze”
The goal of this experience is to provide readers with humorous yet informative content regarding why The Breeze is a fantastic source of news for JMU students, faculty and staff and alumni. Based on our own BuzzFeed results, students respond very well to humorous BuzzFeed content. We were previously able to reach over 1k views in just 7 days of post promotion and with The Breeze’s existing presence on campus we believe they would be able to reach above and beyond our views. Using BuzzFeed as a platform as opposed to the usual Breeze website to post content would provide some variation to readers and having the BuzzFeed name associated
with the content would catch the attention of readers. We want readers to feel persuaded to check out The Breeze as a news source if they aren’t already a reader and inspired to start to do so if they have not already. This content can indirectly advertise every facet of The Breeze from Madison 101 to The Final Draft and everything in between. The Breeze staff is more than capable of producing this content since they are so knowledgeable of the brand from the inside out. This content would be promoted throughout the month of December across social platforms including Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The success of this content would be measured in BuzzFeed page views and would be able to be further broken down by platform. BuzzFeed community is free so there would be no cost associated in this promotion.
International Student Inclusivity
There are 563 international students enrolled at JMU (JMU Facts and Figures). These are 563 readers that The Breeze is currently missing out on interacting with. The Breeze is known for emulating the feeling of the JMU community and while we want them to continue that, we think that it is important for international students to also feel like they are a part of that bond. Since The Breeze is largely targeted towards local students and residents, we decided to expand our target audience to international students, who study at JMU and come from countries where the government has banned the use of Facebook, Instagram, etc. For example, China.
Chinese international students have very different social media habits than US students. We suggest The Breeze promote themselves on a popular social media called WeChat instead of Facebook and Twitter which are popular in the United States, because international students don’t use these social platforms a lot.
Everyone in China uses WeChat, even the older generations can use it very well. More importantly is that international students rely heavily on WeChat since the platform allows them to call and video chat their parents without being charged. This makes WeChat a perfect platform for The Breeze to promote themselves on.
WeChat is a powerful platform where The Breeze can post in different ways to attract international students on just one platform. The first thing and most important thing is that The Breeze should talk with the JMU CSSA President, who can help The Breeze connect with all the international students and also play a key role in helping The Breeze promote towards
international students. Moreover, we think The Breeze should ask JMU CSSA to help them find a volunteer to manage their WeChat account, and we know they are willing to do this job because it will help both The Breeze and international students alike.
In order to use WeChat to promote Breeze, they should first create a WeChat account. This should be done over the summer at the beginning of August to ensure that it is up and running correctly by the time the international students arrive. This would also allow them to interact as they are packing and getting ready to start their time at JMU. This is a private platform, where you have to add people as you friend first and then they can receive all your messages and posts. As we said before there are different ways The Breeze can promote. After The Breeze adds all of the international students, they can create a “Group Chat” which are similar to a GroupMe. In this they can directly talk with international students to solve their problems and also promote themselves. The only downside is that they wouldn’t be able to track their viewers.
The second way is that The Breeze can post the content in a page called “Moments” which is similar to Twitter. The only difference is that posts cannot be retweeted. The page has two features that can show that your friends have read your posts, likes and comments. While the problem is that even if someone saw your post, they might not give you a like or comment, so you don’t know who read your post.
The last way is The Breeze can create their own official accounts, where The Breeze can write an article, create a video or simply send a message, and then share with their subscribers. The “Official Account” is a sub-platform in WeChat. It’s free to everyone, and it’s a relatively public platform, because the subscribers do not need to add The Breeze as a friend, they can just subscribe to the official account and then they can receive articles, videos and messages. In this way the platform will automatically count the views for the article or video. Moreover, their article and video can be shared on the Moments page, so The Breeze also can ask JMU CSSA to help them share it to get more views.
Another important thing is the content. Obviously, the content should be written in Chinese, otherwise, no one will spend the time to read it.
We think The Breeze can segment their target audience. The first segment is freshmen. And for this segment they can post more frequently, because when international students are freshmen here, the know nothing about JMU, and the only way they get information is asking people who already study here. If The Breeze can post a lot of content about JMU on WeChat before the freshmen come here, they will feel more comfortable with a strange environment. So, the content for freshmen should focus on being a guide for JMU, such as their current Madison 101. Having an international student version would be incredibly helpful to those students.
Topics such as the different rules for taking a bus. In China, they don’t have a bus schedule, they just wait in the bus station, or where can they get the food or what the guidelines are for choosing courses in the U.S. Most international freshmen don’t know how to choose classes in the U.S. because they don’t choose classes on their own in China. Helping them to figure out what brands are best in the U.S. for living goods, etc. would also be useful.
For sophomore’s The Breeze can promote content on how to rent an apartment. International students normally don’t know that apartments are rented yearly, or how to use a washer and dryer.
For juniors, The Breeze can promote things about choosing a major, since the majority of Chinese students will go to the College of Business since their parents require them to, The Breeze can post more detail of what it means to be a business major to help them understand the difference between America and China. They can also post internship opening that would be fitting for an international student.
For seniors, The Breeze can promote content to encourage them to graduate, and content with memories and photos of commencement. They can also post some job opportunities for them to especially apply for.
They also need some other content targeting the whole population of international
students. For example, international students travel during the holiday breaks since they can’t go all the way home, so The Breeze can post some recommended places to travel. They also can post the content that combines U.S. and Chinese culture, like to volunteer to help some Americans to practice Chinese, etc.
International students have a habit similar to US students that they will look through all of their friends Moments before they get up in the morning. So, no matter when content is posted, they will never miss the Moments from our friends. But they don’t like accounts to post too frequently. They will spend more time on social media on the weekends and during the holidays as well. So, The Breeze can utilize international students social media consumption habits to decide when to post.
For the budget, like we mentioned before, WeChat doesn’t charge money to create and account or to post, so, it’s free of costs. If The Breeze needs someone help them know the wants and needs of the international students, they can speak with JMU CSSA’s members and they will help them figure it out. If they need someone to help them manage their account they can provide a volunteer job or an internship, we believe a lot of international students will be interested in that. While, there is only one thing that will have a cost and also help international student more engage is they can do a raffle in their Moments. Such as “The 5th person and the 20th person who like the post will receive a prize.” In this way, it can encourage people who read their content to give that Moment a like. The gift will cost some money.We suggest the gift should be something special such as apparel with the JMU logo, or maybe a gift card. We suggest doing this promotion once a month so keep the excitement up with The Breeze and international students.
The Breeze can assess their effectiveness by manually checking how many likes, comments, and views they receive, and how many new people add them as a friend. Overall Recommendations
Aside from our four main themes, we would like to make some overall recommendations for The Breeze’s social media efforts. First, a large complaint from our audience research was that users don’t like when accounts post too much because it takes up too much of their social feeds. We recommend that The Breeze only posts their general articles once and reserve multiple postings for content that warrants more promotion such as larger topics similar to JMU being named the “Number One Recommended University”. We also suggest that The Breeze staff monitor social media closely and respond to readers in a timely manner, such as within 24-36 hours. All of our social media experience recommendations will be much more successful with more engagement from The Breeze’s social accounts with their viewers comments. The Breeze’s main Twitter account should interact consistently with the other subsets of Twitter profiles such as Breeze Culture and Breeze Sports. This will encourage users that only follow The Breeze to expand onto those other accounts. We also would recommend having a conversation with the JMU twitter account management about consistently interacting and sharing Breeze posts on Twitter. Most students start off following only the JMU account and that would allow viewers to discover The Breeze account more quickly. Our final recommendation is to open up an
internship position for a marketing student to help The Breeze staff run the social media accounts in order to keep up with our desired level engagement to ensure the success of our experiences. Activation Plan
Our activation plan consists of us readjusting posting schedules, substituting and adding more engaging, relevant campaigns. To start, The Breeze needs to gather the giveaways that will be given out throughout the select campaigns. They will also need to reach out to the restaurants
that are being advertised during the daily deals. Creative content also must be created prior to the start of the campaign.
The activation plan starts with Blake reviewing the social campaigns then delegating tasks to the student workers. The writing team will be responsible for judging the writing contest. The graphic design team will create all creative content. Additionally, the video editing team will create the montage for the Distinguished Dukes experience. A student intern that will help run the social media accounts and reply to submissions and questions will also need to be added to the team.
To accomplish all of our social experiences we will use $3,630 of the $10,000 budget. To accomplish the JMU community theme we will use $1,680. In the campus takeover experience we will use 500 pop sockets, which costs $1,000 and 1,000 koozie, which will costs $500. We will be giving away six, $30 bookstore gift cards for the guessing the football score experience, which comes to a total of $180. The total costs of the reader centricity theme is $1000. $500 will be from the two cash prizes for the writing contest and $200 is from the cost of integrating a submission feature into the website. $300 will be for the 12 bookstore gift cards for the open communications theme. The relevant reliable go to news theme will costs $825 to run. $600 will go towards the four Duke Club donations for the final draft campaign. Additionally, we will have $100 budgeted for t-shirts and five visa $25 gift cards for the scavenger hunt experience. For the international theme we will be using $125 for five Starbucks gift cards to give out.
The media schedule has been laid out in the appendix into a monthly calendar from August 2019 to July 2019. The social experiences Open Communication and WeChat will be continuous throughout the 12 months. In the month of August we have two social experiences,
Final Draft Submission. In the month of September we have Campus Takeover and Football Score Guess. We will continue the Football Score Guess through November. In October we have Facebook and Twitter Poll experiences. We start Why JMU Wednesday in November and will also run the campaign in March. In December we will run the Buzzfeed campaign. In January we will run the Scavenger Hunt and Bragging About The Burg Campaign. The Bragging About The Burg will continue until June. In February we will start Distinguished Dukes and continue it into March. In April we will start The Breeze Looks Back. In March we will just continue with the ongoing experiences. We will start the Writing Contest in June and run it until the end of July. See below in the appendix for a full calendar specified by date.
Our experiences, goals and themes all tie together and aim to accomplish The Breeze’s main goals of doubling their social media followers, and continuing or improving upon their current growth rate. When developing our plan we made sure that every experience or post we develop, fits in with their overarching objectives. The Breeze can ensure that the campaign is successful in reaching their goals by using the specific metrics outlined in this plan.
Manage and Measure
The metrics we measure will be based on four areas that we believe will help us reach our campaign goals. Doubling Daily Average Engagement will focus on how often followers are engaging with The Breeze’s content, and how well The Breeze is doing responding and conversing with their followers. This will be measured by the number of likes, comments and shares on posts, completion rates for video content, response rate and average response time. Developing Loyal Fans will focus on keeping current followers actively engaged with The Breeze, and will be measured by the frequency on comments, shares, like and other interactions
with individual followers. We will also measure the site stickiness, the number of positive brand mentions, and number of social media followers for The Breeze. Increasing the amount of traffic to BreezeJMU.Org is also a top priority and this will be measured by the number of Page views, time spent per site visit, and content/link click through rate. Lastly, improving the number of readers among international students, staff and alumni will look to better expose The Breeze to this demographic that has a low readership rate. This will be measured by the number of
impressions among international readers, the number of international followers on social media, and the sentiment of international readers done at both the beginning and end of the campaign. We will conduct a sentiment analysis for both international readers, and for all readers at the beginning and end of the campaign to gauge satisfaction with The Breeze’s posts, and how well we are reaching the international community. Facebook and Twitter offer free analytics tools that The Breeze can use and depending on resources available, they could create a business account on instagram to take advantage of their tools. A student could be hired, or brought on as an intern, to manage and monitor the metrics, or The Breeze could invest in a Social Media management tool such as Hootsuite. HootSuite is a great tool that allows users to manage multiple social media accounts, plan posts, and easily track their metrics and ROI.
The Breeze, as a news source should strive to be as honest and transparent as possible. They should also constantly be aware that students may view some ethical dilemmas or controversial posts differently, and failing to do so could create a lot of negativity around the post and The Breeze.
Appropriate permission should be obtained for copyrighted information, and anyone who deserves credit for a post or other piece of content should be given credit for it. Talking to the
businesses or individuals before featuring them, to ensure that the information you’re posting is factual, and also reviewing any laws or restrictions on what can be included in the post.
Appendix
2.
