The Business/Higher Education Roundtable (B/HERT) hired Jagged Edge Communications in October 2015 to manage their LinkedIn page and Twitter accounts. Almost 12 months later, their social media following has more than doubled and the flow on effect has been increased website visits, newsletter subscriptions, award submissions, event attendance and even job applications.
As of September 2016, the organisation’s LinkedIn following has increased by a whopping 342%, Twitter grew by 62%, with the overall audience up 71%.
Happy with how things have been going, B/HERT Executive Director, Sharon Winocur provided the following testimonial for our website:
“Kirsty has convinced me that digital marketing makes a difference, particularly for a not-for-profit with a defined target audience. She picked up our business strategies and priorities and has helped us create a significant online profile. She is highly professional, very responsive and I am confident of her sound advice. I am very happy to recommend her services.”
Principal consultant for Jagged Edge Communications, Kirsty Jagger said she had two main recommendations for B/HERT when they engaged our services.
“The first was related to frequency and consistency. We started posting three times a week – every Monday, Wednesday and Friday – for the first six months,” Kirsty said.
“When we looked at the content and saw that we were not short of contributions, reviewed the stats and saw followers and engagement had increased, we then decided to up the frequency to once every business day.”
Just to Segway slightly here – we get a lot of questions about how frequently businesses should post on social media and generally once a day is perfect. Realistically, Twitter can handle more but you generally start to see a drop in post engagement after three tweets.
“The second recommendation was about tapping into their membership database,” Kirsty continued.
“The really great thing about working with a membership based organisation like B/HERT is that they have access to individuals and organisations doing interesting, innovative things.
“By engaging members in content creation, you’re supporting them; providing a publishing platform and an audience with whom to share their stories. It’s basically free publicity for members. And members are more likely to engage on social media if they feel they are involved in populating it.
“Once they like, comment or share a post, you reach their followers too; a whole new audience is seeing content they may find interesting, helpful or relatable.
“The organisation benefits by saving time on content creation and offering more value to members. But also the content and contributor (by brand association and engagement) help market the organisation and by extension its products, services and events.
“And the beauty of it all is there is no hard selling; nothing disingenuous or desperate that turns prospects off – it’s subtle and sincere.”
About B/HERT: B/HERT was established in 1990 to strengthen the relationship between business and industry and the tertiary education sector. The mission of the Business/Higher Education Round Table is to pursue policies and collaboration initiatives that will advance the goals and improve the performance of business and tertiary education.
About Jagged Edge Communications: A boutique communications agency established in 2010 by journalist Kirsty Jagger, specialising in search engine optimisation through the provision of website, blog and social media copywriting services.